"Omaha" the Cat Dancer is an erotic comic strip and later comic book created by artist Reed Waller and writer Kate Worley. Set in fictional Mipple City, Minnesota (derived from "MPLS", the old postal abbreviation for Minneapolis) in a universe populated by anthropomorphic animal characters, the strip is a soap opera focusing on Omaha, a feline exotic dancer, and her lover, Chuck, the son of a business tycoon.
The strip debuted in the funny animal magazine Vootie, and it was subsequently published in a number of underground comix in the late 1970s and early 1980s. "Omaha" the Cat Dancer became the subject of the eponymous comic book series published from 1984 to 1993 by Kitchen Sink Press; it was relaunched by Fantagraphics Books through 1995. The final chapters of the strip's storyline were published in Sizzle magazine, beginning in 2006.
"Omaha" the Cat Dancer was the first of several comic books published in the early 1980s which integrated explicit sex into their storylines, rather than using sex for shock value. The comic was the subject of a number of obscenity controversies, and it was nominated for multiple Eisner Awards in 1989 and 1991.
Publication history
In 1976, Reed Waller founded Vootie, a fanzine intended to promote funny animal comics. Waller began looking for a theme for his new comic. He visited local strip clubs in St. Paul with his sketchbook, and read newspaper articles about attempts to shut the bars down. Another contributor to the magazine, Jim Schumeister, proposed a comic called Charlie's Bimbos, in which "a bevy of strippers champion liberty in the face of Puritan oppression". This proposal sparked the idea for Omaha. A five-page untitled story appeared in Bizarre Sex No. 10 in 1982, as a followup to the first chapter. In November 1991, Waller was diagnosed with colon cancer; two issues of Images of "Omaha" were published in 1992 to pay for Waller's medical expenses, featuring art and writing by several major comic creators. In 2002, Waller and Worley agreed to complete the story; Worley was diagnosed with lung cancer, and began chemotherapy and radiation treatments in that year. From 2005 to 2013, NBM Publishing imprint Amerotica published eight volumes of strips under the title The Complete Omaha the Cat Dancer.
Fictional background and characters
"Omaha" the Cat Dancer takes place in the fictional Mipple City, Minnesota. The comic's universe is populated by anthropomorphic animal characters. The story began as a satire of local blue laws, before evolving into a comic book soap opera. Omaha starts to become well known after she is featured for the first time in Pet Magazine, an adult entertainment magazine, as the centerfold "Kitten of the Month".
After working as a locally popular dancer, she and Shelly meet Chuck Katt, an artist who begins to fall in love with Omaha and whom she considers "normal". After a new blue law is passed, "all strip clubs are to be closed down", Omaha and Shelly are put out of work. Shelly soon finds a hidden sub-basement at a restaurant that is owned by a man named Charles Tabey, a powerful, yet mentally ill business tycoon, with Shelly as his lover in secret. With Omaha out of work, Chuck Katt starts working for his former boss, Andre DeRoc, a media mogul in the town and the arch-rival of Charles Tabey.
Timeline and social impact
"Omaha" the Cat Dancer was the first of several comic books in the early 1980s which integrated sex into their storylines, rather than using sexual explicitness for shock value. In 1988, Friendly Frank's, a comic book store in suburban Chicago, was fined $750 for selling "obscene" material, including "Omaha" the Cat Dancer; as a result of the obscenity controversy, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund was formed. In 1990, issues of "Omaha" the Cat Dancer were seized by New Zealand authorities; the country's Obscene Publications Tribunal declared that the series was not indecent. Stever commented that "the plot is so rich that it would be a disservice to attempt to sum it up in the small space available here. It is better said that it is a story that does not pull punches and in its essence rings more true to the values of our time than anything short of Tom Wolfe". Entertainment Weekly writer Alex Heard panned the comic, writing that "the story moves very slowly [...] one can readily agree with the disgruntled fan who wrote, 'My God! Where did you dredge up those horrid characters?