''T.H.E. Fox'' is a furry comic strip by Joe Ekaitis which ran from 1986 to 1998. It is among the earliest online comics, predating ''

Where the Buffalo Roam ''Where the Buffalo Roam'' is a 1980 American semi-biographical comedy film which loosely depicts author Hunter S. Thompson's rise to fame in the 1970s and his relationship with Chicano attorney and activist Oscar "Zeta" Acosta. The film was p ...

'' by over five years. ''T.H.E. Fox'' was published on

CompuServe CompuServe (CompuServe Information Service, also known by its initialism CIS) was an American online service provider, the first major commercial one in the world – described in 1994 as "the oldest of the Big Three information services (the oth ...

, Q-Link and

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, and later on the

Web Web most often refers to: * Spider web, a silken structure created by the animal * World Wide Web or the Web, an Internet-based hypertext system Web, WEB, or the Web may also refer to: Computing * WEB, a literate programming system created by ...

as ''Thaddeus''. Despite running weekly for several years, the comic never achieved Ekaitis' goal of

print syndication Print syndication distributes news articles, columns, political cartoons, comic strips and other features to newspapers, magazines and websites. The syndicates offer reprint rights and grant permissions to other parties for republishing content o ...

. Updates became less frequent, and eventually stopped altogether.

Production

Initial strips—consisting of one panel each—were drawn as

pixel art Pixel art () is a form of digital art drawn with graphics software, graphical software where images are built using pixels as the only building block. It is widely associated with the low-resolution graphics from 8-bit and 16-bit era computers a ...

on a

C64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in the Guinness Wo ...

KoalaPad The KoalaPad is a graphics tablet, released in 1983 by U.S. company Koala Technologies Corporation, for the Apple II, TRS-80 Color Computer (as the TRS-80 Touch Pad), Atari 8-bit family, and Commodore 64, as well as for the IBM PC. Originally de ...

, first using KoalaPainter, then Advanced OCP Art Studio. Each panel had a resolution of 160x200 in sixteen colors (or 320x200 in eight), and took from two hours to half a day to complete. Later strips were inked, then scanned onto a PC and touched up with

Paintbrush A paintbrush is a brush used to apply paint or ink. A paintbrush is usually made by clamping bristles to a handle with a ferrule. They are available in various sizes, shapes, and materials. Thicker ones are used for filling in, and thinner one ...

. Characters were typically presented in a single plane, though some strips used

oblique Oblique may refer to: * an alternative name for the character usually called a slash (punctuation) ( / ) * Oblique angle, in geometry *Oblique triangle, in geometry *Oblique lattice, in geometry * Oblique leaf base, a characteristic shape of the b ...

perspective projection Linear or point-projection perspective (from la, perspicere 'to see through') is one of two types of graphical projection perspective in the graphic arts; the other is parallel projection. Linear perspective is an approximate representation, ...

Characters and themes

The comic consisted almost entirely of gags; some concerned the characters' animal natures, but Ekaitis preferred to cover news and exaggerate events of everyday life.Ekatis: "Since Thad and Bunn are more like people who happen to look like a fox and a rabbit, the gags seem to be funnier if their animal species don't enter into it. Everyday life is the best source for gags." The main character—Thaddeus Horatio Eberhard, or simply Thaddeus Fox—was often seen interacting with his roommate, Bunnington Ellsworth Rabbit (Bunn E. Rabbit). Other regulars included Grizz Lee,

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; Wilt the Wolf; an unnamed coyote, and Thaddaeus' nephew, Ferdinand.

Other appearances

Thaddeus (in

fursuit Fursuits are custom-made animal costumes owned and worn by cosplayers and members of the furry fandom, commonly known as "furries"; a furry who wears a fursuit is called a fursuiter. The term is believed to have been coined in 1993 by Robert Kin ...

form) and his creator appeared on the ''

Rapid T. Rabbit and Friends ''Rapid T. Rabbit and Friends'' was an independently produced puppet and variety show created and produced by Richard Concepcion. The show was broadcast weekly on public-access cable TV in New York City from 1983 to 2017. The show ran on the Ma ...

'' show several times and the cable TV show carried most episodes of the comic strip for a number of years. Thaddeus also appeared with Rapid T. Rabbit in the Pasadena Doo Dah Parade. The comic was mentioned in the magazines ''

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'' and ''

RUN Run(s) or RUN may refer to: Places * Run (island), one of the Banda Islands in Indonesia * Run (stream), a stream in the Dutch province of North Brabant People * Run (rapper), Joseph Simmons, now known as "Reverend Run", from the hip-hop group ...

'', and was the subject of an interview by the Commodore 64/128 RoundTable. Thaddeus and Bunn also featured in

editorial cartoon A political cartoon, a form of editorial cartoon, is a cartoon graphic with caricatures of public figures, expressing the artist's opinion. An artist who writes and draws such images is known as an editorial cartoonist. They typically combine a ...

s for the ''

San Bernardino Sun ''The San Bernardino Sun'' is a paid daily newspaper in San Bernardino County. Founded in 1894, it has significant circulation in neighboring Riverside County, and serves most of the Inland Empire in Southern California, with a circulation area s ...

'' regarding the

O. J. Simpson murder case ''The People of the State of California v. Orenthal James Simpson'' was a criminal trial in Los Angeles County Superior Court starting in 1994, in which O. J. Simpson, a former National Football League (NFL) player, broadcaster and actor, was ...

and the price of groceries, and appeared on the covers of Commodore journal ''Twin Cities 128'' (''TC-128'').

Notes

References

External links

T.H.E. Fox
in the GEnie Commodore File Library

(archived at

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

) the website for the web published comic strips. {{Early webcomics Furry webcomics 1990s webcomics Fictional foxes