The Adventures of the Araknid Kid, Episode 1

Josh Alves has produced a new comic book set in a "Wild, Wild, West" type version of the "Old West" and called "The Adventures of the Araknid Kid". The first episode has a flea villian from Ritz Nabiscov's Flea Circus.



In good comic book style, the villians "Kracker & Flea", were formed when their travelling show was hit by a meteor. Kracker is a shape-shifting brute made of cracker crumbs and his flea became enlarged and super-smart.



There was a long development of the characters, Josh told me that Araknid Kid was developed out of a character created in high school called BugBoy. Kracker had started out as a research professor not a showman.

For more details of the book you can read a review of The Adventures of the Araknid Kid by Katherine Dacey

You can buy the book via the Araknid Kid website.

Fleas feel the cold too

There are different interpretations of this humorous sketch by political cartoonist John Deering. Perhaps those are cracker crumbs but I like to think of it as fleas eating soup?

Fleas in cartoons 1948

Thanks to an anonymous contributor at Wikipedia

"Another vintage Warner Bros. cartoon, 'Curtain Razor,' has Porky Pig as a theatrical agent auditioning acts, including a shaggy dog, who turns out to be the transport of a flea circus, which proceeds to set itself up, perform, and return to the dog, on command."

The Looney Toons film is from 1949 and the dog shuffles into the office and blows a whistle to command the fleas. The act does look to be more of a funfair than a circus but they do have a big top which presumably contains all of the acts. Apparently the film was retitled for TV changing from "Curtain Razor" (a reference to the Razorback pig) to "Show Stopper" and was remade with Daffy for "Show Biz Bugs" in 1957

The BFI have some good information about this film in their film at TV Database.

BFI film and TV entry for Curtain Razor

According to Scanton & Wilkes Barre the film preceded many of the Warner Bros. films released theatrically in 1949 and was incorporated into the 1983 feature film Daffy Duck's Movie: Fantastic Island.

You can also watch this on youtube (at the time of writing)

Cartoon

Reproduced with kind permission from Fritz Cartoons