Fat Freddy's Cat
From Hey Kids Comics
Fat Freddy's Cat is a fictional orange tomcat nominally belonging to Fat Freddy Freekowtski, one of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, a trio featured in Gilbert Shelton's underground comix.
While the Cat is usually featured in a small 'topper' strip below a Freak Brothers strip, he has had independent appearances and storylines of his own.
History[edit | edit source]
Fat Freddy's Cat first appeared in 1969 in underground newspapers as a character in The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers strip. He soon gained his own small topper strip, in imitation of the early Krazy Kat strips below The Family Upstairs by George Herriman. Some full-size stories also featured Fat Freddy's Cat.
Many of these strips have been collected in comic book form by Rip Off Comix in a series of The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers compilations and later The Adventures of Fat Freddy's Cat, which ran for four small size issues in the 1970s. Fat Freddy's Comics and Stories (one shot, 1983) also included several stories about the Cat.
The Adventures of Fat Freddy's Cat were reprinted and expanded (starting over from #1) in six comic book size issues in the 1980s. They included new longer stories about the Cat. A seventh edition was released (in the US only) in 1993. After the demise of the underground newspaper, the Cat continued to appear in various comic books. His last appearance to date was in a 1990 strip reprinted in The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers #12.
Character[edit | edit source]
The Cat is much smarter than Freddy, and while sharing many of his preoccupations such as food, sleep and sex, his stories also feature a fair amount of defecation. Like Garfield (whom he predates) he is laid back, but in his personal habits and outlook he is more like the Freak Brothers. However he tends to regard the Freak Brothers with amused contempt, frequently expressed by defecating in inappropriate and inconvenient places, such as stereo headphones.[1][2]
Like Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes, he has a fertile imagination, and one of his storylines featured him playing the role of "F. Frederick Skitty", an undercover agent sworn to stop the distribution of "Tee Hee Hee", a drug that turned people into homosexuals. In another story, one of Fat Freddy's schemes involved trying to replicate Dick Whittington's success by selling the Cat to the (fictional) small, oil-rich nation of Pootweet to deal with mice.
Cat stories longer than one page[edit | edit source]
There have been more than a hundred small comic strips about the Cat, most of which have been reprinted in various formats. But there have only been eight stories longer than one page:
- I Led Nine Lives! (5 pages) (Adventures of ... #1)
- Untitled (2 pages) (Adventures of ... #1)
- Chariot of the Globs (6 pages) (Adventures of ... #2)
- Animal Camp (13 pages) (Adventures of ... #3)
- The Burning of Hollywood (6 pages) (Adventures of ... #4, in color in Thoroughly Ripped)
- The Sacred Sands of Pootweet (9 pages) (Adventures of ... #5)
- The War of the Cockroaches (27 pages) (Adventures of ... #6)
- Paradise Revisited (7 pages) (Fat Freddy's Comics & Stories #1)
The Cat also appears as a key character in:
- Frederick the Duck (3 pages) (Fat Freddy's Comics & Stories #1)
Books[edit | edit source]
- The Collected Adventures of Fat Freddy's Cat and his Friends (1976)
- The Adventures of Fat Freddy's Cat Book 1 (1977)
- The Adventures of Fat Freddy's Cat Book 2
- The Adventures of Fat Freddy's Cat Book 3
- The Adventures of Fat Freddy's Cat Book 4 (1978)
- The Adventures of Fat Freddy's Cat Book 5 (1980)
- The Adventures of Fat Freddy's Cat (1977) ISBN 0-8296-0054-X, UK edition 1978 (reprints the four small Adventures of ... " comix except for 4 strips from #2 and 1 strip from #3.)
- More Adventures of Fat Freddy's Cat (1981) ISBN 0-89620-057-4 (reprints 91 one page strips.)
Popular culture[edit | edit source]
The New Zealand band Fat Freddy's Drop, whose debut album won the 2005 Gilles Peterson Worldwide Winners Award, were named after the comic.[3] The band's debut single had been recorded under the influence of LSD blotters that had been printed with images of Fat Freddy's Cat on them,[4] and the band liked the name.
External links[edit | edit source]
- Rip Off Press, Inc., publishers of the Freak Brothers comics in the U.S.A.
- Knockabout Comics, publishers of the Freak Brothers comics in the U.K.
- Fat Freddys Cat LSD blotter art
References[edit | edit source]
- ↑ Lezard, Nicholas, Review: The Complete Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, vol 1, The Guardian, 8 December 2001
- ↑ Plowright, Frank, The Slings and Arrows Comic Guide Slings & Arrows, 2003 ISBN 0-9544589-0-7, ISBN 978-0-9544589-0-4 p. 236
- ↑ BBC: Fat Freddy's Drop
- ↑ Sydney Morning Herald: Fat Freddy's Drop: Gig Reviews
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