The Life and Death of Fritz the Cat: Selected Stories by R. Crumb (1965-1972)

by Robert Crumb

Paper Book, 1993

Status

Available

Publication

Seattle : Fantagraphics, 1993.

Description

Collects R. Crumb's major Fritz the Cat stories.

User reviews

LibraryThing member Disquiet
So many years after its publication, Fritz the Cat can still shock. I re-read it after a very long gap -- long enough that I'm not quite sure when I last read it, easily a decade. There's more collected than just this volume, but it's a good start. There's kind of a dual shock to Fritz, partly the
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idea it could shock at all. It's a comic about a cat, in the literal and slang sense of the word, who does most of his thinking below his belt. The animated series Archer some 40 years later makes Fritz look like Archie by comparison -- most but not all of the time.

But shock it once did -- and, in the other half of this dual shock, occasionally still can: an incest scene in one of the earliest stories makes it clear, even this many decades on (it dates to the mid-1960s), why. Well, not exactly why. The boundaries Crumb was pushing at at the time, while well cataloged, are very different to consider as categories than to have experienced first hand, which I was certainly too young to have done when it was first being released.

Key among the pleasures of reading it today is watching how quickly, in a matter of mere years, Crumb went from rough line drawings to both the visual style and obsessive cues we associate him with to this day. The stories are often rambling, made up it seems as they go along, but that very sloppiness is another of its pleasures. While set on the idea that comics could be far more than they had been, aspiring to self-evidently "literary" value was not on Crumb's mind. Not yet.

Part of the reason I wanted to revisit Fritz the Cat was to see a quasi-documentary look at mid-60s proto-hipster life, the grungy reality of the lumpen slackers of the day. And this it provides in (to use an alternate definition of a word that in Fritz still shocks to see in print) spades.
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LibraryThing member LibroLindsay
I read this as part of Panels' 2015 Read Harder Challenge for the anthropomorphic animals category. Me...I'm not much a fan of the more realistic portrayals of anthropomorphism, but I welcomed the idea of getting to know R. Crumb's work better.

Artistically, I like Crumb, especially as his style got
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cleaner over the course. Content-wise, I'm not sure this is really for me, mostly because it often makes me uneasy. On one hand, reading Fritz the Cat feels like a rather authentic glimpse into the seedy side of the Sixties, but I'm not familiar enough with Crumb's work to know where he draws the line between social commentary/satire and earnestness. Perhaps that's the point? The whole crows-as-Black-people, rats-as-Chinese, the role of any woman, period (why hello, incest and rape). Fritz is funny mostly because his schtick is just so over-the-top. The parts I liked best were his womanizing in "Fritz Bugs Out" and the James Bond thing going on in "Special Agent for the CIA" (poop jokes also get me every time). I can appreciate the general story arcs from starting simply to devolving into utter madness by the end, but it became redundant to me after a while. I'm sure that worked better as read in its original, sporadic publications rather than in a graphic novel compilation.

So, ultimately, I'm glad I read some Fritz the Cat comics, but I might just stick to Mr. Natural.
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LibraryThing member Jazz1987
This is the type of comic book that is not for everyone; however it should be acknowledged that Robert Crumb is a legend/controversy among comic book writers and artist. Fritz the Cat, along with his album cover for the Big Brother and the Holding Company, are probably his most well recognized
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work.

Many of the jokes or context in Fritz the Cat are out of date dealing with the counterculture of the 1960's (something I personally never cared for but understand its importance along with its failures - which he does show both in satire). I thought it was clever having anthropomorphic animals instead of humans especially when several artists of the day and now disregard it as immature. Also, unlike several underground comix cartoonists, he never (at least in Fritz the Cat) went after other anthropomorphic characters such as Walt Disney or Looney Tunes; most likely he understood the importance of them in American culture.

So if you do not mind adult, very vulgar, crude, sometimes sexist/racist comic books about anthropomorphic animals then you should check it out or if you like to study comics as a medium. I would avoid reading this if you just want to read a comic or if your a sensitive reader. Also, keep in mind Crumb hated Ralph Bakshi's films of Fritz the Cat, hence the ending.
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Language

Local notes

non-circulating

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