Friz Freleng so popular that United Artists, distributors of "The Pink Panther", had Freleng produce a short cartoon starring the character, "The Pink Phink" (1964). After "The Pink Phink" won the 1965 Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoons), Freleng and DePatie responded by producing a whole series of Pink Panther cartoons. Other original cartoon series, among them "The Inspector", "The Ant and the Aardvark", "The Dogfather", "Roland and Rattfink" and "Crazylegs Crane", soon followed. In 1969, "The Pink Panther Show", a Saturday morning anthology program featuring DePatie–Freleng cartoons, debuted on NBC. "The Pink Panther" and the other original DePatie–Freleng series would
Cerebus the Aardvark took a substantial drop over the next 50 issues, however, and Sim commented that the fact that readers could not simply "jump in" to "Cerebus", and had to read the entire series in order to be able to understand the current issue, was a major reason for the sales drop. In July 1984, "Cerebus" publisher Aardvark-Vanaheim was threatened with possible legal action by Marvel Comics over a parody of Wolverine in "Cerebus". When Sim guest-wrote the 10th issue of Todd McFarlane's comics series "Spawn", he donated his entire fee—over $100,000—to the fund. "Jaka's Story", a tragic character study dealing with