Broken Frontier

Genre Bender is your occasional guide to the lost genres of comics. This month we focus on animal stories written for adults.

One of the first novels I can remember reading is George Orwell’s Animal Farm. I read it in one sitting on the couch in my mother’s apartment. I had never read the classic animal stories like Charlotte’s Web. In fact, it wasn’t until years later that I would read Watership Down. But Animal Farm was compelling. So much so that I spent a summer afternoon engrossed in the politics of a barnyard.

The Tale of One Bad Rat, the graphic novel by Bryan Talbot (otherwise known for his mind-bending multi-dimensional epic Luther Arkwright), takes inspiration from Beatrix Potter, the creator of Peter Rabbit. On the surface, it’s the story of a young runaway and her pet rat. It’s also an account of surviving molestation, and quite an important read.

A notable story uses animal imagery. Art Spiegelman’s Maus, the first graphic novel ever awarded the Pulitzer Prize, was an autobiographical account of Spiegelman’s relationship to his father Vladek and of the horrors of Auschwitz. The twist of this autobiographical retelling is that he presented the Jews as mice and the Nazis as cats. These images remain masks, as Spiegelman has drawn in subsequent strips. The animal imagery is a bit of a post-modern construction—it’s pretty clearly implied that these aren’t animals that we’re reading about but real people.

Before the soon-to-be-household-names Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles appeared in 1984, books like Albedo Anthropomorphics and Critters were setting the stage for many of the furry comics to follow. Featured in the pages of both of these books were the earliest appearances of Stan Sakai’s lapine Samurai tale Usagi Yojimbo. As well in the pages of Critters #23, was perhaps Alan Moore’s sole contribution to animal stories, The Sinister Ducks.

When was the last time that the use of animals was prevalent in comics? I barely remember some of the silver age titles like Fox and Crow, or Disney’s Super Goof. The cartoon antics of Bugs Bunny and Yogi Bear seemed to suggest that the best use of animals was in humor or for kids stories. But it seems that there’s something deep in the way that people relate to animals.

The recent release of the critically acclaimed Pride of Baghdad, by Brian K. Vaughan and Niko Henrichon, deserves some credit for harnessing some of that depth. It’s a story set in during the American bombing of Baghdad in 2003, placing four surviving lions into the ruins of the city. The book is brutally violent from the start. Many of the images from the book would be incredibly disturbing for a child, and even for some adults. On the other end of the brutally violent Vertigo fare, there’s Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s We3. It tells of the weapons-equipped escapees of a government science project, a dog, a cat and a rabbit. Unlike the Jews in Maus, these animals are clearly not people.

It seems that a lot of the more adult animal stories in comics would aim to subvert our humorous or childish expectations. There seems to be a direct line between the underground animal sex of R. Crumb’s Fritz the Cat to the soap operatic pornography of Reed Waller and the late Kate Worley’s Omaha the Cat Dancer. The former was an update of one of Crumb’s childhood characters, and inspired an x-rated film animated by Ralph Bakshi. In fact according to some interviews, Crumb was so annoyed by the fanfare that the character received that he killed him off. The latter was an ensemble story revolving around a stripper named Omaha and her sexual adventures. NBM is in the midst of releasing new editions of the adults-only book. These will be followed by a concluding book, drawn by Reed Waller and scripted by James Vance, the widower of Kate Worley.

A book that may have flown out of the coop and completely under the radar is the recent release of Elmer, by Filipino comics artist Gerry Alanguilan. It’s set in a world where (for an as-yet unexplained reason) chickens have achieved sentience. It’s about a young chicken named Jake, who must return home after his father, the titular Elmer, has passed away. The book is an earnest tale of family and responsibility. However, as the book has had a very limited release, it would be easy to assume that many readers haven’t had a chance to pick up a copy. Retailers and readers please note: it comes highly recommended.

Undoubtedly there are a lot of animal stories that have been left out. If there are any favorites I’ve missed, please feel free to mention them on the Broken Frontier boards.