Nine Lives to Live: A Classic Felix -

Otto Messmer

Fantagraphics Books

1996

144 páginas

4h 48m

ISBN-1: 0

Felix the Cat was first and best known as the star of early silent animated cartoons (documented in Canemaker's Felix [1991]), but he lived on in the funny pages long after Mickey Mouse and other talking cartoon critters eclipsed him on the screen. Although glory-hogging entrepreneur Pat Sullivan took credit for Felix, artist Messmer was the genius behind both the cat's incarnations. At its best, the strip (often adapted from the film stories) captured the inventiveness of the cartoons as well as Felix's feisty personality. This volume reprints more than 100 full-color Sunday strips and a smattering of black-and-white dailies; while the Felix strip lacks the significance of others of its era, its whimsy, its naive charm, and the pluck of its star all retain their appeal today. While the book covers only the first decade's worth of the strips, Messmer continued drawing Felix's adventures for both newspapers and comic books well into the 1950s. Staunch fans will devoutly hope for subsequent samplings of the cat's capers.