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hurrengoa
animalized    Humans have long used animal-inspired characters to represent different human traits and behaviours. These animals were reputed to have certain human individual or group characteristics and were thus used to project these. The Greek writer Aesop based his fables on this animal-human analogy. We find the same usage in the sacred Panchatantra sacred writings from India. Since then, this genre or literary resource has been used in many civilisations’ mythology, tales and literature time and time again. Nowadays, characters based on animals are undoubtedly mostly used in an artistic sense in comics. In many ways, too.
When we think of anthropomorphic animals that Americans call "funny animals", Disney, Hanna-Barbera or Warner Bros cartoons and comic books spring to most minds. But there is more. When Mr Disney was a mere lad of 12, comic artist George Herriman began to publish what would become a classic of the world of comics: Krazy Kat. He used a cat, a dog and a mouse to tell us surrealist love-triangle stories. If we take a big jump forward in time to the 80s, we find ourselves in totally different ambience - the most fruitful years of underground comics - and we have Fritz the Cat. Fritz is the antipode of the adorable little Disney creatures. His is a world of music, parties and drugs. Without too much of a change and in order to see different genres, we can move onto The Teenage Ninja Turtles. Before this lot became mere items of merchandising, they had actually originated as an underground parody of Frank Miller’s Ronin.
Moving on to more serious climes, the graphic novel Maus has earned a special place in the history of comics. The author, a Jew, tells us what his father lived through in the holocaust. All of the characters in the comic appear as animals. Here, the animals chosen do not represent individuals but whole peoples. Jews are mice, Germans are cats, Americans are dogs, the Poles are pigs and so forth.
We can also find very talented authors exploring animalhuman analogy in contemporary comics. The Norwegian Jason or French Trondheim to name two. Jason has proved to be a very talented artist and storyteller in a very short period of time. There are many types of stories to be found in his body of work: intimate stories, detective stories, zombies, tales of adventure or love stories. In all of these stories the characters are animal-esque beings (mainly dogs and birds.) Trondheim has been one of the most fertile comic book artists in history and he still has a lot to offer. His work has inspired other comic book artist to use anthropomorphic animals. Apart from his fiction (Donjon – Dungeon or Lapinot are probably the best known) his autobiographical work uses animals as well. He pictures himself as a bird. Unlike Jason, Trondheim mixes all kinds of animals and each character resembles a different animal. It’s no coincidence that two of the most important current comic book authors use animals in their work.