Comics and cartoons are always swapping characters. Some cats born in the comics have become cartoon characters (including those of Walt Disney), while others born in animated features have moved into comic strips (Felix the Cat).
From 1911 to 1944, George Herriman, an author of comic strips published in the New York Journal, immortalized the cat and its craziness. It has been said that President Wilson read this comic strip directed at the members of his Cabinet. Herriman’s lisping cat (of unclear gender) with the evocative name of Krazy Kat is in love with a mouse named Ignatz. This ill-tempered mouse is indifferent to Krazy Kat’s advances and spends its time hurling bricks at everyone as policeman Offissa Pupp, hopelessly in love with Krazy Kat, looks on.
Poetry and the logic of the absurd already reigned in this imaginary world that probably inspired Otto Messmer and Pat Sullivan to create the adventurous Felix the Cat, featured first in movies and later in comic strips (1923).
Walt Disney’s cats: They are generally strays chased by the dog Pluto. Exceptions include Nip, who spends his time trying to irritate Mickey, and especially Big Pete, a black cat gangster whose shady schemes are foiled by Mickey.
Hanna Barbera’s cat Tom defends the house from attack by two little disdainful mice who have made their home in the wall. As can be imagined, they spend their time looking for food and bothering Tom, leading to mad dashes in which anything goes. This story was so successful that Our Gang, the magazine that published it, was retitled Tom & Jerry in 1942. These adventures were also successful in the movies, as were the antics of Sylvester and Tweety.
Most postwar comic strips featured humans with dogs as pets (Snowy, Idefix, Rantanplan). When cats did appear, it was either to highlight a dog (Hercule and Pif) or to wreak havoc. The cat in Gaston Lagaffe is a robber, complainer, and troublemaker.
Azrael, the feline companion of the wizard Gargamel (in The Smurfs by Peyo), is a vile cat who is as deceitful and cruel as his master and as demonic as cats were reputed to be in the Middle Ages.
Fritz first appeared in Robert Crumb’s notebooks in 1959, but the first strips were not published until 1965. According to his creator, Fritz is a young, sophisticated, very hip feline student living in a huge, modern residence hall with millions of other animals. This cat behaves like an unscrupulous, cynical, ambitious, cocky young man. His adventures always have a happy ending.
A European counter-culture born in the 1970s and equivalent to the American underground (with Fat Freddy) featured Matiolli’s Squeak the Mouse, a sort of very modern Tom & Jerry.
In 1978, Jim Davis created the irresistible Garfield, a fat orange tiger cat, for the Herald Tribune. This short-tempered, lying, lazy, bossy cat makes life difficult for his owner, Jon. Yet, the two cannot live without each other and understand one another. Americans probably see these characters as a couple sharing a home. Garfield’s motto is “cats are invincible.”
In comics, as in other forms of artistic expression, the same themes and symbols are associated with cats:- cats as domestic animals (Felix, Garfield, etc.);- cats as animals who are erotic and in love (Fritz by Matiolli or Edika);- cats as cruel, hypocritical animals (Raspoutine and Premieres enquetes by Sokal);- cats as discrete and clever animals (Chevalier and Gheebrant, Chaminou by Macherot, Stanislas, Supermatou, Le chat, alias Jacques Bertrand by Greg);- cats as cursed animals (Fat Freddy, Maido et Maildur);- cats as symbols of the supernatural (the cats in Mandrake, Gogols telepathic cat in La foire aux immortels by Bilal, The Many Lives of Felix, Poussy et Krazy, Ottag by Rebuffi, Les huit jours du diable by Convard).
Russian artists ridiculed their sovereign, Czar Paul I, and caricatured him as a huge, horrible cat.
Louis Wain drew over one thousand cats a year and gave them human expressions. Sine produced comic strips and even plates, basing his caricatures on cats. The same is true of Barberousse and Dubout.
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