Omaha the Cat Dancer
OMAHA THE CAT DANCER
Kitchen Sink (1986-95)
All 26 original issues: v01 19 issues • v02 4 issues • images of omaha 2 issues.
Every page scanned, including story pages, posters, puzzles, full color outer covers and inner cover glossy b&ws.
Omaha made her first less-than-prominent appearance in 1978, in the Vootie contribution of cartoonist Reed Waller. Vootie was an amateur press association devoted to funny animals, or furries, or even anthropomorphics, as many fans, perhaps sensitive about their affinity for such a child-associated genre, prefer to call them. An amateur press association puts out a collection of separately-published fanzines, distributed mainly among its members. This one was named after a sound made by an early Mad parody of J. Fred Muggs, a chimpanzee who appeared on the 1950s Today show, and probably the closest real life has to a funny animal.
Less furry nudity and sex than you would expect from a cat dancer, mostly a furry soap opera. It’s ok though.
Reed Waller started Omaha in the mid-70s, and the earliest instalments were published in underground anthologies like Snarf and Bizarre Sex by Kitchen Sink. It’s an anthropomorphic tale of sex, politics and corruption that focuses on Chuck Katt (real name Tabey (yes, feel free to groan at the surnames)) and the titular Omaha, who’s a stripper. While there’s a lot of sex in the first issues, it’s not that major a part of the page count. It’s well-integrated. But it’s integrated into a story that doesn’t really make that much sense. In onescene , that evil beaky guy up there has arranged to spike the drinks of all the politicians at the opening of an underground bar (literally: it’s in a basement) so that an orgy starts so that he can… er… something… and then there’s an assassin that’s going to shoot Katt I mean Tabey but misses and shoots.
The artwork starts off charming and rapidly becomes more than that. Well, rapidly for a reader: Waller isn’t very prolific, and while there’s a constant refrain of “we’re going to be bi-monthly now” during the entire run, I think there’s on average one issue per year. With some multi-year gaps. Waller has a very appealing art style. While everybody has strange animal heads, they’re extremely expressive and cute. I also love the way he draws a white outline outside the black outlines when there’s a black background (which happens a lot). Everything looks slightly embossed.
The first two “proper” issues were published by Steeldragon Press, but Kitchen Sink took over with issue three (and reprinted the first issues). With the second issue, Kate Worley was brought aboard as the writer, which would continue until the end of Omaha. Plot-wise, there’s a lot of the stuff like the above: Omaha made her escape to San Francisco, and happened to walk past the restaurant of nephew of the owner of the restaurant above the underground night-club, and he recognized her and pulled her back into the plot. *phew*
I like funny animals, but funny animal fans *really* like funny animals. Does it make sense to advertise for a children’s funny animal title on the back of a very not-allowed-for-children-at-all funny animal title? I guess so. Like I said above there, Waller’s characters are extremely expressive. There’s a lot of firebombing in Omaha: It seems like the go-to tactic for the evil conservatives. Waller explains his approach to anthropomorphism: He doesn’t really take it that seriously. These are just people who are drawn with animal heads and tails, and the animal chosen may be a shorthand for a personality trait of that character. But it’s not more nerdy than that.
Wow. Bizarre Sex 9 (which was an all-Omaha issue) had sold 50K copies. That’s pretty respectable, and there were probably further reprintings later. It was eventually republished as Omaha #0 a few years later. All the characters have only four fingers (which is a funny animal trope since the 1920s, at least), but here he says “four stars” and holds up only three fingers. Waller sticks to his “these are really people no matter how I draw them” philosophy.
The inside front cover of each issue has a recap of the preceding issue. At first I thought this was rather odd: Wouldn’t it make more sense to give a proper recap of the entire plot to bring new readers up to speed? But instead this really is more for faithful readers that may need a slight nudge to be reminded what has been going on. I remember that, at the time, I did read those pages, but they didn’t really help that much. I had forgotten most everything that had happened, and who all these characters were. Omaha has a cast of more than a dozen characters, and there are several parallel soap opera plot-lines going on. Reading it back then (in the late 80s) as the issues trickled in, I found myself pleasantly confused most of the time, and that led me to believe that Omaha had a quite complex narrative structure.
The plot in the final Kitchen issues of Omaha is such a bummer. While Omaha usually trundles along on a pretty placid place and nothing really horrible happens, the way things turn out during the last issues is rather distressing. The final issue inexplicably switches to white paper (the rest are on newsprint), and Waller’s artwork becomes rather sketchy at the same time. Both Waller and Worley suffered through major health problems during this time, which may explain the depressing atmosphere.
Finally we’ve arrived at the subject of this blog series! Fantagraphics! We revert back to newsprint and the page count is lowered to 24, but the storylines continue from the first volume without a hitch.
Here’s the explanation for why Waller and Worley changed publishers. Kitchen Sink had “bought” Tundra (or the other way around — has this manoeuvre ever been properly explained?), and Omaha was no longer a good fit. I think that sounds rather odd, because Tundra would have been a pretty good fit for Omaha, I think? Or did they have a “no erect penises” policy? I don’t know.
Waller’s artwork during these last four issues is very nice, and the storylines seemed to perhaps get a bit more development, and sales must have been nice… so why was this the last issue?
Oh! Googling a bit seems to indicate that Waller and Worley broke up and refused to work together. There was a reconciliation a decade later, and they published a few more issues before Worley died. After this, Worley’s widower continued to write the series from Worley’s notes. NBM published the conclusion to the saga in 2013.