Roger Ash

by Roger Ash

When I looked at my picks for the best comics and books of 2011, I was surprised to find a number of anthropomorphic (“funny animal” in case the word is new to you) titles topping the list. Though if I think about it, I shouldn’t have been surprised at all. I was raised on a steady diet of Walt Disney films and TV shows, classic Warner Brothers cartoons, and the best cartoons Saturday Morning television had to offer. I think many of our strongest likes and dislikes can be traced back to childhood (which is why the dearth of comics for kids is so troubling for the future of the industry, but that’s a topic for another day), and for me “funny animals” have always held a large and important part in my life.

Walt Disney Comics Digest #1. The cover of my copy of this issue is pretty tattered.

The earliest comics I have are cartoon-related titles that my parents bought for me like Tom & Jerry or Beep Beep the Road Runner. I have some old Walt Disney digests that were read to tatters on family car trips. Even though I had no idea who he was at the time, that was my first exposure to the work of the Duck Man, Carl Barks. One of his stories, Donald Duck and the Titanic Ants, burned itself into my young brain as images of giants ants attacking the Ducks was quite disturbing.

Laff-A-Lympics #4

So is it really any wonder that my entry into collecting comics was spying a copy of Laff-A-Lympics (a favorite Saturday Morning cartoon at the time) and Howard the Duck on the spinner rack at a local store? I came to love superhero comics too, as well as other genres, but I kept coming back to funny animal books.

Critters #1

Marvel published some Hanna-Barbera comics for a while that helped feed my addiction but they unfortunately didn’t stick around very long. In the 80s, Fantagraphics published a wonderful anthropomorphic anthology called Critters. This introduced me to many fine creators and their work including Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo, Freddy Milton’s Gnuff, William Van Horn’s Ambrose, and my favorite comic that far too few people remember, Mike Kazaleh’s Captain Jack. Captain Jack would eventually spin out into its own series, the Adventures of Captain Jack, for a short time. It featured the adventures of Jack (a cat) and his crew – Herman (a dog) and Adam (an android dog) – on the spaceship the Glass Onion. Herman also had a perpetual devil on his shoulder, Beezlebub, and a raccoon girlfriend named Janet. If you cross classic Warner cartoons with soap operas and science fiction, you have a vague idea of what the book was like.

Usagi Yojimbo #112

Freddy Milton and William Van Horn are also known for their work with the Disney Ducks, but the big break out strip from Critters was Usagi Yojimbo. The fact that I named Usagi my favorite comic from last year should tell you how I feel about it. Stan Sakai tells and draws some wonderful stories and his cast of characters is second to none. From rabbit ronin Usagi to rhino bounty hunter Gen to Usagi’s star-crossed romantic interest Tomoe Ame to the vixen thief Kitsune, the cast is filled with fun and well rounded characters.

Cerebus

Then there was this aardvark named Cerebus. When Dave Sim started on this epic series, Cerebus was simply a parody of sword and sorcery comics. It would soon branch become much more that than as Sim, eventually joined by artistic partner Gerhard, used Cerebus to parody other comic genres, politics, religion, and much more. And his supporting cast was outstanding. I was always pleased to see the return of Lord Julius, Sim’s tribute to Groucho Marx. Early on Sim said the Cerebus’ story would run 300 issues, a promise that he kept. Along the way, he ruffled some feathers but his amazing accomplishment of self-publishing 300 issues of a title is truly amazing. Unless the comic market changes drastically, I don’t think anyone will be able to match that.

As I got older and my weekly allowance grew, I rediscovered Carl Barks work with the Disney Duck in the excellent Carl Barks Library. This oversized, black and white, hardcover library collected all of Barks’ Disney work along with critical essays. It was an excellent presentation of work by a master craftsman. This was followed by Gladstone’s first foray into publishing Disney Comics including classic creators like Barks and Floyd Gottfredson along with new work by Van Horn and the man many feel is Barks’ successor, Don Rosa.

Bone

Then came Jeff Smith’s Bone. Some of you may argue with me about whether this is an anthropomorphic title or not. And I can understand that. Yet the Bones are not human, you have a talking dragon, talking rat creatures, a giant talking mountain lion, and a talking leafhopper named Ted. That certainly sounds like an anthropomorphic title to me. I was taken with the book from the beginning and, after a short time, I was far from the only one. The characters are so much fun and the story is a real joy to read and can go from funny to scary to adventurous to horrific at a moment’s notice. Bone is one of the real success stories in comics over the past 20 years with nearly every schoolchild knowing the adventures of the Bones thanks to Smith’s publishing deal with Scholastic.

Roger Langridge's Snarked

There have been other funny animal comics through the years, including Evan Dorkin & Jill Thompson’s Beasts of Burden, The Muppet Show, and Roger Langridge’s Snarked. But funny animal comics are not a staple of the current market which is why I’m so happy we’re getting comic strip collections like Pogo, Bloom County, and Berkely Breathed’s Complete Outland Collection HC.

But aside from the joy reading funny animal comics, they also play a part in my professional life. My first published piece in Back Issue Magazine was on Gladstone’s initial run of Disney Comics. My one serious attempt to break into writing comics was a Disney story. Unfortunately, that didn’t pan out but that’s a story for another day.

So I’m always on the lookout for a good anthropomorphic comic. It’s part of who I am. How about you? What kind of comics get your motor running? Share in the comments section and join the conversation!

Now, go read a comic!

Classic comic covers from the Grand Comics Database.

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