A Classic Felix Celebration
By Otto Messmer, edited by David Gerstein (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 1-56097-308-0
Felix is a talking cat, created by Otto Messmer for the Pat Sullivan animation studio in 1915. An overnight global hit, the cartoons led to long career as a newspaper strip, as well as a plethora of product in many other media.
Messmer wrote and drew the Sunday strip which first premiered in London before being launched in the USA on August 19th, 1923. Sullivan, as Messmer’s boss, re-inked those initial strips, signed them, and then took total credit for both strips and even the cartoons, which Messmer directed until 1931.
He produced the Sunday pages and the daily strips until 1955, when his assistant Joe Oriolo took over. Oriolo also began the campaign to return the credit for Felix’s invention and exploits, but it wasn’t until the 1960s that shy, loyal, brilliant Otto Messmer finally admitted what most of the industry had known for years.
As the cat evolved through successive movie shorts, and eventually TV appearances, the additional paraphernalia of mad professors, clunky robots and a magic Bag of Tricks gradually became icons of Felix’s magical world, but most of that is the stuff of another volume. The early work collected here from the 1920’s is a different kind of whimsy.
Fast-paced slapstick, fantastic invention and yes, a few images and gags that might arch the eyebrow of the Political Correctness lobby; these are the strips that caught the world’s imagination nearly a century ago. This was when even the modern citizens of America and Great Britain were social primitives compared to us. The imagination and wonderment of George Herriman’s Krazy Kat and Cliff Sterrett’s Polly and her Pals, both so similar to Felix in style, tone and execution, got the same laughs out of those same citizens with the same sole intent: To make the reader laugh.
The current trend to label as racist or sexist any such historical incidence in popular art-forms whilst ignoring the same “sins†in High Art is the worst kind of aesthetic bigotry, is usually prompted by an opportunistic basis and really ticks me off. Why not use those incensed sensibilities and attendant publicity machine to tackle the injustices and inequalities so many people are still enduring rather than take a cheap shot at a bygone and less enlightened world and creators who had no intent to offend with their content?
Sorry about that, but the point remains that the history of our artform is always going to be curtailed and covert if we are not allowed the same “conditional discharge†afforded to film, painting or novels: when was the last time anybody demanded that Oliver Twist was banned because of the depiction of Jews?
None of which alter the fact that Felix the Cat is a brilliant and important comic strip by an unsung genius. The wonderful work collected here retains a universal charm and the rapid-fire, surreal gags will still delight and enthral youngsters of all ages.
© 1996 O.G. Publishing Corp.