Maxwell the Magic Cat was a British comic strip written and drawn by Alan Moore under the pseudonym "Jill de Ray." Moore produced the strip for the weekly Northants Post from 1979 to 1986. Moore originally pitched the Post an adult-oriented strip called Nutter's Ruin, which they rejected, advising him instead to propose a children's strip. Although Maxwell is on the surface intended for children, Moore inserted metafictional and surrealist elements, adult references, and social/political commentary into the strip throughout its run. In fact, the Jill de Ray pseudonym is a pun on the Medieval child murderer Gilles de Rais, something Moore found to be a "sardonic joke".