'Korky the Cat'?----------who's he?!
Let's get this out of the way first: the theme of CATS have been done to death in all walks of cartoon fantasy, whether it is within the realms of comic strips or animated cartoons. I did hundreds of rough sketches before even beginning any 'proper' inked-in drawings of my characters, to make Damn sure that what I was putting out was unique only to me, and not a carbon-copy of what other dudes and dudettes were producing either now, or in the past.
However, a fair amount of punters immediately proclaim: 'Korky the Cat!' [a well-established one-time feline cover star of British 'fun' paper the DANDY, who first appeared in 1937 and is enjoying a stylized comeback in 2011] when they first clock my cat-character, JET BLANC.
There are definately similarities in the construction of these two characters, but certainly no more than Jet's similarity to vintage animation star 'Felix the Cat', who just simply happens to be a mostly-black cartoonized cat, also. I did have a stint on drawing Korky for D. C. Thomson in their DANDY COMIC LIBRARIES series around 1986,but I definately approached that assignment very differently, utilizing photostats from the definitive Korky artist Charlie 'Chas' Grigg, to ensure overall cohesion in drawing an established character.
Drawing the events within BABY BOOMER is a real 'break from the past' regarding drawing existing icons, and this strip has very little---if anything------to do with reliving past glories within comics/cartoon History, even if, paradoxically, the BOOMER strips have a very retro look and ambience to them.
I also feel that my JET character also resembles one of the titular characters within John Geering's Puss 'n' Boots, a strip that ran in SPARKY from 1969 that impressed me greatly. If anything, Jet is perhaps an amalgamation of many cartoon and comic cats from the past, who inhabits a World that is very different-----and with supremely different humor------to all that has gone before. Once many tune into the strip, most readers can hopefully see that what I'm doing is my own unique spin on things, which bears little concession to any other cartoonist's output.
Nevertheless, I did feel compelled to put out a satirical drawing 'sending up' the percieved differences between Jet Blanc and Korky, and this was the result [complete with attendent mispelling of 'plagarism' in my haste]:
However, a fair amount of punters immediately proclaim: 'Korky the Cat!' [a well-established one-time feline cover star of British 'fun' paper the DANDY, who first appeared in 1937 and is enjoying a stylized comeback in 2011] when they first clock my cat-character, JET BLANC.
There are definately similarities in the construction of these two characters, but certainly no more than Jet's similarity to vintage animation star 'Felix the Cat', who just simply happens to be a mostly-black cartoonized cat, also. I did have a stint on drawing Korky for D. C. Thomson in their DANDY COMIC LIBRARIES series around 1986,but I definately approached that assignment very differently, utilizing photostats from the definitive Korky artist Charlie 'Chas' Grigg, to ensure overall cohesion in drawing an established character.
Drawing the events within BABY BOOMER is a real 'break from the past' regarding drawing existing icons, and this strip has very little---if anything------to do with reliving past glories within comics/cartoon History, even if, paradoxically, the BOOMER strips have a very retro look and ambience to them.
I also feel that my JET character also resembles one of the titular characters within John Geering's Puss 'n' Boots, a strip that ran in SPARKY from 1969 that impressed me greatly. If anything, Jet is perhaps an amalgamation of many cartoon and comic cats from the past, who inhabits a World that is very different-----and with supremely different humor------to all that has gone before. Once many tune into the strip, most readers can hopefully see that what I'm doing is my own unique spin on things, which bears little concession to any other cartoonist's output.
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