Michael Barrier's 1972-3 (and Later) Writings Put 'Fritz' in Perspective
I suggest starting with the Intro page:
http://www.michaelbarrier.com/Funnyworld/FritzPartOne/FritzIntro.htm and reading through to the end, including the postscript with Robert Crumb's commentary on Barrier's articles:
http://www.michaelbarrier.com/Funnyworld/FritzPartTwo/Crumb.htm -- In which it is revealed that, according to Crumb, he never did sign the freakin' contract in the first place, his wife did. (And I believe this to be true, though I obviously can't prove it.)
Also worth reading is Barrier's highly negative review of "Wizards":
http://www.michaelbarrier.com/Funnyworld/RaggedyAnnReview/RaggedyAnnRe view1.html
...With which I disagree, by the way. I really enjoyed "Wizards." But I can understand how Barrier, who knows more about cartoon history than most of us will ever even begin to know, might dislike it.
The first page of the whole five-chapter series that I stumbled on was the last chapter, in which nearly the first words that greeted my eyes were, "The animated feature that emerged from all this travail is one of the most important cartoons ever made. In it, Bakshi established himself as almost the only cartoon director whose current work [This was written in 1973--PA2] is worthy of serious attention... This is so even though Fritz the Cat is, in many respects, a pretty bad movie." Emphasis mine.
I couldn't agree more. It's an important movie. It's a very interesting movie. It's an extremely influential movie. It's also, in so very many ways, a pretty bad movie.
Maybe if you weren't already a Crumb fan before you saw it... Maybe if you hadn't already read all of Bakshi's source material... Well, then, maybe you wouldn't feel the same sense of almost crushing disappointment I felt. (Or maybe you would anyway.)
Or, as Barrier puts it, "The problem with this is not that Bakshi departed from the letter of Crumb's stories—those stories are not Holy Writ—but that he so rarely improved on Crumb."
Emphasis mine again. But once again, I respectfully disagree with Barrier. "So rarely?" Howzabout never?
"I don't deduce, I observe."