Adam Koford is an illustrator who knows his space. He’s a comic artist who knows where his box is. He knows how important, essential, and healthy it can be to climb around in and cultivate a single culture. His is of these internets. Not just that though, cats. Cats and comics. Koford has a narrative running that contains two cats who are homeless, but know the solids they can do inside a single frame.

One joke each, always conscious of the media.

Look at that comic up there! It’s doin it wrong! It’s amazing! Look below for another selection of Kofords pieces too, then call up your local newspaper and tell them to carry this comic! It goes by the name Laugh-Out-Loud Cats, not to be confused with “LOLCats”, which is an entirely different thing.

The thing is though that these cats have a very similar vernacular to the LOLs. They’ve got quirks of their own, too, like the little one, Pip, he loves leaves! In fact, in one comic, you find out he’s been writing fanfic about them!

The strip this comic reminds me of most, and in fact it probably owes homage to them in spirit, is Megatokyo. The first comic I ever saw that used what they call “L33T SP34K”, that being a slang collection based on internet lingo – one with pretty specific rules and word usages – as a real deal, actual language!

Similar things are going on here. Wonderful things.

Now here’s where it gets extra awesome. Not only did the Laugh-Out-Loud cats exist WAY WAY before LOLCats, it was started by Koford’s great grandfather between 1912 and 1913! How about that! Now hear a bit about this history from Koford himself:

Not many people know this, but my great grandfather Aloysius “Gorilla” Koford, was also a cartoonist (see the video evidence here [*BELOW]). From 1912-1913 he produced a comic strip which was featured in 17 newspapers, including the Philadephia Star-Democrat, the Tampa Telegraph, and the Santa Fe Good-Newser. The strip was entitled “the Laugh-Out-Loud Cats” and featured the exploits of one Meowlin Q. Kitteh (a sort of cat hobo-raconteur) and his young hapless kitten friend, Pip. The strip did not last long due to a run-in my great-grandfather had with none other than William Randolph Hearst.

See, the Laugh-Out-Loud Cats was syndicated by one of Hearst’s competitors, so “Big Willy” (as Hearst was known in his day) used the bully pulpit of his media empire to hound and mock the efforts of my great-grandfather. Hearst scribes insinuated Aloysius was an actual trained gorilla and purported to have evidence in the form of banana shipping statements. (In reality, my great-grandfather was an expert climber and incredibly hirsute, and had earned the nickname in college.) Pressures continued to mount and Aloysius hung up his pen after only a year of working on the strip. He turned to a life of quiet dignity as a steamer captain and part-time walrus hunter.

Here’s the video mentioned in that first paragraph of Koford’s great grandfather doing a drawing of one of his cats around 1912. Kool!

Now thank you for reading up on this fantastic phenomenon! I want you to check out some of the comics below or just go straight on into the archive as whipped up by Koford. He’s also got some stuff for sale and even a tomb of a bunch of the first strips. Koo koo!

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies kawaii category.