Tanks. Jimmy. Meat robots. These are the weirdos that make up the only extended universe that matters: Heathcliff.
If all you know about pop culture’s second most famous orange cat is that he eats fish down to the skeleton, well, that’s a good gag. But there’s more to the comic strip than that — for instance, he has a ham helmet. Also, he occasionally runs into an ape called the Garbage Ape, and he might be a god?
Josh Kurp at Uproxx talks to cartoonist Peter Gallagher about the strange animals that populate Heathcliff.
I would say probably the Garbage Ape was the first character that maybe I developed on my own, outside of the normal Heathcliff cast. Then from there, I keep trying out new characters all the time. I’m developing a couple of them now, but you never know if it’s going to work, but definitely, I think the Garbage Ape was the first one for sure.
I even know a 1980’s segment from the 1984-1987 DIC Heathcliff cartoon called “The Catillac Cats” even appeared in Peter Gallagher’s Heathcliff comic strip.
I color Heathcliff dailies and Sundays; it’s one of the strips I really enjoy doing. Garfield has more name recognition , but Heathcliff is my kind of cat. Seriously, I suspect my Maine coon Conner has fantasies much like this orange guy.