Comic About Un-cute Cats Launches on Kickstarter
The Internet needs more cats! That’s what I and comic co-creator Brooks Peck think. We (he’s a pop culture museum curator and I’m a former anthropologist, you can find me on Twitter as @fattprecious) are trying to overthrow the hegemony of cute cats ruling the Internet by creating a comic about the not-so-desirable cats that accumulate at shelters. You know, like the sickly ones, the gross ones, and the plain-old-mean ones.
Unadoptables Kickstarter – find out more
Our first issue focuses on a bonded pair of cats: Marmalade, an adorable Scottish fold kitten, and a very, very old Maine Coon, Vincent von Toast.
Sample page (see full version)
Marmalade is hell-bent on getting herself – and Vincent – out of the pokey and into a comfortable home. She’s got endless plans for how they are going to either catch themselves an owner or break out and live free in the wild. Vincent knows that Marmalade would have a much better chance of being adopted without him, but she won’t leave his side. Marmalade’s optimism about the bonded-pair’s future forces Vincent to keep up appearances, and even get a little hopeful from time to time.
Sample page (see full version)
The setting for the comic is a cat café called Calico Coffee, owned by Hank, a big dude with an inner cat lady. Hank loves all cats, but especially the lifers.
Calico Coffee is home to a number of Unadoptables, like the resident gross cat, Jelly. He’s a sneezer, a drooler, a litter box sleeper, and he doesn’t keep up with self-grooming. The cone-dependent Babalu is the sickly cat of the group. She’s a thin, picky eater with bladder issues, and when she takes a nap, people often mistake her for dead.
The first six pages are complete and available on the Kickstarter page, which is live! Brooks and I are raising funds to complete the first issue, “Catnapped!”, with stretch goals that will get the comic translated into three languages as well as make it accessible to the blind. The comic will be free to the public on Tumblr and Tapas.
Check out our Kickstarter merch!
We’re offering a limited first edition of the comic as a reward, as well as merchandise at the higher levels, like a t-shirt and cat-covered leggings with designs exclusive to the campaign.
About the Creators
Brooks was an entertainment journalist, but for the past thirteen years he’s been a curator at the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle. I used to work with monkeys, but changed careers when I got my MFA in creative writing in 2014. We were inspired to create the comic after our experience adopting our cat Ripley, whom we based one of the characters in the comic on: Ripper is a lioness trapped in a house cat’s body with an insatiable need to hunt bugs, hats, toes, earrings, and anything else that moves.
Check out our live Kickstarter page now xxx
