Here's the text post I was talking about, now before anything I do wanna say: WARNING, SPOILERS FOR THE FELIX THE CAT GRAPHIC NOVEL!—with that outta the way I wanna talk about two things, first of all I wanna discuss my new favorite Felix character right behind the wonderful, wonderful cat himself, Xilef, and why he practically kills the character Alex (Felix's cousin from Australia)
For starters I wanna say that I do not like Alex as much as like Xilef (if you haven't read the comic you'll understand why and if you already read it you probably do understand) but I don't hate Alex AT ALL! I really do like the character and I plan to give him a pretty important role in my Blood & Ink AU as a deuteragonist to the main antagonists.
With that being said I'll discuss what we have in terms of both of their CANON appearances, which is kinda difficult because: ALEX HAS NOTHING! Like I'll give him some credit, his brief appearances in the old comics & his cameo in twisted tales have left such an imprint that he has fans even now which is fucking crazy to know that this small minor character who's a flavorless white copy of Felix is used in AUs. I've seen Alex play a prominent role in one AU called timedout or something and he appears in a continuation of that one AU where they give cuphead yellow piss hair (I forget the name, it was the one made by somebody problematic but picked back up and continued by someone seemingly cool? Idk). Whatever the case the fact that he continues to exist through fans is awesome, but actual canon media? Uhhh....Alex tried to steal Kitty?.... Ya know... The thing every old cartoon villain does? He's not very original which makes sense however I do believe he CAN be original, I'll talk about that later though. He also makes an appearance as an illusion thing summoned in Twisted Tales where he gets an inverted version of the magic bag, which is pretty cool but it's cool factor doesn't hold up because he gets beaten like... 6 seconds later. That's basically it though? Alex is Australian, painted himself to get with kitty because all old toon villains are creeps, and when he made an appearance in a reboot decades later he appeared for a few seconds before being never seen again.
Now of course after saying that people will bring up the fact that Xilef is a new introduction into the Felix cast so his media is restricted to his one antagonist role in the comics. However because he gets one entire comic dedicated to him being introduced as a new villain, he gets the spotlight fully to shine and BLOWS ALEX OUTTA THE WATER! He establishes himself pretty strongly as Felix's strongest canon foe because he's not some relation lookalike, he IS Felix which is a whole lot scarier. Like Felix himself and his tooney knack for quick thinking combined with a magic bag allowing him to do basically whatever is good for jokes and gags and whatnot, but when you take a step back and give those powers to somebody who's a villain you get an actual fucking threat which Xilef clearly is. He forces the (limited) cast of Felix's rogue gallery to fight him on the basis he can just ZAP THEM INTO FARM ANIMALS EFFORTLESSLY! First appearance and so far he's the strongest villain—but a strong villain doesn't necessarily make a good one of course. I do think his powers can make for some interesting writing in future comics (and hopefully a new show or movie!) but in terms of actual character he leaves something to be desired but the ground work IS THERE! Xilef is Felix from an alternate universe and while he does share some traits with Felix, Xilef has a more evil personality with his entire goal being to gain power. Pretty standard villain stuff, but the fact that Xilef makes a comment saying he's met a "million billion trillion" versions of Felix but only him and our Felix hold magic items (the cane and bag) clearly demonstrate that there's something that makes him special. Not only this but the fact that apparently our Felix is the singular being across an infinite multiverse to have a magic bag has some interesting implications and an explanation on why that is would have to relate to Xilef since he's the one who's traveling the multiverse and knows all this junk. OH! And speaking about the multiverse thing: he has a multiverse traveling robot Wabbit that is filled with technology that Kitty can gain no information from. The fact that he just casually has this tech is pretty weird considering Felix isn't really that much of a mechanic and more or less relies on his magic bag—meaning Xilef has something else going on which is PRIME MATERIAL TO BE USED IN THE FUTURE! Which brings me to the sad realization of what'll probably happen to Alex and what I would prefer: Alex is fucking dead!
Addressing the elephant in the room: Xilef is based on Alex's design 100%. They basically ripped Alex's skin off and gave it to this newer character because without the hood Xilef wears, they're legit 1 to 1 copies which they themselves are just white versions of Felix.
No difference! Well—Alex has whiskers but that's a side effect of the older versions of Felix having whiskers themselves thus his cousin carrying over the whisker trait. But other than the design element based on Felix's own design, NO DIFFERENCE! Because there's no difference it kinda doesn't make sense to have two white copies of the main character running around, the reason why copy characters work in other media like say—Sonic the hedgehog—Is because each Sonic faker is unique. Metal, Shadow, Surge, Fleetway's Super, all of them are unique. Even the generic and boring anti-Sonic got enough of a redesign in the form of Scourge that bro stands out uniquely amongst the others. Xilef and Alex have the exact same design though and Xilef does everything Alex didn't making the need for Alex completely redundant because there's no use for him as it stands? They'll need to completely redesign his look, letting Xilef keep the white faker asthetic, in order to have Alex be even considered amongst the rest, but with every cool thing Xilef has done why would we need Alex?
Now this is the part where I wanna suggest something for what could potentially keep Alex into the Felix continuity, the issue is... He kinda adds nothing? Like my IDEAL scenario for letting Alex stay is for starters redesign him to be unique, and then give him some motivation to wanting to steal things Felix has (not necessarily including the magic bag and Kitty's affection but that can be apart of it). Have a Scourge the hedgehog thing going on where Alex is this character full of hate and resentment for how much Felix is loved that it drives him to actively impersonate Felix under the selfish basis that he believes HE deserves all the attention and love. Now while this is a cool character idea—its Felix the cat, it don't go this deep. The closest we got to something this deep was the catastrophe (pun not intended) that was the Felix movie. Felix is inherently a goofy series so to have this random super deep idea for Alex to keep him in the canon is unlikely at best. Alex has more of a chance to be reduced to a dunderheaded gag character who appears for cameos once in awhile which—I WOULD PERSONALLY HATE! I don't want this character to be completely butchered but as it stands.... Damn! Xilef just outclasses him.
Anyways ramble over. Idk, as I said I don't hate Alex but we have a clear superior character who I pray appears more in the future purely because it would add to any future Felix stories being made. He's cool as hell and in general I believe he deserves some love. (I will say though it would be so funny if this one appearance is his ONLY appearance and he legit is forever trapped in ancient Egypt lol, would be a bigger waste of a character though).
