toxicTom: Well you should definitely give Monkey Island 1 + 2 a try... That said, I don't condemn cartoony looks per se - I think DotT did it perfectly with all that whackiness and Full Throttle was wonderfully drawn too.
Thanks for your reply, it was the sort I was hoping for. The art style of an adventure game never makes or breaks it for me, it is the narrative elements (characters, story, setting, themes) and then the gameplay. The Longest Journey is my favorite adventure game I've played, and then there are a bunch of others that don't come close but are also quite great and I love, including Full Throttle and The Dig. So as long as it is good, I figure I will like it. I consider DotT, Sam and Max, Indiana Jones atFoA all to be great (not quite as great as The Dig and Full Throttle, though.) What you said definitely makes me want to try Monkey Island 1+2.
As a side note I've never played Loom or Grim Fandango. Loom wasn't at the store where I bought my games for some reason so I never even knew about it, and I tried a demo of GF back when it came out and it didn't run on my computer, then I started college and now it's been ~15 years since all of that.