After bonding over booze, Fritz and the crow steal and crash a car before hitting up a blacks-only party, where Fritz smokes dope for the first time and experiences an epiphany that convince him that the revolution is nigh. He escapes the wrath of his now-homeless neighbors by heading out to a local bar, where he befriends a black crow who advises him to "bug out" (split the scene) to clear his head. The next morning, still woozy from his sex hangover, Fritz is entirely unmotivated to study for final exams, so he sets all his books and papers on fire in his dorm room, subsequently burning down the entire building. His buddies, Fuzzy the Bunny and Heinz the Pig, console him by arranging a rockin' beer bash, where Fritz meets a new girl named Charlene and they soon take off to her apartment, where they fuck like bunnies (or cats, as it were). The first story, "Fritz Bugs Out," features Fritz in college, where he is in despair after being dumped by his girlfriend, Winston. An additional $50,000 flowed Crumb's way when Fritz starred in Ralph Bakshi's infamous animated movie, Fritz the Cat (a film Crumb may despise, but he certainly found a way to spend the money).įritz the Cat compiles three multi-page Fritz stories, including two from 1965 and one from 1968.Īt 10 by 13 inches, it's an oversize book, which makes it fun to hold and easy to read. Even in 1969, when Crumb had become a prolific counterculture superstar, he still welcomed the money when Ballantine Books paid him a $10,000 advance for publication rights to three stories featuring Fritz. After all, the shitty page rates from EVO were not about to pay the bills. Three years later, while Crumb was selling Zap Comix #1 for a quarter a copy in San Francisco, Fritz the Cat remained his most successful cartoon character and continued to provide a significant source of personal income. Fritz takes pity on her and eventually brings the teen-age pigeon up to his hotel room.where he proceeds to eat her. After Fritz flies into one city on his concert tour, a fanatical groupie goes wild and desperately chases Fritz across town. The May 1965 issue of Help! contained another Fritz story, "Fred, the Teen-Age Girl Pigeon," in which Fritz is a guitar-playing pop star. Question is, how do we print them without going to jail?" Crumb, we think the little pussycat drawings you sent us were just great. After reading this submission from Crumb, Kurtzman sent Crumb a letter that read, "Dear R. In that debut, "Fritz Comes on Strong," Fritz brings a female cat home and strips off her clothes before mounting her and.picking off her fleas. All of these early Fritz stories were drawn well before Crumb drew Zap Comix #0 and #1.įritz the Cat's first public appearance came in January, 1965 in Harvey Kurtzman's Help! magazine. In the mid '60s, Crumb began producing more mature and sophisticated Fritz the Cat stories that would later be published in Help! and Cavalier magazines, as well as the 1969 Rip Off Press comic digest, R. Crumb developed some of Fritz's quirky personality traits in several early 1960s comics. In a subsequent story called "Robin Hood," Crumb changed the cat's name to Fritz and made him fully anthropomorphic (talking balloons instead of just thought balloons). While Fritz may be dead to Crumb, the cat's legacy still burns strong and his saga is well worth retelling to those yet unaware of his meteoric rise to fame.įritz the Cat was incarnated in 1959 as a normal cat named Fred in a comic story called "Cat Life," a long-form adventure based on Crumb's family cat and the cats that inhabited his neighborhood. But when Fritz was featured in a landmark animated movie, Crumb was so disgusted by the film that he murdered his own character in pen and ink and never drew him again. In the mid to late '60s, he began sharing those adventures in publications like Help!, Cavalier, Head Comix, and R. Through the 1960s, Crumb crafted chaotic adventures featuring Fritz strictly for his own enjoyment. Robert Crumb was a mere lad of 16 in 1959 when he created what would become his most famous cartoon character during his early career. Ah, the charismatic, legendary Fritz the Cat.
0 Comments
|
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |