Krazy Kat & The Art of George Herriman A Celebration
Krazy Kat & The Art of George Herriman A Celebration
By Craig Yoe
176 pages, Abrams ComicArts, U.S. $29.95/Can. $35.95
As a kid, my first exposure to Krazy Kat were the 50 animated shorts that were produced between 1962-1964 and ran with Beetle Bailey and Snuffy Smith cartoons in a thirty minute block. I found the cartoons charming if a little odd and it was years later before I finally saw some of George Herriman’s wonderful comic strip work. While a comic genius, I knew little about him or how the world perceived his amazing creation.
Thankfully, Craig Yoe, a man with a keen eye for pop art and culture, has assembled a work dedicated to Herriman’s art but also serves as a biography. I now know that the Herriman was born as a light-skinned, Creole African-American in Louisiana before moving west where he did his professional work. In California, he began as a newspaper cartoonist and did everything from political cartoons to sports cartoons before settling down to produce the daily adventures of The Dingbat Family. At the bottom of the panels first appeared a cat of indeterminate gender and a mouse. In time, the mouse began throwing things at the cat and audiences picked up on the drama so Herriman was encouraged to give the two their own feature.
In time, Krazy Kat and the brick-tossing Ignatz Mouse were joined by Offissa Bull Pupp and other denizens of Coconino County, Arizona. They soared in popularity while Herriman took full advantage of the comic strip form before it became rule-bound and limited. The dailies and later Sunday pages rarely repeated themselves and careful reading showed a literary and poetic quality to the writing that belied the physical comedy.
Herriman’s characters enchanted a nation between 1913 and 1944, when he died way too soon at 63. They remain enshrined in Arizona folklore where Herriman maintained a vacation home and became fascinated with the Native Americans who lived in the vicinity.
Yoe’s affection for the subject and its creator is clear from the loving attention to detail found from cover to cover. He did a meticulous job in researching Herriman and uncovered numerous unpublished pieces of art or rarely seen images including the strips on his drawing board at the time of Herriman’s death. Herriman produced a lot of Krazy Kat artwork for friends and associates, much of which is here in large, crisp color. There are hundreds of images, 200 in color, and the book is a visual feast.
Yoe lets others share their affection as well as the collection contains original essays from Jay Cantor, Douglas Wolk, Harry L. Katz, Richard Thompson, Dee Cox (Herriman’s granddaughter), and Craig McCracken. The book opens with an appreciation by Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson, a spiritual descendant. Yoe also unearths essays from Herriman’s time including two seminal essays by Gilbert Seldes and e. e. cummings, with presenting newly discovered vintage essays by Tad Dorgon, Summerfield Baldwin, and William Paul Langreich.
The essayists explain why they like or love the strip and try to express that affection with the general reading public. Imagine a famous poet as cummings writing an introduction to a 1946 collection of strips analyzing Krazy, Ignatz and Pupp as if it was an essay for English class.
Animator McCracken writes, “From everything I read on the subject, most people didn’t get it. Truth be told, one hundred years later some people still don’t get it. Here was a weird strip that repeated the same joke over and over. It went from day to night and back to day all in a matter of three panels. He turns into she and she into he. Cacti keep coming and going. And aul da weerd poetic lengwage wuz spelld aul wrung. Krazy konfused a lot of people and in turn frustrated a lot of editors, who wanted to kancel the strip entirely.”
All true but William Randolph Hearts, whose syndicate distributed the feature adored it so the strip ran and ran well.
Yoe’s assortment of artwork shows that for those who did get the joke could also get assorted merchandise including sheet music to songs based on the characters.
Herriman’s life is reflected in the strips and the text goes to point this out, an element also seen in his personal drawings for friends. He loved the desert and its culture, seeing a limitless canvass on which his characters can cavort without boundaries.
I didn’t get the strip for the longest time, but this well-balanced assortment of words and pictures goes a long way to making Herriman understood. The subtitle is A Celebration and it is a very apt description as, from cover to cover, you can’t help but appreciate what Herriman accomplished and how many people he touched.
William Randolph
HeartsHearst.FIFY. Couldn’t find an email@. Feel free to delete this correction.
If you’ve ever spent any real time in New Orleans – the real New Oreans, not the tourist-trap parts of the Quarter – Krazy and Co’s dialog makes perfect sense – somewhere between Yat and Nint Wawd.