So, in 1973, a guy by the name of George Gately, created a newspaper comic strip called ‘Heathcliff’ about a fat orange cat, who gets involved in wacky antics with food. It never really caught on, just because it happened to be overshadowed by a comic that came out 3 years later which just so happened to be about a fat orange cat, who gets involved in wacky antics with food. But nonetheless, it still managed to be mildly popular, with two separate cartoons in the 80s with two seasons each, both having the titular character of Heathcliff being voiced by Mel Blanc, alongside multiple illustrated novels, and even a small animated movie.

But why am I telling you all of this? Why do we need to care about an (not knockoff) orange cartoon cat comic which almost nobody’s even heard of nowadays?

Like, looking at it now, this makes sense. Everyone can at least agree that there is a coherent and understandable joke in here. You can look at this and go “OK, this has a setup, a punchline, and a meaning which can be understood by the common person”.

So, lemme break this down for you real quick: so, there’s Heathcliff the cat, playing the bagpipes on the roof of the house, because it is “pizza night”.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? WHY’S HE WEARING A HELMET? WHY DOES IT SAY DIRT??

You could maybe explain this by theorizing how on Gallagher’s home planet, helmets give people special abilities depending on what it says, thus giving Heathcliff the confidence to be more talkative at social gatherings.

I could go all day showing off some of the most interesting articles of Heathcliff literature, but I think you get the idea.

See, there was going to be a new modern day ‘Heathcliff’ movie, animated fully in 3D back around 2011, but for some reason it was suddenly cancelled. And while we do know that there sadly isn’t that much interest in ‘Heathcliff’ nowadays, and it sorta makes sense that the movie wouldn’t seem worth the budget from a major studio to be fully produced, this movie sorta has a strange post production history behind it.

Was this the only thing ever finished by the production team? Why is it 12 hours? Why is there a link in the description which leads to what looks like one of the most virus infected websites of all time, with a jpeg of Jesus to the side?