Drinking With Hamsters

Walfred Cybean was an American cartoonist, whose work was featured in magazines like The New Yooper from 1954 to 1969. At the time, Cybean’s doodler-style cartoons were seen as reductive and unpleasant by some readers [proof needed], for they typically displayed a drunken middle-aged man sharing a squalorous living space with an oversized hamster. So many of Cybean’s cartoons contained this theme, that a book compiling them was printed in 1970. Despite persistent rumors that Cybean died of alcohol poisoning and hamster-related injuries, his death came instead when he fell between the cars of a subway train.

Little is known of Cybean outside of his cartooning work. After his death, preparatory materials for a new book, titled Drinking With Hamsters Again, were discovered on his desk by his landlord. In 1981, an attempt was made to mount a retrospective of Cybean’s cartoons, but fell through due to a general lack of details or interest [need proof here]. First editions of Drinking With Hamsters are somewhat coveted by collectors and obscure cartoon enthusiasts, and have gone for dozens of dollars at online auctions [citation needed]. Cybean had no family, and tended to keep to himself. It is not known whether he kept a hamster as a pet.