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Krazy and Ignatz
The George Herriman Library: Krazy & Ignatz 1916-1918
For nearly 30 years, George Herriman’s hilarious, poetic masterpiece Krazy Kat graced the Sunday pages of America’s newspapers. This new hardcover collection of all the full-sized Sunday pages from 1916 through 1918 brings back into print the inventive language, haunting vistas, and beguiling brick throwing that makes this strip so special. Perfect for Herriman connoisseurs and brand-new readers, this collection provides you with the joy of joining the lovelorn Krazy Kat, the ill-tempered Ignatz Mouse, the stalwart Officer Pupp, and many more of the inhabitants of surreal Coconino County in the strip that originally elevated the comics medium into a celebrated art form.
176 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2010
32 people are currently reading
213 people want to read
About the author
George Herriman
222 books46 followersGeorge Herriman was an American cartoonist celebrated for creating the groundbreaking comic strip Krazy Kat, a work widely regarded as one of the most inventive, poetic, and influential achievements in the history of comics. Raised in a culturally diverse environment and navigating complex racial identities throughout his life, Herriman developed a singular artistic voice that combined humor, surrealism, philosophical reflection, and emotional nuance. He began his career as a newspaper illustrator and political cartoonist before transitioning fully into comic strips, producing several short-lived features and experiments that helped him refine his sense of rhythm, timing, and visual storytelling. Krazy Kat, which emerged from an earlier strip called The Dingbat Family, became his defining work and ran for decades in newspapers across the United States. The strip centered on a triangular relationship among three main characters: Krazy, a blissfully optimistic and androgynous cat; Ignatz Mouse, who continually expressed his contempt or affection by throwing bricks; and Offisa Pupp, a dutiful dog who sought to protect Krazy and maintain order. What might have been a simple gag became, in Herriman’s hands, a lyrical exploration of love, longing, misunderstanding, and the complexities of emotional connection, articulated through shifting perspectives, inventive language, and a dreamlike visual landscape inspired by the American Southwest. Herriman developed a distinctive style that blended loose, expressive brushwork with carefully considered composition, often altering backgrounds from panel to panel to evoke mood rather than physical continuity. His dialogue employed dialects, puns, poetic phrasing, and playful linguistic invention, creating a voice for Krazy Kat that felt both musical and deeply human. The strip attracted a passionate following among intellectuals, writers, and artists, including figures such as Gilbert Seldes, E.E. Cummings, Willem de Kooning, and many others who recognized its sophistication and emotional resonance. However, Krazy Kat never achieved the widespread commercial popularity of contemporaries like Popeye or Li’l Abner and often relied on the support of influential newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, who admired Herriman’s work and insisted it remain in publication despite fluctuating readership. Herriman also produced the comic strip Baron Bean, as well as numerous illustrations, editorial drawings, and commercial work throughout his career, but it was Krazy Kat that defined his legacy and shaped the development of visual narrative art. The strip influenced generations of cartoonists and graphic storytellers, contributing to a lineage that includes artists working in newspaper strips, comic books, underground comix, graphic novels, animation, and contemporary experimental media. Herriman maintained a private, quiet personal life, working diligently and steadily, drawing inspiration from the landscapes of California, Arizona, and New Mexico, which he visited frequently and often featured in his art as stylized mesas, desert plateaus, and open skies. His deep engagement with the American Southwest brought texture, symbolism, and environmental presence to Krazy Kat, making setting an integral emotional and thematic component rather than a mere backdrop. Although widely honored posthumously, his work was recognized during his lifetime by peers and critics who understood the originality of his vision. Today, he is acknowledged as one of the key figures who expanded the expressive potential of the comic strip form, demonstrating that sequential art could convey subtle emotional states, philosophical ideas, and complex storytelling with elegance and humor. Herriman’s legacy endures in the ongoing study, republication, and celebration of Krazy Kat, which continues to be admired for its innovation, sensitivity, and unique artistic spirit.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
December 27, 2020
I initially bought this because Krazy Kat is one of those newspaper strips the pros always mention and the almighty Bill Watterson lists it as an influence.
At first glance, the art looks primitive, almost crude in places. Once I tipped to what Herriman was trying to accomplish, I started noticing all the little things. Some of the elements that seem commonplace now were being forged in these very strips. Herriman's art had to be an influence on an untold number of cartoonists, both mainstream and underground. Herriman was also a pioneer in the field of mouse on cat violence since Ignatz was always trying to brain Krazy with bricks.
Between this and Windsor McKay's Little Nemo in Slumberland, the early days of newspaper comics were the wild, wild west, especially compared to what we see today, in the newspapers' dying age. It's not exactly my cup of tea but I can fathom the skill of George Herriman just the same. 4 out of 5 bricks.
At first glance, the art looks primitive, almost crude in places. Once I tipped to what Herriman was trying to accomplish, I started noticing all the little things. Some of the elements that seem commonplace now were being forged in these very strips. Herriman's art had to be an influence on an untold number of cartoonists, both mainstream and underground. Herriman was also a pioneer in the field of mouse on cat violence since Ignatz was always trying to brain Krazy with bricks.
Between this and Windsor McKay's Little Nemo in Slumberland, the early days of newspaper comics were the wild, wild west, especially compared to what we see today, in the newspapers' dying age. It's not exactly my cup of tea but I can fathom the skill of George Herriman just the same. 4 out of 5 bricks.
February 27, 2020
This was my second go-round reading Krazy Kat (after these same years in the 2010 edition from Fantagraphics), and I've definitely started to come around to the strip's charms in a way that I hadn't when I first read this five or so years ago. I probably helps that I read Michael Tisserand's biography Krazy: George Herriman, a Life in Black and White and have more appreciation for where Herriman was coming from and the time and culture he was creating in. There are still strips whose appeal eludes me, which is to be expected when the culture they are responding to is 102 years removed from my own, but human nature is human nature - some things are timeless, and I have a better understanding now of the things Herriman was trying to explore. Also, the artwork remains amazing and Herriman's creative use of pages and panels makes him worthy of considerable study for his artistry alone.
September 7, 2023
Great to finally go to the start and read this strip. Technically there's even early Krazy Kat strips, small runs that ran in the margins of the comic strip pages. I wonder if those are collected anywhere.
I've read a few random years of this strip and always felt like I was missing something. It's a pretty odd comic. I feel like you either love it or are just confused why other people love it. Many of the strips confused me still, there's a lot of references that I didn't pick up on.
Overall so many of these strike a balance of being clever, funny, slap-stick, romantic/poetic. The cartooning is exemplary but you got to really lean in to see the small drawings even on a bigger page.
It's cool to read comics that are over 100 years old and still fresh and vibrant.
I've read a few random years of this strip and always felt like I was missing something. It's a pretty odd comic. I feel like you either love it or are just confused why other people love it. Many of the strips confused me still, there's a lot of references that I didn't pick up on.
Overall so many of these strike a balance of being clever, funny, slap-stick, romantic/poetic. The cartooning is exemplary but you got to really lean in to see the small drawings even on a bigger page.
It's cool to read comics that are over 100 years old and still fresh and vibrant.
Read
April 1, 2024A lot of the greats cite George Herriman's Krazy Kat as a major influence, so I figured I should check it out. This is the first of the recent Fantagraphics reprints collecting all Sunday pages.
It's difficult to read this at times. Yes, it's "old," and comics from over 100 years ago are obviously going to require patience on the part of modern readers. For me, the difficulty largely stems from Herriman's consistent use of slang and intentional misspelling of words as a means of giving characters dialects. And the art looks crude and scratchy to modern eyes; the two main characters, Krazy and Ignatz, don't really have facial expressions, which means that emotions and intent from dialogue can get lost in translation. In order to grasp all that was happening, I had to read the (often very crowded) strips slowly, sometimes even needing to read them a second time. The book took several long lunch breaks for me to complete. I found it harder to digest than its contemporary, Gasoline Alley, which I recently tackled for the first time, too.
But I was taken with what Herriman was doing from the first pages. Krazy Kat predicts slapstick cat and mouse cartoons (plus Wile E. Coyote/Roadrunner), and I can clearly see its influence on comics like Pogo, Fritz the Cat, Mutts, Calvin and Hobbes, and Quimby the Mouse. The strips are funny, sometimes surreal, and always creative; Herriman experiments with form, manipulating panels in unique sequences and occasionally using song structures or poetry to convey a story. Some strips have little to no dialogue while others are loaded with text. Visually, there's a lot of variety here, and some pages are wonderfully idiosyncratic. Another takeaway is the undercurrent of sadness and darkness. It's about a carefree, simpleminded cat who loves a mouse, misinterpreting that mouse's contempt (usually in the form of throwing bricks at the cat's head) for admiration. Tragedy and melancholy lurks beneath the humor, antics, and talking animals. It makes for a funny and compelling yet disturbing read. Krazy Kat has punchlines and individual jokes, yes. But it's more about the cumulative effect of Ignatz repeatedly scheming to throw bricks at his admirer's head and Krazy's undying love for Ignatz.
This volume has informative essays about Herriman and the strip, including a reprint of a positive assessment by writer Summerfield Baldwin a year after the Sundays began. This essay offers insight into why Krazy Kat became revered by the intellectual community (poets, art critics, etc).
My library has a few other of these Fantagraphics volumes. I'm definitely going to read them, but I think I'll wait a bit to return. Krazy Kat is dense and requires a lot of attention to get the most out of it. And I want to get the most out of it.
It's difficult to read this at times. Yes, it's "old," and comics from over 100 years ago are obviously going to require patience on the part of modern readers. For me, the difficulty largely stems from Herriman's consistent use of slang and intentional misspelling of words as a means of giving characters dialects. And the art looks crude and scratchy to modern eyes; the two main characters, Krazy and Ignatz, don't really have facial expressions, which means that emotions and intent from dialogue can get lost in translation. In order to grasp all that was happening, I had to read the (often very crowded) strips slowly, sometimes even needing to read them a second time. The book took several long lunch breaks for me to complete. I found it harder to digest than its contemporary, Gasoline Alley, which I recently tackled for the first time, too.
But I was taken with what Herriman was doing from the first pages. Krazy Kat predicts slapstick cat and mouse cartoons (plus Wile E. Coyote/Roadrunner), and I can clearly see its influence on comics like Pogo, Fritz the Cat, Mutts, Calvin and Hobbes, and Quimby the Mouse. The strips are funny, sometimes surreal, and always creative; Herriman experiments with form, manipulating panels in unique sequences and occasionally using song structures or poetry to convey a story. Some strips have little to no dialogue while others are loaded with text. Visually, there's a lot of variety here, and some pages are wonderfully idiosyncratic. Another takeaway is the undercurrent of sadness and darkness. It's about a carefree, simpleminded cat who loves a mouse, misinterpreting that mouse's contempt (usually in the form of throwing bricks at the cat's head) for admiration. Tragedy and melancholy lurks beneath the humor, antics, and talking animals. It makes for a funny and compelling yet disturbing read. Krazy Kat has punchlines and individual jokes, yes. But it's more about the cumulative effect of Ignatz repeatedly scheming to throw bricks at his admirer's head and Krazy's undying love for Ignatz.
This volume has informative essays about Herriman and the strip, including a reprint of a positive assessment by writer Summerfield Baldwin a year after the Sundays began. This essay offers insight into why Krazy Kat became revered by the intellectual community (poets, art critics, etc).
My library has a few other of these Fantagraphics volumes. I'm definitely going to read them, but I think I'll wait a bit to return. Krazy Kat is dense and requires a lot of attention to get the most out of it. And I want to get the most out of it.
August 12, 2022
These cartoons have always fascinated me. I suppose all comic strips create a separate world, but Herriman seems to have had a special genius. Years ago, I was put off by Krazy Kat's speech and wondered about racism, and there is no question that these show what is often called "the racism of the times", but there is clear brilliance here. My view on the matter was also affected by reading about Herriman's origins. This volume is the monochrome Sunday comics from 1916 - 1918 only and it has been very well-produced. There are other volumes in the series including the color comics from 1935 - 1944, but I don't think I'm ready to spend a couple of hundred dollars to read them all.
September 28, 2020
Born in New Orleans in 1880, it wasn't 'till long after George's death in 1944 that his birth certificate came to public light revealing his mixed race and Black identity. Growing up in Los Angeles, teenager Herriman contributed drawings to local newspapers. Moving to New York City in his 20s, Herriman was eventually hired by newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst for the New York Evening Journal.
According to his Goodread's profile "Krazy Kat never achieved wide popularity among newspaper readers, though it attracted a highbrow following. Fans included Pablo Picasso, Charlie Chaplin, Walt Disney, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Frank Capra, H. L. Mencken, and Ernest Hemingway. Krazy Kat's lengthy tenure owed much to Hearst's personal love of the strip. Acceptance by the cultural mainstream grew after Herriman's death, as Krazy Kat appeared in an animated series by Paramount Studios and even in a novel. Throughout the 20th century, cartoonists have considered Krazy Kat the founding father (or mother) of sophisticated comic strips."
While I generally focus on my opinions and insights as the unique product being offered on my youtube channel I ended up having to do a lot of research for this video. As a total ignominious when it comes to something so far removed from my time and place I have chosen not to even attempt to repackage this information as my own and will be clearly citing the articles I have drawing from and linking them all below.
Digging a bit into meta review of the reviews territory, I found Aaron Humphrey's 2017 article in Comics Grid "The Cult of Krazy Kat: Memory and Recollection in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" extremely interesting. While everything right now feels like it's instantly archived for the rest of eternity, at the time of publication Krazy Kat was purely a product of the reader's memory with very little ability to review after the day of publication. How might this effect the way Krazy Kat was reviewed, especially during Herriman's life? Even now, most of the comics available to our eyeballs are the Sunday comics.
My personal observation on the art of the comic: Krazy Kat is as simplistic as it is detailed. With these being full paged Sunday comics, there's often a lot of line work going on divided by wide white borders. Each panel is generally numbered. The situations that Krazy and Ignatz get themselves into are often ridiculous, sometimes fantastical, and usually involve a brick of some kind. While I had often heard references to how much influence Herriman had on later comics, I was very surprised in picking up Krazy and Ignazt how much of it is so evident in Crumb's work, for example. Ignatz also bears more then a passing resemblance to Pearl's Before Swine's Rat.
This particular collection has some examples of his pre Krazy Kat work of Herriman, which involve a lot more cultural stereotype and caricatures. Including several cowboys and two sambo characters. We then jump forward to 1916 and go through each week's Sunday comic until December 1918.
As far as race and gender went, the Dallas News published an interesting article back in 2016 talking about reading Blackness and passing back into Sunday comics after Herriman's Blackness came to light thirty years after his death. They also noted that Krazy Kat is often referred to by both he/him and she/her pronouns, which I had been wondering about but chalked down to not being good enough at reading.
Last year, in a Hyperallergic article, David Carrier spent some time looking at the simplicity and never changing quality of the world of Krazy Kat. Certainly a departure from current trends where long fought plots are king, but not something that terribly surprised when I picked up Krazy Kat. I also wasn't surprised when Carrier pointed out that Herriman is known to have participated in Black Face minstrelsy, a very popular form of entertainment in his day (that continues to the present).
Gabrielle Bellot also wrote an very insightful piece for the New Yorker in 2017 on "The Gender Fluidity of Krazy Kat" which digs into the ways that Herriman created mystery around himself in order to pass for white. Bellot also, uniquely, talked about the ways that Krazy Kat became a queer icon due to never having an assigned gender.
One of the more interesting parts of the book, tucked in after the closing essays, highlights some of the historical references being made that went totally over my head. Each wasn't super interesting or hard hitting, but the first point was a good reminder of exactly what the cultural milue this cartoon was swimming in. Namely, a note that Mr. Mouse is whistling Old Zip C-O-O-N. A term that had become racially charged by the time of this comic and the reason that ice cream trucks should not play the tune "Turkey in the Straw".
The visually represented "blind pig" apparently refers to places where alcohol could still be purchased "with a buck and a wink" as dry legalisation began to spread across so called America. This is the closest we got to disability representation, not great but never surprising.
Class, not really touched on by any of the articles, felt like it was being played with a bit. That said, I think that's only because it felt to me that the characters were speaking an English that seems irregular to me and despite trying not to judge people who don't use the kind of English I was taught in school because that's stupid, I think that was at play here. Especially since I have no idea what is causing what I perceive to be a heavily accented English. Herriman and I have lived on opposite ends of Turtle Island in drastically different times. My only defence is that none of the Krazy Kat characters appear to be wealthy either. Either way, if it is a depiction of more average to poor people it's still a bit tainted by every time an article mentions that the comic was not generally popular but then lists a bunch of famous people who did like it. Obviously I don't think something needs to be super popular with the masses in order to be good, but this just makes the comic seem really pretentious and/or elitist.
Drawing attention to a none comic, if you are interested in the concept of passing, a recent and very popular book on this topic is The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennet. Certainly not a book above critique, I would then urge you to also watch a number of Black own voices reviews of the book as the opinions are very diverse. There are obviously other books that also cover this subject, but of the ones I have read, none are coming to mind at this time.
But wrapping up this review, I think I'll be rating Krazy and Ignatz, 1916-1918: Love in a Kestle or Love in a Hut three out of five stars. While it wasn't super easy, it was interesting to read something so early in American Comic history. Could I have dug deeper, probably. Will I read further in these collections, probably not soon.
The Cult of Krazy Kat: Memory and Recollection in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction - Author: Aaron Humphrey: https://www.comicsgrid.com/articles/1...
This kat was krazy influential, but few knew his creator's secret: https://www.dallasnews.com/arts-enter...
Is George Herriman the Greatest American Visual Artist?: https://hyperallergic.com/512766/is-g...
The Gender Fluidity of Krazy Kat: https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-...
According to his Goodread's profile "Krazy Kat never achieved wide popularity among newspaper readers, though it attracted a highbrow following. Fans included Pablo Picasso, Charlie Chaplin, Walt Disney, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Frank Capra, H. L. Mencken, and Ernest Hemingway. Krazy Kat's lengthy tenure owed much to Hearst's personal love of the strip. Acceptance by the cultural mainstream grew after Herriman's death, as Krazy Kat appeared in an animated series by Paramount Studios and even in a novel. Throughout the 20th century, cartoonists have considered Krazy Kat the founding father (or mother) of sophisticated comic strips."
While I generally focus on my opinions and insights as the unique product being offered on my youtube channel I ended up having to do a lot of research for this video. As a total ignominious when it comes to something so far removed from my time and place I have chosen not to even attempt to repackage this information as my own and will be clearly citing the articles I have drawing from and linking them all below.
Digging a bit into meta review of the reviews territory, I found Aaron Humphrey's 2017 article in Comics Grid "The Cult of Krazy Kat: Memory and Recollection in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" extremely interesting. While everything right now feels like it's instantly archived for the rest of eternity, at the time of publication Krazy Kat was purely a product of the reader's memory with very little ability to review after the day of publication. How might this effect the way Krazy Kat was reviewed, especially during Herriman's life? Even now, most of the comics available to our eyeballs are the Sunday comics.
My personal observation on the art of the comic: Krazy Kat is as simplistic as it is detailed. With these being full paged Sunday comics, there's often a lot of line work going on divided by wide white borders. Each panel is generally numbered. The situations that Krazy and Ignatz get themselves into are often ridiculous, sometimes fantastical, and usually involve a brick of some kind. While I had often heard references to how much influence Herriman had on later comics, I was very surprised in picking up Krazy and Ignazt how much of it is so evident in Crumb's work, for example. Ignatz also bears more then a passing resemblance to Pearl's Before Swine's Rat.
This particular collection has some examples of his pre Krazy Kat work of Herriman, which involve a lot more cultural stereotype and caricatures. Including several cowboys and two sambo characters. We then jump forward to 1916 and go through each week's Sunday comic until December 1918.
As far as race and gender went, the Dallas News published an interesting article back in 2016 talking about reading Blackness and passing back into Sunday comics after Herriman's Blackness came to light thirty years after his death. They also noted that Krazy Kat is often referred to by both he/him and she/her pronouns, which I had been wondering about but chalked down to not being good enough at reading.
Last year, in a Hyperallergic article, David Carrier spent some time looking at the simplicity and never changing quality of the world of Krazy Kat. Certainly a departure from current trends where long fought plots are king, but not something that terribly surprised when I picked up Krazy Kat. I also wasn't surprised when Carrier pointed out that Herriman is known to have participated in Black Face minstrelsy, a very popular form of entertainment in his day (that continues to the present).
Gabrielle Bellot also wrote an very insightful piece for the New Yorker in 2017 on "The Gender Fluidity of Krazy Kat" which digs into the ways that Herriman created mystery around himself in order to pass for white. Bellot also, uniquely, talked about the ways that Krazy Kat became a queer icon due to never having an assigned gender.
One of the more interesting parts of the book, tucked in after the closing essays, highlights some of the historical references being made that went totally over my head. Each wasn't super interesting or hard hitting, but the first point was a good reminder of exactly what the cultural milue this cartoon was swimming in. Namely, a note that Mr. Mouse is whistling Old Zip C-O-O-N. A term that had become racially charged by the time of this comic and the reason that ice cream trucks should not play the tune "Turkey in the Straw".
The visually represented "blind pig" apparently refers to places where alcohol could still be purchased "with a buck and a wink" as dry legalisation began to spread across so called America. This is the closest we got to disability representation, not great but never surprising.
Class, not really touched on by any of the articles, felt like it was being played with a bit. That said, I think that's only because it felt to me that the characters were speaking an English that seems irregular to me and despite trying not to judge people who don't use the kind of English I was taught in school because that's stupid, I think that was at play here. Especially since I have no idea what is causing what I perceive to be a heavily accented English. Herriman and I have lived on opposite ends of Turtle Island in drastically different times. My only defence is that none of the Krazy Kat characters appear to be wealthy either. Either way, if it is a depiction of more average to poor people it's still a bit tainted by every time an article mentions that the comic was not generally popular but then lists a bunch of famous people who did like it. Obviously I don't think something needs to be super popular with the masses in order to be good, but this just makes the comic seem really pretentious and/or elitist.
Drawing attention to a none comic, if you are interested in the concept of passing, a recent and very popular book on this topic is The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennet. Certainly not a book above critique, I would then urge you to also watch a number of Black own voices reviews of the book as the opinions are very diverse. There are obviously other books that also cover this subject, but of the ones I have read, none are coming to mind at this time.
But wrapping up this review, I think I'll be rating Krazy and Ignatz, 1916-1918: Love in a Kestle or Love in a Hut three out of five stars. While it wasn't super easy, it was interesting to read something so early in American Comic history. Could I have dug deeper, probably. Will I read further in these collections, probably not soon.
The Cult of Krazy Kat: Memory and Recollection in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction - Author: Aaron Humphrey: https://www.comicsgrid.com/articles/1...
This kat was krazy influential, but few knew his creator's secret: https://www.dallasnews.com/arts-enter...
Is George Herriman the Greatest American Visual Artist?: https://hyperallergic.com/512766/is-g...
The Gender Fluidity of Krazy Kat: https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-...
October 3, 2025
See Krazy Kat Collection 1935-1944...
January 17, 2022
Absolutely brilliant on so many levels. The concept of Krazy & Ignatz - the antics of a cat and a mouse - is simple, but Herriman does so many different things with a basic idea, incorporating language, setting, pacing, and so much more. Plus the strip is hilarious. Herriman was a true genius.
July 14, 2022
This is a must-have for any serious fan of Krazy Kat or newspaper strips in general. Beautifully laid out, it captures the early years of one of the most influential cartoons strips ever produced. And even though we are well before Herriman's really experimental phase, you can see the groundwork being laid for it throughout. Reading these strips is like entering another world, with its patois, its unique cadence, and its cast of oddballs who will make you smirk when they are not making you laugh out loud.
May 16, 2018
George Herriman's comic strip masterpiece is a fascinating look back into what was funny a century ago and also shows how influential Herriman was to the emerging medium. This book collects the first three years of the full page Sunday strip which gave the cartoonist a much larger canvas and allowed him to innovate even more. "Krazy and Ignatz" is weird and wonderful and a must read for fans of cartoons and comics.
September 23, 2025
Krazy Kat and Ignatz the Mouse is an unapologetical expression of creativity, and it must look like Herriman. Page after page. It is a slow digest of a Saturday cartoon, perhaps too texty for the modern reader. The content is a mixed bag, as some of it is just puns and simple concept shenanigans, taken it is the early days of the strip. One must admire, though, the phonetic speech bubbles and borderless panels. They don't make them like this anymore.
June 13, 2021
A brick to the head is better than a stick in the eye.
July 30, 2021
The offbeat art, poetry, and surreal and silly but subtly sad symmetry add layers of enjoyment to the comics in this collection.
April 5, 2022
Oy dahlink, how heppy I yam to has finally read this, this magnefiscent tomb of a book.
February 4, 2017
I've become a fan of George Herriman's masterpiece, "Krazy Kat," in the past few years, and recently decided to buy this collection, which is the beginning of the comic's Sunday strips. I didn't expect the quality to be so high in the beginning! Most of my favorite artists get better with time (Buster Keaton, Yasujiro Ozu, P.G. Wodehouse), but as soon as George Herriman started making the Sunday strips, he was already making fantastic art that outshines nearly everything else in the comics medium. Just look at the 2nd strip published, a crazy cat-and-mouse chase in which Ignatz Mouse grabs onto a balloon and floats way up in the air, with Krazy Kat trying to save him.
"Krazy Kat" is the invention of George Herriman, a black man from New Orleans who was able to pass for white, and so was able to be a successful comic strips artist at a time when most people of color would have probably gotten the boot from William Randolph Hearst. Looking back in hindsight, there's no doubt that Herriman's Creole heritage helps to explain the fantastic dialect Krazy uses. And Herriman's love of Arizona, with its mixture of white, Mexican and Native American culture, obviously influenced "Kokonino Kounty," the idealized and surreal Eden in which "Krazy Kat" takes place. One of my favorite things about "Krazy Kat" is that the background ALWAYS changes, even when it doesn't have to.
"Krazy Kat" is the invention of George Herriman, a black man from New Orleans who was able to pass for white, and so was able to be a successful comic strips artist at a time when most people of color would have probably gotten the boot from William Randolph Hearst. Looking back in hindsight, there's no doubt that Herriman's Creole heritage helps to explain the fantastic dialect Krazy uses. And Herriman's love of Arizona, with its mixture of white, Mexican and Native American culture, obviously influenced "Kokonino Kounty," the idealized and surreal Eden in which "Krazy Kat" takes place. One of my favorite things about "Krazy Kat" is that the background ALWAYS changes, even when it doesn't have to.
April 10, 2025
Krazy Kat has quickly went from "really creative and historically significant" to "my favorite thing in the universe" and all it took was reading it in big ass physical print...
Read
September 30, 2021This is the first part of the collection of weekly comics by George Herriman. Most of them are centered around a black cat named Krazy and a mouse named Ignatz. They have a troubling relationship where Ignatz always wants to throw bricks at Krazy, and Krazy loves Ignatz very much and calls him "l'il ainjil." Krazy ends up usually satisfied and grateful while Ignatz is frustrated. They live with other creatures in Coconino, where some things seem kind of Mexican, and everyone talks with a really specific dialect, maybe old-fashioned urban American, with words like gled, dahlink, woil, heppy, mizzabil, ent, that's a fack, perfick, ket.
I didn't read all of it, partly because it's kind of hard to read, partly because some of it was slapstick cat-and-mouse stories, but the art is really impressive. The layouts are very purposeful. They are fluid and often adapt to the way the story needs to be told or how the action of the story needs to be represented. They often result in a really interesting overall composition on the page.
It can be hard to step back and appreciate the great drawing style and composition because there's a pull to go in and decipher the stories first.
There are some very charming details that affect the tone of the storytelling. The sight lines that show what a person is looking at as well as some other things like "Now, let's cut back to where 'Krazy' left the 'Tortilla' simmering insipidly upon the stove" and how each panel has a little number, always communicating in what order to read it — these details give it this funny tone like the whole thing is this puppet show, and the author sometimes sticks his head into the scene and, in the same mood with the play, tries to make sure you understand what's happening. Like it's a little naive and clumsy but in a funny, aware way.
The dialect is quite satisfying because it might seem like nonsense at first, but as you start to understand it you can spread that way of talking to the rest of the words and add a lot of personality to the way the characters are speaking.
There are also little details that make it very human and like you're sitting with someone who's making up the story, especially when there is no set way to communicate something, like little sound effects that the characters say. The overall storytelling pace reminds me of Windy Corner Magazine because the words you're going to read next aren't smoothly flowing. The person telling you the story has some thoughts that they're not telling you while they're building the set for the next scene.
I didn't read all of it, partly because it's kind of hard to read, partly because some of it was slapstick cat-and-mouse stories, but the art is really impressive. The layouts are very purposeful. They are fluid and often adapt to the way the story needs to be told or how the action of the story needs to be represented. They often result in a really interesting overall composition on the page.
It can be hard to step back and appreciate the great drawing style and composition because there's a pull to go in and decipher the stories first.
There are some very charming details that affect the tone of the storytelling. The sight lines that show what a person is looking at as well as some other things like "Now, let's cut back to where 'Krazy' left the 'Tortilla' simmering insipidly upon the stove" and how each panel has a little number, always communicating in what order to read it — these details give it this funny tone like the whole thing is this puppet show, and the author sometimes sticks his head into the scene and, in the same mood with the play, tries to make sure you understand what's happening. Like it's a little naive and clumsy but in a funny, aware way.
The dialect is quite satisfying because it might seem like nonsense at first, but as you start to understand it you can spread that way of talking to the rest of the words and add a lot of personality to the way the characters are speaking.
There are also little details that make it very human and like you're sitting with someone who's making up the story, especially when there is no set way to communicate something, like little sound effects that the characters say. The overall storytelling pace reminds me of Windy Corner Magazine because the words you're going to read next aren't smoothly flowing. The person telling you the story has some thoughts that they're not telling you while they're building the set for the next scene.
February 27, 2020
This is a tough one to comment on. I didn't particularly enjoy it - maybe one in every seven or eight strips landed a good laugh or a knowing smile for me (which is probably more than I actually expected from a strip that is literally more than one hundred years old now).
So I can't say these are ageless strips, but in many ways, it is still a very compelling book and it's the aging that makes it interesting. Most specifically, I really enjoyed seeing how Herriman assembled pages and sequences. He's really experimenting with panel borders, open panels, how much information to put on a page, vertical and horizontal space, and the overall shape and space of the comics page. So for a comics geek who enjoys that level of creation, this book's definitely worth a glance. The language of the page was not codified in Herriman's time, and he was laying down the rules that everybody since his time has been using.
So I can't say these are ageless strips, but in many ways, it is still a very compelling book and it's the aging that makes it interesting. Most specifically, I really enjoyed seeing how Herriman assembled pages and sequences. He's really experimenting with panel borders, open panels, how much information to put on a page, vertical and horizontal space, and the overall shape and space of the comics page. So for a comics geek who enjoys that level of creation, this book's definitely worth a glance. The language of the page was not codified in Herriman's time, and he was laying down the rules that everybody since his time has been using.
September 30, 2014
I have been hearing for quite a while how ingenious the Krazy Kat strips were, so I took a chance and bought the first of a ten-volume set to check it out for myself. This book contains the Sunday strips from 1916 through 1918. It is good and for the most part it stands up (there are some references that are strictly from that time that I didn't get, but there is a page in the back that explains some of these). My only complaint is that with some of the strips, because they have been shrunk down from newspaper size, are hard to read because the words get rather small. I'll probably order the second book and read some more.
May 12, 2025
(This review covers the complete strip)
A surreal, poetic strip built around the strange dynamic between Krazy Kat and Ignatz Mouse, whose brick-throwing is mistaken for affection by Krazy. It's set apart by the rhythm of its language, experimental page layouts way ahead of their time, and the shifting, dream-like backgrounds of the Arizona desert. Arguably the most influential strip ever made, it helped establish the idea of comics as a serious artistic medium with its mix of playful language and emotional ambiguity.
A surreal, poetic strip built around the strange dynamic between Krazy Kat and Ignatz Mouse, whose brick-throwing is mistaken for affection by Krazy. It's set apart by the rhythm of its language, experimental page layouts way ahead of their time, and the shifting, dream-like backgrounds of the Arizona desert. Arguably the most influential strip ever made, it helped establish the idea of comics as a serious artistic medium with its mix of playful language and emotional ambiguity.
December 18, 2010
More konstant delight with Krazy Kat, Offisa Pup, and Ignatz Mouse, the li'l angel. Seldes proclaimed this one of the top works of art produced in America in the first half of the 20th kentury. It is hard to argue with evidence so sublime. Several Shakespeare and Kervantes references.
April 10, 2020
The large format of this edition really suits the material.
April 4, 2017
Well, I finished all of the Peanuts...may as well read all of Krazy Kat, too. As it is, it won't take me 12 years to read them all, as the Sunday Krazy Kats are all published.
These cartoons are 100 years old now; they are timeless.
These cartoons are 100 years old now; they are timeless.
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