Cat's Yarn: Kim Deitch's Alias the Cat

This story originally appeared in PW Comics Week on May 8, 2007 Sign up now!

by Chris Arrant, PW Comics Week -- Publishers Weekly, 5/8/2007

An integral figure in the underground "comix" movement of the 1960s, Kim Deitch has developed a mature and humorous perspective on life that is heavily inspired by pop culture entertainment. The dense linework of Deitch's black & white illustrations harks back to the vaudeville era, while imparting the culture and vitality of his own modern-day life. Besides Deitch's own appearances in his comics, the central figure in his work is the character of Waldo, whose sordid mouth and actions soon reveal a dramatic and impassioned personality incongruous coming from a character who resembles Felix the Cat.

Alias the Cat, released this month from Pantheon Books, finds Kim and his wife, Pam, engaging in her hobby of collecting Halloween cats from the '20s and '30s. After discovering an awkward but intriguing cat costume from that era, they find themselves on the trail of a forgotten character named Alias who starred in both comic strips and film reels, even becoming a real-life vigilante for a brief moment. As they continue, the story leads them to a litany of unbelievable stories, from Alias's creator's own tragic tale to a South Seas romance, and ending, where else, in Midgetville, N.J. And for Waldo fans, he makes an appearance, revealing his soft spot in his search for love.

PW Comics Week: How did the idea for Alias the Cat come to be?

Kim Deitch: The real genesis of Alias the Cat was that I got a job from Time Out magazine. They were doing a guidebook of New York, and they asked me for ideas on what would be interesting here in New York City. Well, I thought the flea markets were pretty interesting around town, and I could create a walk from one place to another, the different flea markets. So I had Waldo showing you around the flea markets and wrote a little plot to go with it.

Researching the story was a pleasure. I was going to the flea markets, finding stuff and having such a good time with it that I didn't want it to end. So one thing led to another and the next thing you know I was starting this comic.

At one point I was doing situps and this South Seas movie came on, which had a plot of sacrificing maidens to volcanoes on the island. I thought, "Yeah, yeah yeah!" and at first I thought I was completely appropriating that plot, but by the time I'd drawn it out, it had evolved to something else.

That's the thing Alias the Cat revels in—taking a bath in all the hobbies and then sharing them with the readers. In a way, it's probably a more personal book than what I've done before, and because of that aspect, it's a book I enjoy more than anything I've done before.

The other big influence on this comes out of my late '90s work for Details magazine, doing what you'd have to call "reality comics," way before there was reality TV. I was actually going around interviewing people, and that definitely influenced me. First of all, I loved doing that. Afterwards I thought to myself, "Gee, maybe in some weird way I missed my calling," because I loved being a roving reporter; I loved talking to people and getting stuff out of them as they talked. I seemed to have the right patience for it. It opened me up to take that approach in realistic stories and take that to the fiction I was doing.

PWCW: Although in your past books you've stood in as storyteller and narrator for the comics, in Alias the Cat you take it a step further as a sort of comic documentarian—even though the subject is fictionalized. Is that coming from your work with Details?

KD: It was a conscious decision, because it was coming out of doing real stories. The most interesting one was when I went to Virginia and covered real death row executions and interviewed those guys... which was utterly fascinating.

In older fiction, there's a certain kind of book, "adventure thrillers," which work like that. Take the work of someone like Henry Rider Haggard or similar early pulp writers. A lot of those stories are like, "I was sitting in my study having my evening pipe, going over my notes when suddenly through the side window there was a mysterious knocking. I went to look and there was a strange emaciated man, and I let him in and poured him a brandy. He started telling me the most incredible story, and I now am going to give it to you exactly as it came from his troubled lips."

It's all for the good. Instead of being a pathological liar, I'm a fictioneer, and I hope a good one.

PWCW: How did you decide to develop the story out of your wife's hobby of collecting Halloween cats?

KD: In all stories I do, it's got to seem real to me. I'm making up a yarn, but on some level it's got to be real and logical. So that was part of it. But also, I wanted to please my wife. I thought she'd be thrilled if I did that, and also putting our hobbies out there might get other people to know what we're into and get some action from our readers in terms of getting more stuff. [laughs]