In 1916, Marquis introduced the fictional character "archy" into his daily newspaper column at the New York Tribune. archy (whose name was always written in lower case) was a cockroach who had been a free-style poet in a previous life, and he took to writing stories of his life on an old typewriter at the newspaper office when everyone in the building had left. archy would climb up onto the typewriter and hurl himself at the keys, laboriously typing out stories of the daily challenges and travails of a cockroach. archy's best friend was an alley cat named "mehitabel," and the two of them shared a series of day-to-day adventures that made satiric commentary on daily life in the city during the era of the early 20th Century.
Because he was a cockroach, archy was unable to reach the shift key on the typewriter, and so all of his verse was written without capitalization or punctuation.
Collections of the "archy" stories have been published and re-printed numerous times over the years. The published editions of these stories were originally illustrated by George Herriman, the creator and illustrator of Krazy Kat. Titles in the series include: