Just after the middle of the 20th century, the exploration of outer space began moving from novels, stories, films, and comics—our collective human imagination—into real life. The USSR was the first to make big moves. In 1957 they successfully launched a small satellite called Sputnik 1 into orbit around Earth, and its steady signal could be heard by anyone with a shortwave radio receiver. A month later, the Soviets successfully launched a street dog named Laika into orbit aboard a thirteen-foot-tall capsule called Sputnik 2. And while Laika the dog died within hours, likely due to overheating in the capsule, the launch was considered a major step toward human space flight. Just four years later, in 1961, the USSR finally sent cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into low-earth orbit, making him the first human ever to escape Earth’s atmosphere. Later that very year, NASA’s Project Mercury sent Alan Shepherd more than a hundred miles skyward.

Just two years after that feat, US President John F. Kennedy made the bold declaration that the United States would put a man on the Moon by the end of the decade, a prophecy that was fulfilled by the Apollo program with only a few months to spare.

It was in that same year, 1963, that an unknown author, going by the name “CK Kasper,” published his first and only short story, in the pulp fiction magazine Spicy Tales of Space. The story was titled, simply, Moon Family, and while it was an otherwise forgettable science fiction story about a family of circus performers living on a Moon colony in the future, the unmistakable standout character from the story was the family’s show-stealing, limelight-seeking pet, Sparkle Dog. Sparkle Dog, a small white dog with perky ears and a curled tail, did space tricks in the low gravity of the Moon, performing flips and rolls, balancing inflated balls on his nose, catching a baton in midair, or bounding over high walls.

Unfortunately for CK Kasper, by 1963 pulp fiction magazines were already rapidly losing popularity due to growing competition from television and comic books, and the issue sold poorly. Spicy Tales of Space folded entirely just nine months later.

CK Kasper was likely a pen name, as no one with that name who could claim authorship of Moon Family has been found in the United States or Canada. In fact, no one is even sure if CK Kasper was a man or a woman. Further complicating matters, the publisher of Spicy Tales of Space, E. Ernest Vitas, died in his Chicago home in 1965, and few records of the magazine were found, despite an exhaustive search of his papers by his family. The original creator of Sparkle Dog is, as of this writing, still completely unknown. 

A few years after Vitas’s death, in 1967, the first issue of the comic serial Showstoppers was released to stores in Chicago and Milwaukee. Its main character? A stage-loving celebrity dog named Sparkle Dog. The comic was written by a Lithuanian immigrant named Andy Papulis and drawn by his outspoken libertarian artistic partner Fin Jarvis. Papulis always claimed, until he died of complications from AIDS in 1991, that Sparkle Dog was an original creation, but given that he was living in Chicago in 1963, where Spicy Tales of Space was distributed, it seems unlikely to be a coincidence.

The comic sold very well to teenage readers, both male and female, in the Midwest, and soon was being distributed as far away as Los Angeles and Boston. It was clear, too, that Sparkle Dog was the star of the comic, and by the third issue, the comic book was retitled Sparkle Dog Showstoppers. But in spite of the comic’s sales among young audiences, it was robustly hated. Readers complained of the lack of plot, of the repetitiveness of the settings, of the narrow character development. Parents especially despised the character of Sparkle Dog, who was seen as vain, shallow, and completely lacking in integrity. Sparkle Dog was so in love with fame, and so in love with himself, he would sell out his own community, stab friends in the back, and step over his own family to achieve his dreams. In other words: a terrible role model for teen readers. To make matters worse, the art in the comic was considered lightweight, amateurish, and unpolished.

In a 2000 interview with nascent pop-culture website (now white supremacist propaganda website) Daily Dose, the always profane Fin Jarvis said this:

I couldn’t draw to save my fucking life. I knew I couldn’t draw. Andy [Papulis] couldn’t write, although I don’t know if he realized how shit of a writer he was... And I don’t know where the Sparkle Dog thing came from for sure. It was a stupid fucking idea. He always said he made it up but I’ve read the Spicy Tales story and he definitely lifted some of it. He was uncreative garbage and a son of a bitch and I wasn’t sad at all when he died. Not at all. 

Sparkle Dog Showstoppers ran as a 24-page monthly for four years. In that time, at least 850,000 copies were circulated, even though at no time did anyone seem to actually like it. In fact, the 1970 Christmas issue, Sparkle Dog Showstoppers Go to the North Pole, which sold 90,000 copies alone, was so despised that it was believed to be responsible for a bizarre plumbing crisis in Chicago that winter, when thousands of readers attempted to flush their copies down the toilet. Libraries, train stations, bus stations, and bookstores were inundated with queues of frantic Sparkle Dog readers looking for a place to defecate. Many Chicago children, today adults with children of their own, can recall ruined Christmases that year due to overflowing toilets and water-logged copies of Sparkle Dog Showstoppers. Paradoxically, people kept buying it.

Perhaps worst of all, toward the end of its life as a comic, Sparkle Dog Showstoppers became more political, highly pro-military, and began explicitly supporting the ongoing war effort in Vietnam. Sparkle Dog might be seen fighting in Vietnamese jungles, flying a gunship, or visiting with Richard Nixon in the Oval Office to discuss the war effort. Sparkle Dog became increasingly racist toward Vietnamese people, as well, depicting them as unintelligent savages and cannibals. Fin Jarvis, to this day, is unapologetic. He said of that era:

I didn’t give a fuck about that war. Or about Nixon. Andy wrote the stories and I drew them. Vietnam may as well have been on the Moon. I just drew for the paycheck. I had child support to deal with. That was closer to me than any Vietnamese.

Sparkle Dog Showstoppers ceased printing in 1972 as anti-war and anti-Nixon sentiment rose. Sparkle Dog had developed a reputation as racist, jingoistic, pro-war propaganda. And likely that would have been the last of the character were it not for a television producer in the twilight of his career in the mid 1980s, who was looking around for an idea.

Roland R. Duffy had once been a successful TV producer, having created game shows such as It’s Time for Pantomime! and situational comedies such as Love Trapezoid. His own talk show, The Roland Duffy Variety Hour, ran for seven years starting in 1971. But in 1983 his last operating production, Deborah Harry’s Gun Club, was not renewed by CBS, and because of a poor “junk bond” investment portfolio managed by Michael Milken, within a few years he found himself desperate for income, but out of ideas. He later admitted in court to stealing the character of Sparkle Dog from a comic book left in his home by one of his grandchildren—lifting the character from its pages wholly formed—while creating a new adventure and new friends for him. This, in spite of the fact that even Duffy himself, in a 2005 documentary on his life, described Sparkle Dog this way:

Sparkle Dog was idiotic. The character was idiotic and the whole plot was idiotic. But he made me a lot of money. A lot a lot of money. I might not be here today if not for that idiot. There’s something about that stupid dog.

Originally, The Adventures of Sparkle Dog was planned as a twelve-episode miniseries for the ABC network. Stripped of its racism and pro-military political views, Sparkle Dog was whitewashed for prime-time television audiences. It isn’t clear whether the ABC executives and legal department failed to do adequate research on the story’s origins, or just didn’t care, but production for the miniseries may have been given the go-ahead on the basis of Duffy’s reputation alone—and the star power of Kirk Cameron and of James Woods, who played Sparkle Dog. Initially, enough material was filmed and edited for seven episodes, but upon seeing early cuts, ABC quickly pulled funding for further production. Duffy, heartbroken and determined to sell the idea, re-edited and compressed the footage into a ninety-minute made-for-TV movie. Thanks to careful editing and a new soundtrack by German electronic group Tangerine Dream, the film went from a family-friendly adventure to a bold psychological thriller. Duffy sold the film to NBC and it aired following Super Bowl XXIII on January 22, 1989, with the new title Brotherhood of the Sparkle Dog.

Super Bowl XXIII was played between the Cincinnati Bengals and the San Francisco 49ers. The game was very close in the fourth quarter, and came down to a long offensive drive led by Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana, who threw the game-winning touchdown pass with only 34 seconds remaining. Because of the close, exciting finish, millions of viewers were still tuned in to NBC when Brotherhood of the Sparkle Dog came on the air after the game.

Viewers were spellbound. The film was so bad that people began calling friends and family to tell them to tune in. Plotless, winding, far from thrilling, and focused on the vain, fame-seeking, backstabbing character of Sparkle Dog, the re-edited movie was considered unwatchable. But millions of people watched it anyway. In fact, Brotherhood of the Sparkle Dog, for a brief time, had a higher ratings share than the Super Bowl played just before it.

Three weeks later, Andy Papulis and Fin Jarvis sued, naming NBC and Roland Duffy Enterprises as defendants. But during the trial’s discovery phase it was revealed that Andy Papulis had stolen the idea for Sparkle Dog from CK Kasper’s Moon Family, and the case was dismissed. For many people this was the first mention of the link between Sparkle Dog and his enigmatic original creator. NBC and Roland Duffy had never heard of the author, but with the intellectual property case getting national press, both enterprises waited for CK Kasper to emerge from the shadows with a lawsuit of his (or her) own. None ever materialized. It was realized during this period, in 1989–90, that with no known living author, Sparkle Dog might be a rare kind of intellectual property that is all at once well-known, and profitable, but part of the public domain; but after NBC’s broadcast of Brotherhood of the Sparkle Dog, few major companies in the United States would test this theory, for fear that CK Kasper, his family, or the family of E. Ernest Vitas would suddenly emerge with a lawsuit.

After Andy Papulis’s death in 1991, and the dismissal of the NBC lawsuit, the character of Sparkle Dog began taking off internationally. New comic books, television series, novelizations, and even cartoon pornography, centered around the celebrity pet Sparkle Dog, emerged in Mexico, Japan, Brazil, and the Netherlands. In South Africa, Sparkle Dog became a cartoon advocate against the end of apartheid.

After racing around the globe in multiple languages and media formats for the better part of a decade, in 1998 Sparkle Dog made his way back home to the United States, as the original concept for The Adventures of Sparkle Dog was licensed from Roland Duffy Enterprises to create the feature film of that title. The mixed cartoon/live action hybrid film, produced by Harvey Weinstein at Miramax, was released nationwide in the summer of 1999.

It was instantly hated, by both moviegoers and film critics. Roger Ebert, in one of his first film reviews after the death of TV partner Gene Siskel, wrote: 

When a new civilization is born out of the rubble left behind by this one, they will come to understand that The Adventures of Sparkle Dog was the beginning of the end of our people. This was our history.

To this day it is considered one of the worst films ever made. Yet, moviegoers kept buying tickets to see it. The film did well at the box office, grossing $80 million in the first two weeks for a production costing about $50 million. Worldwide, by the end of 2000, The Adventures of Sparkle Dog had taken in $330 million. A sequel was planned quickly, and a script rushed out by a team of studio writers. Sparkle Dog II: Back in the Saddle did nearly as well at the box office, but was hated even more. (The sequel’s soundtrack, though, which features original tracks by R. Kelly and DMX, is still beloved.) 

Thanks to the licensing agreement, Roland Duffy’s production company took in millions, and Duffy died a rich man in 2006, despite having stolen Sparkle Dog from a comic book which stole Sparkle Dog from the short story by CK Kasper.

It was during this time that E. Ernest Vitas’s daughter, Madeline Vitas, began a more concerted effort to find written records of her father’s hand in publishing Moon Family—a contract, a letter from the author, an original manuscript, any scrap of paper with the name CK Kasper or just elements of the story. However, contracts for pulp fiction magazines in the 1950s and ’60s were often recorded on cheap, brittle carbon copy paper with poor shelf life, and even if a contract were found, the Vitas family would still be on shaky legal ground, as most fiction publications only reserve the right to first publication. The author reserves the copyright.

The success of the film brought about a domestic novelization, too. Run, Sparkle Dog, Run, written by James Patterson and Bill Clinton, spent several weeks on the New York Times Bestsellers list despite poor reviews.

A line of children’s toys and action figures, a board game, truck decals, fidget spinners, an Indonesian airline—all were emblazoned with the image of Sparkle Dog, and none of them required licensing. Other movie studios created Sparkle Dog films, too, with titles like A Fortnight and a Sparkle Dog, Sparkle Dog Goes to Hell, and Sparkle Dog Versus Predator. Today, these movies would probably fall under the collective term “dogsploitation films.” Even Bollywood joined the fray, producing films like Sparkle Dog Zinda Hai, Sparkle Dog Ne Bana Di Jodi, and the blockbuster romantic comedy Om Shanti Sparkle Dog, the highest-grossing and concurrently most widely hated Hindi-language film of all time.

Sparkle Dog leapt into other media as well. Wisconsin rapper Sparkle Boi took both his stage name and aesthetic from the long legacy of Sparkle Dog. He is one of the most hated music artists of this generation, with dislikes outnumbering likes on every YouTube video he has ever produced. And today of course, the Broadway musical Sparkle Dog and Friends sells tickets for $1,500 a pair. Some tickets on the black market can be found for as much as $4,000 a pair, and people wait eight to ten months to see it. Like all Sparkle Dog creations, it is loathed by all who see it, but people keep going to see it. No one knows why.

Sparkle Dog has become a trademark free radical, and one of the hottest single pieces of intellectual property in the world today. And yet, every iteration of the Sparkle Dog universe, every generation of Sparkle Dog creative enterprises, creates greater animosity and hatred toward itself, while simultaneously generating greater and greater profits for the producers that iterate it. Sparkle Dog flies ever higher into the pop culture stratosphere, and always feels overheated, like the Soviet space dog Laika.

Legal experts say that Sparkle Dog, despite its continued use and reuse, is still not public domain. The author, living or dead, and his or her family, remain the rightful copyright holders. At any point, a living relative of CK Kasper could stumble upon an original typewritten or handwritten manuscript for Moon Family, or even just notes on the character of Sparkle Dog. Because of this, many people have offered up forgeries, claiming to be the rightful heirs of the Sparkle Dog fortune. Every one has failed to show sufficient provenance in court.

Even the original story, Moon Family, is now worth millions. Just last January, a mint copy of Spicy Tales of Space containing Moon Family sold at auction for $1.1 million to an anonymous buyer. Only two fine-condition copies are known to exist, with one already owned by the Crown Prince of Bahrain, who claims to be the world’s biggest Sparkle Dog fan. It is, by an astonishing margin, easily the most valuable and collectible fiction magazine in the world. Even a poor condition copy can be sold for as much as $50,000.

Next month, Vice News will debut its latest documentary, The Search for CK. Critics are already calling it the worst documentary ever made. Yet the documentary will make the case for a new development in the long legacy of Sparkle Dog: that Sparkle Dog existed before even CK Kasper’s Moon Family. The documentary points especially to a Russian film titled Собака со звезд, which translates to “Dog from the Stars.” The film is mentioned only in the recorded minutes of a meeting in 1935 of the Communist Party’s Central Committee. The film is described there as being about a dog with strengths beyond that of a normal dog, who is too swift, and jumps too high into the sky, and who ultimately dies for his hubris. It is unknown if Russian moviegoers of the 1930s ever saw the film, as it was hated by Joseph Stalin’s Communist Party, who likely had the reels destroyed. 

Cultural anthropologists now say the idea for that film, too, probably came from Russian folklore and other mythologies dating back hundreds or thousands of years. In Greek mythology, for example, the dog Laelaps was said to be so agile, and to be able to jump so high, that he could catch birds out of the sky. Laelaps became so adept at jumping that he began to bite the ankles of the gods themselves, and Zeus, displeased with all the dog bites, and displeased with the unearthly ambition of this dog, turned Laelaps to stone and cast him into the night sky, where he became the constellation we now know as Canis Major. Even the gods hated Sparkle Dog; yet they immortalized him in light, as we immortalize him through the lens of a theater projector.

It’s possible that the story of Sparkle Dog has been with us since the dawn of civilization, or perhaps that Sparkle Dog predates human civilization. The anthropologically- and literary-minded might even point to that first wolf who dared venture to ally with human clans tens of thousands of years ago, a wolf who was too ambitious for his own pack, who was dreaming of reaching beyond the bounds of wolfdom. In a sense: the vain, show-stealing, backstabbing circus performer may have been living among us for thousands of generations, all the way back, through our mythology, folktales, movies, musicals, books, rap artists, and truck decals. He has done anything and everything to steal our attention, and we have always resented him for it. Perhaps “CK Kasper,” too, was a mere pseudonym for Sparkle Dog himself, writing his legacy, one more time, into the story of our civilization.