| rdfs:comment | - Samurai Cat (aka Miaowara Tomokato) is the main character in a series of books by Mark E. Rogers. In addition to the detailed writing, almost every page in each book has a picture painted by Rogers, depicting the events described on that page. Each chapter is a bizarre parody of some historical or pop culture event, but it is always treated as entirely serious. For example, no one finds it at all unusual that Tomokato is a walking, talking, sword-wielding cat.
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| abstract | - Samurai Cat (aka Miaowara Tomokato) is the main character in a series of books by Mark E. Rogers. In addition to the detailed writing, almost every page in each book has a picture painted by Rogers, depicting the events described on that page. Each chapter is a bizarre parody of some historical or pop culture event, but it is always treated as entirely serious. For example, no one finds it at all unusual that Tomokato is a walking, talking, sword-wielding cat. The basic premise of the story is that Japan's greatest warrior Tomokato is out for revenge after his master Nobunaga is killed. The group that led the attack on Nobunaga's castle was made up of characters from throughout time and space, so Tomokato travels all over the Earth and beyond to seek his vengeance (from Japan to Camelot to Valhalla to Mars, to name just a few) in the most violent ways possible, involving the deaths of hundreds of beings. In the first book, The Adventures of Samurai Cat, Rogers skewers J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, H. P. Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth, Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian and Norse mythology. With the second book, entitled, More Adventures of Samurai Cat, Rogers goes after the movies (while still referencing pulp literature), satirizing Indiana Jones, and fusing it with King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table in the search for the Holy Spad (a biplane armed with two 15 mm machineguns and God's own special effects, complete with 3D glasses for safe viewing). From there Tomokato (and his firearms-obsessed nephew, Shiro) travel to Edgar Rice Burroughs' Martian Barsoom. Rogers saves his most biting humor for the last chapter which takes on Star Wars. By the third book, Samurai Cat in the Real World, Rogers take on historical figures like the Third Reich, Chicago gangsters and finally Joseph Stalin and the Communist Party. Subsequent books include The Sword of the Samurai Cat, Samurai Cat Goes to the Movies and Samurai Cat Goes to Hell. In the last of these Tomokato dies and finds himself in a parody of Dante's Inferno, perhaps to close off demand for any more books. From June to September 1991, Epic Comics released a three-issue mini-series comic book version of Samurai Cat with the covers rendered by Rogers but the artwork done by others.
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