A new issue of King Cat is out, go buy it now! Best to get that out of the way early, because unless we ever hit the point that John is putting out “King Cat sponsored by Wal Mart” or some shit I doubt very much that I won’t like an issue of King Cat. And is it my imagination or is the paper on slightly thicker stock? Since I still have #81 in the “reviewed comics” pile on my desk (seriously, send help, I’m going to end up buried alive under this pile one day), it looks like the answer is “eh, maybe”! So what’s in this issue, just in case you’re new to John’s work and need a little convincing? I’d say the fact that he made it to #82 of a mini comic should be all the convincing you need, but I’m again showing my bias. Things start off gently enough, with strips about the chain of watchers (him watching his cat, his cat watching a squirrel, etc.), watching a friend play an arcade game (this comes up later in a longer story), some nature observations, and a dire late night thought that maybe wasn’t all that dire after all. After that things get rough for a bit. I was afraid of this when he dedicated the issue to Michi, one of his cats, and I was sadly correct: she passed away recently. No comic for this, he instead wrote a beautiful and heartfelt tribute to her, filled with the little things she did and some of their interactions. The bit about how she would see him coming home from one of the windows and would then rush over to the glass door and put her paws on it, eager to greet him, just about broke me. This is unrelated, sort of, but as somebody who lost two cats fairly recently, I’d recommend writing down your favorite things about them somewhere. Pictures and videos are great, granted, but about a month after Sassafrasquatch passed away I found myself starting to forget the little things, so I wrote a few pages worth of my favorite things about her. They don’t live nearly long enough, so just something to keep in mind after the grief briefly stops pounding away at you. OK, there’s no way for this to be anything other than an awkward transition, so back to King Cat! From there we go to three pages of letters, including a very welcome check-in from Jeff Zenick, a long time zinester. There’s a top 40 list, and then we hit a few comic stories, dealing with all the time he spent in 7-11 stores as a kid, his attempt to get up at 3am to watch Yellow Submarine, watching the rain come down and thinking about the time before the internet, and counting poops. And more, of course, but the random surprises are maybe the best part of an issue of King Cat, even for new people, who I assume are the only ones reading this, as everybody else closed this tab and bought a copy of it after reading the first sentence. Yes, it’s still an amazing, peaceful, thoughtful, questioning yet settled comic. In case you were wondering. $5
