Fritz The Cat - Publication History

Publication History

Help!, a magazine published by former Mad editor Harvey Kurtzman, published two stories featuring Fritz, including the character's first public appearance in January 1965, "Fritz Comes on Strong". In this debut story, Fritz brings a young female cat home and strips all her clothes off before getting on top of her to pick fleas off of her. Preceding the publication of the story, Kurtzman sent Crumb a letter which read, "Dear R. Crumb, we think the little pussycat drawings you sent us were just great. Question is, how do we print them without going to jail?"

Although Kurtzman agreed to publish the story, he requested that Crumb alter the final two panels; the published version depicted Fritz standing next to her. Crumb later recalled that the original ending "wasn't that dirty... only slightly risque by today's standards". In May 1965, Help! published a second Fritz story, "Fred, the Teen-Age Girl Pigeon". In this episode Fritz is a guitar-playing pop idol and he brings Fred, a female pigeon groupie, to his hotel room and proceeds to eat her. John Canaday's New York magazine review of Head Comix describes this punch line as "outrageous brilliance is rivaled only by Evelyn Waugh's last lines in The Loved One."

"Fritz Bugs Out" was serialized in Cavalier from February to October 1968. In the summer of 1968, Fritz the Cat strips appeared in the Viking Press compilation titled Head Comix, which focused exclusively on Crumb's material. In 1969, Ballantine Books paid Crumb a $5,000 advance for the publication rights to a compilation of three stories featuring Fritz. Crumb used the money to purchase a three-acre lot. Crumb abandoned the character that year, but previously unpublished stories appeared in Promethean #3 & 4 in 1971 and Artistic in 1973. "Fritz the Cat 'Superstar'" was the last new story released; it was published in The People's Comics in 1972.

In 1978, Bélier Press published The Complete Fritz the Cat, which brought together all the published stories featuring Fritz, as well as previously unpublished drawings and unfinished comics. At the artist's request, a 10-page story drawn in 1964 and previously published in R. Crumb's Comics and Stories in 1969 was excluded from this collection. In April 1993, Fantagraphics Books published The Life & Death of Fritz the Cat, compiling nine major strips, including the 1964 story previously excluded from The Complete Fritz the Cat. Fritz the Cat strips also appear in The Complete Crumb Comics series. An unpublished page featuring Fritz that had been intended for Help!, as well as comics featuring other characters related to the anthropomorphic universe of Fritz the Cat, appeared in The R. Crumb Coffee Table Art Book in 1998.