Reading diary.

- Fritz the cat (The complete Crumb comics, vol. 3). Robert Crumb. A compilation of Crumb’s assorted comics and ephemera from 1964 - 1966, including the early adventures of his infamous “Fritz the cat”, rounded out with such curiosities as assorted designs for a greetings card company, sketches about Harlem and Bulgaria, attempts at other comic strips (The silly pidgeons; Roberta) and more. 

Crumb is, in a word, controversial. Also unique and also often irritating (which on second thought are both ways to define “controversial”), and certainly seldom something that leaves one indifferent. This collection of his complete works in chronological order allows us to see the evolution of his style and themes. As one can expect from any collection that includes bit of juvenilia and nearly private work, most of it is interesting, but not entirely up to professional standards. However, they offer a rather insightful context for the main pieces of interest, that being these —“furry comic strips”! 

“The silly pidgeons” (geddit?) would seem a little too precious were it not for the revelation that all are  entirely autobiographical. Capturing the lowest years of his first marriage (which soon ended in divorce), eroded by poverty and a general sense of malady, Crumb manages a rather sincere portrait of the era (if somewhat sanitized. These strips entirely omit the couples’ dabbling in heavy drugs, which would be left to the “Fritz” stories). 

And then there is Fritz, infamous figure of underground comic culture (only surpassed in the Crumb pantheon by the likes of his latter “Mr. Natural”) and subject of a couple animated movies —that Crumb disliked so much they led him to kill Fritz in latter years! 

So who is Fritz the cat? He’s —everything. In these first stories he can be a post-beatnik college student, a smarmy secret service agent, a street magician, a sleazy door-to-door salesman. He’s a lech, a picaresque hero (anti-hero, even), and he’s —funny. Thoroughly unsympathetic, yet funny. 

As the introduction from Marty Pahls informs us (and is repeated several times throughout the volume): “Robert (Crumb) dressed his less-than-Great society in animal skins, and into them he sent a cat named Fritz (…) a gilt talker, master of any situation (…). But Robert’s own satirical claws were out for Fritz. The cat was a poseur: As struggling student, sensitive artiste, self-assured cocksman, stemwinder salesman, even CIA operative supreme. His posturing was taken seriously by others because, first of all, Fritz took it seriously himself”. 

Fritz the cat is, in that way, the spirit of the quintessential American fantasy, and simultaneously its parody. The over-the-top adventures he gets into remain as entertaining and eyebrow-raising as they were back in the last century.