Puss 'n' Boots were cartoon characters, a cat and a dog (billed, oddly enough, as "They Fight Like Cat and Dog") in the Sparky comic. Probably inspired by Tom and Jerry and other madcap American cartoons, and drawn by John Geering of Bananaman fame, the occasional script was written by the later Dandy editor Morris Heggie. Puss was a black humanoid Feline whereas Boots was a tan-coloured humanoid Dog. Every week would involve one of the two playing a trick on the other, then the other getting his revenge, which would lead to a fight with varying results.
The stories not only depended on accentuated and very graphic artwork, but flowery and descriptive insults which added to the mayhem that made the strip.
It was one of the few DC Thomson cartoons where dialogue had equal importance with the visuals. A long and involved joke could be played out in the speech balloons (a nightmare for the hand-letterers) and all sorts of wild ideas were played out in words as well as pictures - often both courtesy of J.K. Geering.
Regular characters included Puss' baby nephew, Titch, whose speech balloon largely consisted of the word 'Baggle', and the occasional variation thereon; and from time to time the Scottish uncles, Uncle Hamish McToorie and Uncle Duncan McTavish - who, incidentally, had the same name as the staff scriptwriter's great-uncle, who was latterly the BBC news cameraman/interviewer, based in Nairn - before becoming secretary of Nairn Golf Club in the 1970s.
The writer and inventor of the uncles has wondered for some time if the exaggerated Islander who appeared in the television series Still Game (Jack and Victor) was based on the Scottish uncles. It seems almost too good to be true.
After the Sparky folded for good, having previously merged with the Topper, they fled to The Dandy appearing in 1993, but they only appeared very sparingly and were never regulars. After a long hiatus they reappeared in The Dandy for two spells in the early 2000s, the second spell being less successful, as John Geering had died in 1999 and artistic duty was taken over by Barrie Appleby who drew Cuddles and Dimples. The characters were dropped when the comic was revamped in October 2004. As well as receiving a double page each month in Classics from the Comics, since 2008 new strips have begun appearing in The Dandy. Their names are an obvious pun on the play Puss in Boots. Prior to 1993 when they appeared in the Dandy, the strip was originally named 'Mutt & Moggy' (billed as "They're the Best of Fiends"). These strips started in around 1987, and the characters were coloured differently. Puss 'n' Boots appear in the Dandy Annual 2009 but this time drawn by Nigel Parkinson. They also feature in the 2012 annual drawn by Nigel Auchterlounie.
A similarly themed strip also appeared in The Beano under the name Meebo and Zuky.
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Famous quotes containing the words puss and/or boots:
“Do you see that kitten chasing so prettily her own tail? If you could look with her eyes, you might see her surrounded with hundreds of figures performing complex dramas, with tragic and comic issues, long conversations, many characters, many ups and downs of fate,—and meantime it is only puss and her tail.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Women think that an engineer is a man in hip boots building a dam. They don’t realize that 95 percent of engineering is done in a nice air-conditioned office.”
—Beatrice Alice Hicks (1919–1979)