Fritz the Cat Totally Explained

Everything about Fritz The Cat totally explained

Fritz the Cat is an underground comic book fictional character created by Robert Crumb. The character first appeared in printed form during the height of the underground comix movement of the 1960s and has since appeared in two films inspired by Crumb's comics.

History

Fritz the Cat was one of the first characters Crumb created, and the first to see print in a professional publication. In the liner notes for the Fritz the Cat film soundtrack, Thomas Albright describes Fritz as "a kind of updated Felix with overtones of Charlie Chaplin, Candide and Don Quixote."
   Fritz was originally created as part of a series of comic books that R. Crumb and his brother Charles drew when they were children. In the earliest stages of the character's form, Fritz was a house cat named Fred. Crumb eventually developed Fred into an anthropomorphic character, renaming him Fritz.
   In early strips, collected in The Complete Crumb Comics series, Fritz has adventures as a James Bond-like secret agent, has an incestuous tryst with one of his sisters and generally behaves in ways somewhat out of character with his persona in his later, published stories. The character's first published story appeared in Help! #22 (January 1965). The story was called Fritz Comes on Strong. In it, Fritz brings a young (cat) girl home, and strips all of her clothes off before getting on top of her to pick fleas off her. While Harvey Kurtzman agreed to publish the comic, he told Crumb that he didn't know how he was going to "publish it without getting arrested."
   Fritz developed a distinct personality. Fritz was "glib, smooth and self-assured," characteristics Crumb himself felt he lacked.
   Crumb first saw the film in February 1972, during a visit to Los Angeles in the company of fellow underground cartoonists Spain Rodriguez, S. Clay Wilson, Robert Williams, and Rick Griffin. Crumb disliked it, stating "it's really twisted in some kind of weird, unfunny way." Crumb also took issue with the film's condemnation of the radical left. San Francisco copyright attorney Albert L. Morse claims that no suit was filed, but an agreement was reached to remove Crumb's name from the credits. both of these claims are highly unlikely. Crumb later claimed that he "wrote them a letter telling them not to use any more of my characters in their films." A sequel was released by American International Pictures in 1974, entitled The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat, directed by Robert Taylor, and written by Taylor, Fred Halliday, and Eric Monte. In both films, Fritz was voiced by Skip Hinnant.

Death

Crumb's displeasure with the film version of his character led him to kill the feline in an attempt to stop the making of any future films. The story, Fritz the Cat "Superstar", published in 1972, depicted Fritz as a pompous and arrogant famous Hollywood movie star, being exploited by a pair of film producers and his agent who cast him in endless sequels. The producers are caricatures of Ralph Bakshi (portrayed as a parrot) and Steve Krantz (portrayed as a hog with sunglasses). Fritz's agent is portrayed as a wolf.
After recording a television appearance, Fritz is approached by Andrea Ostrich, a neurotic ex-girlfriend of his, who urges him to have sex with her. At her apartment, he ignores her as he watches the television show, despite her repeatedly threatening to commit suicide. When the show is over, Fritz finds Andrea hiding her head under the chair, and gives her a kick in the pants before leaving. As he walks out of the apartment, she stabs him in the back of the head with an icepick. A caption pointing to Fritz's dead body reads "violence in the media." After having killed off Fritz, Crumb never drew another story featuring the character.

Partial list of stories

The character has appeared in a number of stories drawn by Crumb. Listed here are among the most notable of the stories and their original publication information, as reprinted in the compilation The Life and Death of Fritz the Cat.

Fritz Comes on Strong—first published in Help! #22, January, 1965
Fred, the Teen-Age Girl Pigeon—first published in Help! #24, May, 1965
Fritz Bugs Out—first serialized in the February to October 1968 issues of Cavalier
Fritz the Cat—first published in R. Crumb's Head Comix, 1968.
Fritz the No-Good—first published in the September/October 1968 issue of Cavalier.
Untitled—created in 1964; first published in R. Crumb's Comics & Stories, 1969
Fritz the Cat, Special Agent for the C.I.A.—created March/May 1965; first published in R. Crumb's Fritz the Cat, 1969.
Fritz the Cat, Magician—created summer 1965; first published in Promethean Enterprises#3, 1971.
Fritz the Cat: "Superstar"—first published in The People's Comics, 1972.

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