Alias the Cat - Hardcover

Deitch, Kim

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375424318 ISBN 13: 9780375424311

Publisher: Pantheon, 2007

Synopsis

At the center of the novel Kim Deitch deftly places himself and his wife Pam–a passionate collector of Halloween cats from the 1920s and 30s, whose collection is impressive to say the least. But when she buys a mysterious old cat costume, she and Kim find themselves in wholly new territory: the lost world of Alias the Cat who, in 1915, appeared not only in a comic strip and film serial, but in real life as a freedom-fighting superhero.

When Kim begins to research this forgotten figure, he uncovers one almost unbelievable story after another: about the Furries, a tiny subculture of people who dress up as cartoon animals in order to have sex; about Keller and Frankie, two seamen stranded on a Pacific island, forced to make cat toys to appease the natives; about the secret lover of Alias’s alter ego, Malek Janochek; and, of course, about Deitch’s own Waldo the Cat, the common thread weaving the stories together as Kim and Pam move toward a fateful showdown in Midgetville...New Jersey, of course.

Alias the Cat is Kim Deitch at his eye-catching, mind-bending best.

About this title

About the Author

Kim Deitch was a seminal figure in the Underground Comix movement in the 1960s, and over the last 30 years he has worked non-stop, his comix appearing in Raw, LA Weekly, Weirdo, Heavy Metal, and Nickelodeon Magazine among many other publications. He and Pam live in Manhattan, with their two cats (actual, real ones).

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Followers of premier underground comics creator Deitch's long career know how hopeless it's been for him to expunge Waldo, the evil blue cat that only he and other deranged characters can see, from his cartooning--and his life. The malignant feline bedeviled the hero of The Boulevard of Broken Dreams (2002), and Deitch's new book concerns several others so cursed, Deitch himself foremost among them. He and his wife are inveterate collectors of pop-cultural detritus. Her passion for cat kitsch and his for silent movies intersect when they find, buy, and mysteriously lose a (gulp!) Waldo doll, and, thanks to her winning an eBay auction for an ancient cat costume, he then discovers a 1915 comic-strip-and-movie serial, left incomplete by its creator's bizarre death. The costume was worn in the film version, in which the shadow of cat ears--Waldo's ears!--fleetingly appears. In the final, third episode of a wild ride punctuated by wilder side trips to fill in the backstory, Deitch repairs to Midgetville, New Jersey, to face down his nemesis. He does not emerge unscathed. Deitch's parody of the hard-boiled sleuther is gloriously ludicrous yet as involving as a Philip Marlowe caper, and his boldly cartoonish artwork, packed with ambient detail and full of blockish, weighty figures (they could all be heavies), is the perfect medium for it. Ray Olson
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About this edition

• Publisher: Pantheon
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0375424318
• ISBN 13: 9780375424311
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 136