Cassandra Cat, Cleo of Catillac Cats … same difference, really

One of the most hilarious (and frankly more than a little disturbing) running jokes at both comic strip themed sites The Comics Curmudgeon and Reynard Noir is the obsession everyone has over a anthropomorphic but shapely cartoon cat. Of late, though, Slylock Fox’s Cassandra Cat has started to look like an earlier furry icon:

(First image courtesy of therossman.com; second image courtesy of Bob Weber, Jr., creator of “Slylock Fox & Comics For Kids”)

That first picture would be Cleo of “The Catillac Cats,” the back-up show for the “Heathcliff” cartoons. Cleo was, like, so totally 80’s. I mean, look at that Aqua-Net hair and the legwarmers. She’s like a well preserved icon of that decade. And, at least from the visual cues, Cassandra could be her modern cousin. Same color hair and skin, and the same anthropomorphic cues to accent the feminine curves. Heck, they even have names that allude to characters from antiquity.

Oddly enough, when Cassandra originally debuted, she sported a more unique tawny hair, tawny skin combo. Is it some sort of genetic predisposition that turns all feminine cat-women into furry Scandanavian supermodels?

And why do I get this icky feeling that I’ve been thinking about this way too much?

Great Moments in the Funny Pages: Curtis Versus the Man-Eating Plant

Curtis. The strip is usually filled with light-hearted tales of a Black family in the city. The stories typically follow a familiar pattern: Curtis tries to get his Dad to quit smoking, Curtis tries to get Michelle on a date, Curtis encounters some Gunk voodoo, Curtis tries to avoid an encounter with the rougher kids. But that all changes one day in July of 2007, when Curtis and his friend Gunk come face to face … WITH HORROR.

It all begins innocently enough, as Curtis arrives at Gunk’s place for advice on flowers to give to his girl, Michelle. Just a typical Curtis storyline, right?

We get our first inkling that all is not as it seems when Curtis chips his tooth on a banana. One can almost hear the sinister music cue up during Curtis’ double entendre in panel three. (A banana that’s “hard as a brick,” indeed.)

Curtis’ tour of Gunk’s House of Horrors ends here, at the so-called “Bird of Paradise.” Anyone who’s ever seen Gremlins knows that the last panel can’t possibly end well.

Old Cassandra Cat news, but hey, I was on vacation is San Fran, so what the heck…

So, this is definitely old news, but it was just too cool to pass up:

Bob Weber, Jr., the artist behind Slylock Fox, has just provided a design for the loyal readers of The Comics Curmudgeon. Now, earlier Bob Weber, Jr., had revealed himself as a reader since some, er, salacious pictures of Cassandra Cat (the curviest member of his rogue’s gallery) surfaced on the web. He asked the artist and Josh Fruhlinger nicely to remove the pictures, since kids — his primary audience — might come across it. It was fair enough, and his request was pleasant (unlike the litiguous complaints from the lawyers of For Better or Worse‘s Lynn Johnston.)

However, to make up for it and prove that he is indeed the most awesome guy on earth, Bob Weber, Jr., provided a supersexy Cassandra Cat logo for use in official Comics Curmudgeon merchandise. Super AWESOME!!!! Check it out! Of course, you risk looking like a furry if you wear any of this stuff, but goddamn that is a sweet logo!

Great Moments in the Funny Pages: 9 Chickweed Lane’s Unicorn Saga

9 Chickweed Lane is a syndicated comic strip created by Brooke McEldowney, who, despite the name, is actually a dude. Usually this comic as a good excuse to have shapely women in bathing suits…

… or having them in impenetrable ballet sequences.

But at some point, Mr. McEldowney had the inspiration to do something a little different. It seems he wanted to say something about artist’s roles in society. It also gives a glimpse on the author’s viewpoint on those who work in a corporate setting. And McEldowney, much like Bill Waterson before him, dares to play with conventions of the comic strip form and employs a rare layout: one picture on the left, purple prose on the right. Readers, I give you as storyline that ran from May to June 2007. It’s what I call … the “Unicorn Saga.”

Great Moments in the Funny Pages: The Sexy Bathrobe Saga (Rex Morgan)

Today, we begin “Great Moments in the Funny Pages,” a feature that looks at comic strip plotlines that will be remembered for years to come. In this installment, we salute June Morgan and Heather Avery for their adventures in Rex Morgan, MD. If the good doctor himself can’t provide any entertainment for most of July 2007, then he definitely made the right choice by leaving the strip in the more than capable hands of his sexy nurse wife and a hot blonde nanny.

For nearly the entire month of July, the reader was treated to the sight of June and Heather lounging around in loose fitting robes.

The Shocker!

So, this Sunday’s “Spider-Man” strip features of the appearance of the villian known as “The Shocker.”

So who, exactly, is The Shocker? Well, there are two general definitions. Examine this panel of The Punisher War Journal and you can see two Shockers: