NationCats is about cats that look like flags and are involved in specific historical events and humor related to vexillology. That's really what it is.
Information
I created nationcats officially and publicly in early 2019 on my original DeviantArt account that originally served as a shitpost account; the series was certainly short-lived on that platform as I got banned in July of that year and moved to Tumblr and then eventually Twitter. Initially, nationcats comic ideas were given by friends, but as Bella took over, I shifted it to be more educational and focus directly on specific events or flags (vexillology). While many nation personification media existed already, I mainly wanted to aim my stuff towards solely vexillologists or people interested in specific historical stuff; I didn't want to do the obvious and make a comic based off of WW2, for example.
Backstory
The exact origins of the idea I had a while ago—far before I even discovered similar media—were far, far back in 2013, when I drew cats as flags. The drawings, of course, were mediocre and ugly and are now lost to time. I was young at this time, so I didn't really care what would happen if I never took care of stuff. Fast forward to 2016, when I commissioned a follower on DeviantArt to make me a "profile mascot" (really, just a sona) of a cat that resembled the American flag, and I really liked the design, but over time his similarity to another American-themed character resulted in me having his design changed.
Around 2017, me and some friends on Discord conceptualized characters that resembled national flags, and some actually made the basis for the modern nationcat characters, an example being AmeriCat's new design. Eventually, in early 2019, I proposed the idea to a friend, named Bobb; they accepted the idea, and we made the first public webcomics together; again, this was before the focus was more serious and flag-directed; when Bobb retired, another friend took over, and eventually Bella took over. During this time, I aimed nationcats to bring up random, not-so-obvious historical events and flag or vexillological humor, and to bring up historical events with flag or vexillology, we did not without trouble, including issues I had to deal with, including people stealing my characters or even our concept work being used in other nation-personification media we were not involved in at all.
Why vexillology?
Again, my idea for flag characters existed long before I knew of similar Ideas existed; however, if you wonder, "Why in the hell should a webcomic be only about vexillology most of the time and not have a plot?" Well, first of all, this is a webcomic about cats that look likeflags It's going to be about vexillology one way or another, but I had this question before: why do you think some flag books exist? because people were interested in the idea of vexillology and flag-related stuff in general. Growing up, I had only ever seen library-rented flag books and a few flag websites. Growing up on the internet in the 2000s, vexillology was not that common, aside from a few communities from my memory, like FOTW.info, and that information has been helpful in the creation of some of our content.
It was not really until the 2010s that I would say that online flag communities had a "boom." However, some information feels like it is recycled and non-stop told as basic "flag facts," like "Did you know? The old flag of Pocatello, Idaho looked like fucking shit?" than more obscure-ish information, and as a result, I felt like nationcats should shift towards a more education-aimed thingy and focus on random flag humor combined with obscure-ish information, sprinkled sometimes with non-flag facts but still historical facts anyway.
