The creator of the zenith of comic strip art Krazy Kat,
George Joseph Herriman, was born on August 22, 1880, in New
Orleans. When he was still a teenager, George and his family moved
to Los Angeles, as many African-American Creole families did, to
escape the restrictions of the Jim Crow laws. Herriman never
publicly acknowledged his ethnicity, probably fearful of its
effects on his reputation. Herriman's death certificate lists him
as Caucasian.
Between 1901 and 1910, Herriman produced his first, regular
strip, Musical Mose, as well as other features
like Acrobatic Archie, Professor Otto and His
Auto, Major Ozone's Fresh Air Crusade, Mary's Home from
College, and Gooseberry Sprig, for the Pulitzer papers and the
prestigious T.C. McClure Syndicate.
In 1910, the artist inaugurated The Dingbat Family, later
renamed The Family Upstairs, for The New York Evening
Journal, a Hearst paper. The strip featured the adventures of an
ordinary family dealing with their annoying upstairs neighbors.
In The Family Upstairs the artist used the bottom part of
each panel to narrate the stories of the Dingbats' pet, Krazy Kat,
and a mouse named Ignatz, whose adventures were unrelated to those
of the Dingbats. On July 29, 1910, Ignatz Mouse threw an object at
Krazy Kat's head for the first time. and bonking Krazy's brain with
a brick, with all its attendant meanings, became the strip's main
motif. In 1913, Krazy Kat and Ignatz finally had a strip on their
own, while The Family Upstairs folded in 1916. It was at
this time that Herriman began another strip, Baron Bean, which ran
until 1919.
Herriman's creative use of language narrates the whimsical
adventures of three main characters, Krazy, Ignatz, and Offissa
Pupp. The unfortunate feline is in love with Ignatz, who does not
reciprocate his feelings (or her? Krazy's gender was never clearly
established) and likes to hurl bricks at the cat's head. This
violent treatment only seems to throw Krazy more deeply in
love.
The strip's subtleties and surrealism never made it very popular
with the public en masse, but it had an enthusiastic following
among artistic and intellectual circles. Writer Gilbert Seldes
dubbed Herriman "the counterpart of Chaplin in the comic film" in
his Seven Lively Arts, in 1924. President Woodrow Wilson
never missed reading it, and Picasso was reputedly a fan. But the
artist's most ardent supporter was William Randolph Hearst. Hearst
owned the King Feature Syndicate and refused to drop
Herriman's Krazy Kat even when it was carried by fewer
than 50 papers. It was Hearst who ordered the strip to be cancelled
in 1944, upon learning of Herriman's passing. In his opinion, no
one could replace the artist and Krazy Kat was possibly
the first strip to die with his creator.
"Once again The Library of American Comics sets the standard for archival and reprint quality." —Mark Squirek, New York Journal of Books
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