Commander Kitty

Commander Kitty was a webcomic by Scotty Arsenault, who also created Heebas.

Commander Kitty is about zany space adventure, from the perspective of characters who are not themselves entirely sane. Witness your mind turn to quivering mush as they battle with imaginary evil alter egos from another dimension, fending off commercial advertising that would make the Borg tremble, travelling through time leaving a bloody carnage of blatant paradox behind them, discovering the secret artifacts of planet Pangolin, and going shopping for yogurt.

The site
The original Commander Kitty was somewhat sporadically active from 2002-2004. After its host server suffered a database corruption, regular updates finally ceased. Work, and personal obligations also contributed to its ending, but Scotty did not abandon the concept, and still produced Commander Kitty artwork from time to time.

The strip resumed on January 4th, 2009. The new version restarted the storyline to a point before Commander Kitty and Nin Wah had met, covering them both separately, starting an arc involving a small fluffy sheep fronting some sort of deadly plot involving all the pirates in the galaxy.

Cast
The Crew The crew of the Number Six consists of three Cats (Kitty, Mittens and Fluffy), a Ferret (Mr Socks) and a Red Panda (Nin Wah) who Kitty can't seem to get rid of. The ship's computer is a mobile system of robots called MOUSE.


 * Kitty : Commander Kitty is our antihero. He's our Black Adder... our Arnold Rimmer... our Basil Fawlty.  A scheming, cunning, conniving misfit who will never be satisfied until the world sees him as the Greatest Spacer Ever.   Kitty insists on everyone calling him 'Commander', even though Mittens is the only one who actually does.  (Not out of respect, but out of 'Mittens is such a wiener'.)   To CK, image is everything!  His dream is to be the suave, daring, roguish daredevil Spacer that everyone admires, and whom gets all the girls.  And these petty jobs he keeps getting are hardly worth his effort.   When something goes wrong, he blames the equipment.  Or the sun was in his eyes.  Or it was Mittens' fault. In the original strips, he does mention that he has a real first name, but the strip ends before he announces it. Most of the strips were lost when the original hosting site went down. It is unclear whether it will be announced in the revamped version.
 * Mittens : Mittens was born with a red ensign's uniform on. He's loyal to CK because he thinks he's being taught by the best.  Whether out of fear, or out of sheer naivety, Mittens respects CK's authority.  Not to say he won't cower and tremble and beg for mercy when he's ordered to sneak into a Mandrill Death Chamber.   He is reliable, but doesn't listen very well.  He's trusting, but gullible.  He wouldn't be anyone's first choice to pilot a Spacer ship, but he's exactly the pilot CK deserves.
 * Mr. Socks : Mr Socks is, basically, a parody of TV's Mr Spock. But where Spock was emotionless, Socks is a Ferret with emotion overload!  Happy one minute, lazy the next... easily distracted by squeaky things and bright lights.  Socks does possess a remarkably inventive mind, and is often at work in his lab, creating magnificent machines and terrifying weapons that may or may not work according to plan, depending on how well CK and/or Mittens follow instructions. Imagine Stephen Hawking with ADHD and you'll probably not be far off.
 * Fluffy : The First Officer, she is likely not even aware they are on a space ship. She is known for the audible thud noise that her brain makes when someone asks her a question with two meanings.  Simple tasks like making toast can cause her little mind to pop.   Yet she often saves the day by her sheer blissful fearlessness and dumb luck.
 * MOUSE : MOUSE is the computer operating system for CK's ship. It comes equipped with an interactive robot named MOUSE.  MOUSE is a little bastard, though.  It delights in tormenting CK and Mittens with its practical jokes, and backtalk.  It's programmed to obey orders, but that doesn't mean it has to like it.  To make things worse, MOUSE is self replicating, and able to produce five of itself at any time, to aid in ship repairs, or crew support.  This would be a pretty handy feature if they didn't just gang up on Mittens all the time.   Basically, its main feature is to be a pain in the butt.
 * Nin Wah : Nin Wah is a Spacer like CK. She is cheerful, energetic, and optimistic.  That doesn't mean she's any more successful than CK, though!  She is from the planet Panda Red, and like all of her people, considers the black and white pandas to be the 'lesser' variety.    Nin Wah has a cybertronic right arm.  If you ask her how she lost it, she'll tell a different sensational story every time!

Press coverage
In an interview with the Nashua Telegraph Online, Scotty mentioned the following about his strip: "'Commander Kitty' is, as most Web comics start out as, a labor of love, and just an outlet for my creativity," Arsenault said in a recent telephone interview. "I don’t remember wanting to do anything else. I always wanted to draw and be creative. The Internet is just a magnificent place for giving people with something to say, a place to say it."

"I created a bunch of characters that really weren’t going anywhere, then I came up with new ones that I could work better with, and out came Commander Kitty, Fluffy, Mittens, Mr. Socks, it just sprang out of that," Arsenault said. "After I put the characters together, I took a vacation in Washington, D.C. I’d take my sketch pad and started making up stories."