"Tom & Jerry" begat "Itchy & Scratchy", right? Oh... wait...

I'm already bored watching the Dumbocrats race towards the edge of the cliff, so have been reareading some of my National Lampoon mags, from back in the 70s. (These will eventually wind up for sale on Walt's Attic.) I found something in the June 1973 issue that sheds some light on a question which has bedevilled cartoon fans for ages: the origins of Itchy & Scratchy.

Everybody knows that "Itchy and Scratchy" was inspired by (or knock-off of) "Tom & Jerry". Right? "Tom & Jerry" is an American animated franchise and series of comedy short films created in 1940 by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, who later became infamous for the "partial animation" which ruined their made-for-TV cartoons, like "The Flintstones". The 161 cartoon shorts produced for MGM centered on a friendship/rivalry (a love-hate relationship) between the title characters Tom, a cat, and Jerry, a mouse.

Although, deep down, Tom and Jerry supposedly were great friends [homosexual lovers? Ed.], they spent most of their time chasing and battering each other, with violence which was more edgy than that seen in the more popular Disney and Warner Bros. cartoon. So when Matt Groening and the others responsible for "Itchy & Scratchy", a feature on many earlier episodes of "The Simpsons", made their cat and mouse even more violent, many fans-- and there are many -- figured it was just an outgrowth or parody of "Tom & Jerry". One entire episode is devoted to Marj's complaining about the violence of TV cartoons.

The comic book cartoon I discovered today in National Lampoon suggests that there may have been an intermediate step, like the so-called "missing link" between cavemen and modern men (sorry, "persons"). Check out "Kit 'n' Kaboodle", written by Brian McConnachie, with art by Warren Sattler.

Who knows? Maybe Matt Groening, or Brian McConnachie, or both of them, were (like Walt) regular readers of the "Adult Humor Magazine".