Nov. 9 (Bloomberg) -- In 1984, a U.S. tourist named Fat Freddy’s Cat awoke in Paris to discover that his airline reservation home had been canceled due to lack of payment.

Separated from his nominal owner, a member of Texas artist Gilbert Shelton’s comic-book gang The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, the layabout orange tomcat and occasional secret agent in the U.S. government war against the hee-hee-hee drug decided to visit Pere Lachaise Cemetery to find Jim Morrison’s grave.

“The cat got locked in the place and we never left France,” Shelton says over dinner at La Canaille, a Bastille bistro that takes its name from the French word for riff-raff. “This is Fat Freddy’s Cat’s favorite restaurant, an anarchist hangout, a good place to meet fellow cynics and sardonics.”

Along with fellow 1960s underground “comix” creatures such as Robert Crumb’s Mr. Natural and Bill Griffith’s Zippy the Pinhead, Fat Freddy’s Cat has matured into a global industry with some 40 million books and comic books published in more than a dozen languages from Greek to Japanese to Finnish.

Shelton has assembled a selection of his signature character’s recent adventures and classic escapades in the new book “The Fat Freddy’s Cat Omnibus” (Knockabout Comics, $29.99). “Dogs just have an owner,” Shelton says of the project. “Fat Freddy’s Cat has an entire staff.”

Freaks and Cats

Fat Freddy’s Cat, born on a sofa in Venice Beach, California, in the summer of 1970 while Shelton was illustrating The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers strip for the Los Angeles Free Press, is the doppelgaenger of a tom named Codpiece. “The cat kept jumping on me,” Shelton says, fingering a blue checkered shirt pocket stuffed with ink drawing pens in various colors.

“The cat traditionally represents a rebellious attitude,” says Shelton. Yet unlike many ribald underground comix characters fit for adult consumption, the often potty-mouthed Fat Freddy’s Cat is a child-friendly, albeit politically incorrect, feline.

“Making children laugh is magic,” says Shelton, who attended high school with the choreographer Tommy Tune, counted Janis Joplin as one of his closest friends and drew concert posters for rock bands such as Steppenwolf. “What makes people laugh is a question I’m obsessed with,” he says. “Kids like kitty-litter gags.”

So do adults. “Shelton is as near as comics have come to producing a natural comedic genius,” says Alan Moore, the U.K. filmmaker and graphic novelist behind such works as “V for Vendetta” and the “Watchmen” series. “He’s one of the greatest funny talents that the comics medium has to offer.”

Burgundy Drinker

Fingering his gold wire-rim glasses, Shelton explains in a sturdy Texas drawl why Fat Freddy’s Cat today mostly favors Burgundy wine over a long-neck bottle of Lone Star beer and clearly prefers life in France over that in his native U.S.

“Things got distracting for me in the States,” says Shelton, who, with his wife Lora Fountain, has a country house outside Chablis. “The French are polite and here I don’t have to worry about meeting Americans so much because they don’t speak French.”

Shelton says France is the ideal home for an American cat and his long-time pal Robert Crumb mostly because the French would never dream of calling them cartoonists.

“I still tell my old high-school friends in Texas that I’m in the publishing business; a 69-year-old man doing comic books really doesn’t work in America,” says Shelton, a descendant of Anson Jones, last president of the Republic of Texas before it became a state in 1845.

French Legation

The relationship between Shelton, France and Texas runs culturally deep, stretching back to his days as a student at the University of Texas in Austin, where he edited the school humor magazine “Texas Ranger” in the shadow of the city’s French Legation. Built in 1841, it’s the oldest frame structure in the capital and a reminder that France on Sept. 25, 1839, was the first European country to recognize the Republic of Texas.

“In France, we’re artists,” Shelton says. “It’s a country where comics are bestselling books, just look at Asterix.”

There are, nonetheless, plenty of American pranksters who still crack Shelton up. Chief among them is his college friend Stanley Marsh 3, the multimillionaire Texas oil baron and owner of Marsh Media Co. He commissioned the Dynamite Museum and the Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, Texas, burying nose first in concrete a row of Cadillacs along Route 66 with the tail fins sticking up. As for the American cartoonists Shelton left behind, he says Garry Trudeau remains his favorite.

“Doonesbury is constantly witty,” Shelton says. “That is not easy. Too many American humorists have lost their humor.”

To contact the writer on the story: A. Craig Copetas in Paris at ccopetas@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 8, 2009 19:00 EST