Krazy Kat

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Krazy Kat
Detail of a Sunday page in which Ignatz, disguised as a painting, hurls a brick at Krazy Kat, who interprets it as an expression of love.
Author(s)	George Herriman
Current status	Ended
Syndicate(s)	King Features Syndicate
Launch date	October 13, 1913
End Date	June 25, 1944
Genre(s)	Humor, Romance

Krazy Kat is a comic strip created by George Herriman that appeared in U.S. newspapers between 1913 and 1944. It was first published in William Randolph Hearst's New York Evening Journal. Set in a dreamlike portrayal of Herriman's vacation home of Coconino County, Arizona, Krazy Kat's mixture of surrealism, innocent playfulness, and poetic language have made it a favorite of comics aficionados and art critics for more than eighty years.^[1][2][3]

The strip focuses on the relationship triangle between its title character, a carefree and innocent cat of indeterminate gender (referred to as both male and female), her antagonist Ignatz Mouse, and the protective police dog, Officer Bull Pupp. Krazy nurses an unrequited love for the mouse, but Ignatz despises her and constantly schemes to throw a brick at her head; for unknown reasons, Krazy takes this as a sign of affection. Officer Pupp, as Coconino County's administrator of law and order, makes it his unwavering mission to interfere with Ignatz's brick-tossing plans and lock the mouse in the county jail.

Despite the slapstick simplicity of the general premise, it was the detailed characterization, combined with Herriman's visual and verbal creativity, that made Krazy Kat one of the first comics to be widely praised by intellectuals and treated as serious art.^[1] Gilbert Seldes, a noted art critic of the time, wrote a lengthy panegyric to the strip in 1924, calling it "the most amusing and fantastic and satisfactory work of art produced in America today."^[4] Famed poet E. E. Cummings, as another Herriman admirer, wrote the introduction to the first collection of the strip in book form. In more recent years, many modern cartoonists have cited Krazy Kat as a major influence.

[edit] Overview

An early color Saturday page in which Krazy tries to understand why Door Mouse (a minor character) is carrying around a door. Published January 21, 1922.
Click image to enlarge.

Krazy Kat takes place in a heavily stylized version of Coconino County, Arizona, with Herriman filling the page with landscapes typical of the Painted Desert.^[5] These backgrounds tend to change dramatically between panels even while the characters remain stationary. A Southwestern visual style is evident throughout, with clay-shingled rooftops, trees planted in pots with designs imitating Navajo art, and references to Mexican-American culture. The descriptive passages mix whimsical and often alliterative language with a poetic sensibility ("Agathla, centuries aslumber, shivers in its sleep with splenetic splendor, and spreads abroad a seismic spasm with the supreme suavity of a vagabond volcano.").^[6] Herriman was fond of experimenting with unconventional page layouts in his Sunday strips, including panels of various shapes and sizes, arranged in whatever fashion he thought would best tell the story.

Though the basic concept of the strip is straightforward, Herriman always found ways to tweak the formula. Sometimes, Ignatz's plans to surreptitiously lob a brick at Krazy's head succeed; other times Officer Pupp outsmarts the wily mouse and imprisons him. The interventions of Coconino County's other anthropomorphic animal residents, and even forces of nature, occasionally change the dynamic in unexpected ways. Other strips have Krazy's simple-minded or gnomic pronouncements irritating the mouse so much that he goes to seek out a brick in the final panel. Even self-referential humor is evident — in one strip, Officer Pupp, having arrested Ignatz, berates the cartoonist for not having finished drawing the jail.^[7]

Public reaction at the time was mixed; many were puzzled by its iconoclastic refusal to conform to comic strip conventions and simple gags. But publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst loved Krazy Kat, and it continued to appear in his papers throughout its run, sometimes only by his direct order.^[8]

[edit] Characters

Krazy Kat's three central characters. Left to right: Ignatz Mouse, Officer Pupp, Krazy Kat.

[edit] Krazy Kat

Simple-minded and curious, the strip's title character drifts through life in Coconino County without a care. Krazy's dialogue is a highly stylized argot ("A fowl konspirissy — is it pussible?")^[9] phonetically evoking a mixture of English, French, Spanish, Yiddish, and other dialects, often identified as George Herriman's own native New Orleans dialect, Yat.^[2] Often singing and dancing to express her eternal joy, Krazy is hopelessly in love with Ignatz and thinks that the mouse's brick-tossing is his way of returning that love. She is also completely unaware of the bitter rivalry between Ignatz and Officer Pupp and mistakes the dog's frequent imprisonment of the mouse for an innocent game of tag ("Ever times I see them two playing games togedda, Ignatz seems to be It").^[10] On those occasions when Ignatz is caught before he can launch his brick, Krazy is left pining for her "l'il ainjil" and wonders where her beloved mouse has gone.

Krazy's own gender is never made clear and appears to be fluid, varying from strip to strip. Most authors post-Herriman (beginning with E. E. Cummings) have referred to her as female,^[11] but Krazy's creator was more ambiguous and even published several strips poking fun at this uncertainty.^[12][13] When filmmaker Frank Capra, a fan of the strip, asked Herriman to straightforwardly define the character's sex, the cartoonist admitted that Krazy was "something like a sprite, an elf. They have no sex. So that Kat can't be a he or a she. The Kat's a spirit — a pixie — free to butt into anything."^[14]

[edit] Ignatz

Ignatz being marched off by Officer Pupp for trying to throw a brick (lower-right) at Krazy Kat. Behind the newspaper, Krazy is reading and describing aloud the very same cartoon that they're all appearing in.

Ignatz Mouse is driven to distraction by Krazy's naïveté, and nothing gives him greater joy than to toss a brick at the Kat's head. To shield his plans from the ever-vigilant (and ever-suspecting) Officer Pupp, Ignatz hides his bricks, disguises himself, or enlists the aid of willing Coconino County denizens (without making his intentions clear). Easing Ignatz's task is Krazy Kat's willingness to meet him anywhere at any appointed time, eager to receive a token of affection in the form of a brick to the head.

[edit] Officer Pupp

"Limb of Law and Arm of Order", Officer Bull Pupp (also called "Offissa" and "Offisa") always tries — and sometimes succeeds — to thwart Ignatz's designs to pelt bricks at Krazy Kat. Officer Pupp and Ignatz often try to get the better of each other even when Krazy is not directly involved, as they both enjoy seeing the other played for a fool.

[edit] Minor characters

Beyond these three, Coconino County is populated with an assortment of characters. Kolin Kelly, a dog, is a brickmaker and often Ignatz's source for projectiles, although he distrusts the mouse. Mrs. Kwakk Wakk, a duck in a pillbox hat, is a scold who frequently notices Ignatz in the course of his plotting and then informs Officer Pupp. Joe Stork, "purveyor of progeny to prince & proletarian",^[15] often makes unwanted baby deliveries to various characters (in one strip, Ignatz tries to trick him into dropping a brick onto Krazy's head from above). Other characters who make semi-frequent appearances are Bum Bill Bee, a transient insect; Don Kiyote, a dignified and aristocratic Mexican coyote; Mock Duck, a clairvoyant fowl of Chinese descent who resembles a coolie and operates a cleaning establishment; and Krazy's cousins, Krazy Katbird and Krazy Katfish.

[edit] History

Krazy Kat evolved from an earlier comic strip of Herriman's, The Dingbat Family, which started in 1910 and would later be renamed "The Family Upstairs." This comic chronicled the Dingbats' attempts to avoid the mischief of the mysterious unseen family living in the apartment above theirs and to unmask that family. Herriman would complete the cartoons about the Dingbats, and finding himself with time left over in his 8-hour work day, filled the bottom of the strip with slapstick drawings of the upstair family's mouse preying upon the Dingbats' cat.^[16]

Ignatz Mouse resolves not to throw any more bricks at Krazy. Temptation follows him at every turn, and ultimately he finds a loophole to indulge his passion. Sunday, January 6, 1918.
Click image to enlarge.

This "basement strip" grew into something much larger than the original cartoon. It became a daily comic strip with a title (running vertically down the side of the page) on October 28, 1913 and a black and white full-page Sunday cartoon on April 23, 1916. Due to the objections of editors, who didn't think it was suitable for the comics sections, Krazy Kat originally appeared in the Hearst papers' art and drama sections.^[17] Hearst himself, however, enjoyed the strip so much that he gave Herriman a lifetime contract and guaranteed the cartoonist complete creative freedom.

Despite its low popularity among the general public, Krazy Kat gained a wide following among intellectuals. In 1922, a jazz ballet based on the comic was produced and scored by John Alden Carpenter; though the performance played to sold-out crowds on two nights^[18] and was given positive reviews in The New York Times and The New Republic,^[19] it failed to boost the strip's popularity as Hearst had hoped. In addition to Seldes and Cummings, contemporary admirers of Krazy Kat included Willem de Kooning, H. L. Mencken, and Jack Kerouac.^[3] More recent scholars and authors have seen the strip as reflecting the Dada movement^[20] and prefiguring Postmodernism.^[2][21]

Beginning in 1935, Krazy Kat's Sunday edition was published in full color. Though the number of newspapers carrying it dwindled in its last decade, Herriman continued to draw Krazy Kat — creating roughly 3,000 cartoons — until his death in 1944. Hearst promptly canceled the strip after the artist died, since he did not want to see a new cartoonist take over (as common practice of the time dictated).^[22]

[edit] Animated adaptations

A scene from the 1930 Charles Mintz Krazy Kat cartoon, Lambs Will Gambol.

The comic strip was animated several times. The earliest Krazy Kat shorts were produced by William Randolph Hearst in 1916. They were produced under Hearst-Vitagraph News Pictorial and later the International Film Service (IFS), though Herriman was not involved. In 1920, after a two-year hiatus, the John R. Bray studio began producing a series of Krazy Kat shorts.^[23]

In 1925, animation pioneer Bill Nolan decided to bring Krazy to the screen again. Nolan intended to produce the series under Associated Animators, but when it dissolved, he sought distribution from Margaret J. Winkler. Unlike earlier adaptations, Nolan did not base his shorts on the characters and setting of the Herriman comic strip. Instead, the feline in Nolan's cartoons was an explicitly male cat whose design and personality both reflected Felix the Cat. This is probably due to the fact that Nolan himself was a former employee of the Pat Sullivan studio.^[24]

Winkler's husband, Charles B. Mintz, slowly began assuming control of the operation. Mintz and his studio began producing the cartoons in sound beginning with 1929's Ratskin. In 1930, he moved the staff to California and ultimately changed the design of Krazy Kat. The new character bore even less resemblance to the one in the newspapers. Mintz's sound Krazy Kat was, like many other early 1930s cartoon characters, imitative of Mickey Mouse, and usually engaged in slapstick comic adventures with his look-alike girlfriend and loyal pet dog.^[25] In 1936, animator Isadore Klein, with the blessing of Mintz, set to work creating the short, Lil' Ainjil, the only Mintz work that was intended to reflect Herriman's comic strip. However, Klein was "terribly disappointed" with the resulting cartoon, and the Mickey-derivative Krazy returned.^[26] In 1939, Mintz became indebted to his distributor, Columbia Pictures, and subsequently sold his studio to them.^[27] Under the name Screen Gems, the studio produced only one more Krazy Kat cartoon, The Mouse Exterminator in 1940.^[28]

Gene Deitch's Rembrandt Films in Prague, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) produced Krazy Kat cartoons from 1962 to 1964, helping to introduce Herriman's cat to the baby boom generation. The Deitch shorts were made for television and have a closer connection to the comic strip; the backgrounds are drawn in a similar style, and Ignatz and Officer Pupp are both present. However, this incarnation of Krazy was made explicitly female. Jerky animation and poorly-synchronized voices are common in these Krazy Kat shorts. Jay Livingston and Ray Evans did the music for most of the episodes.^[23]

[edit] Legacy

In 1999, Krazy Kat was rated #1 in a Comics Journal list of the best American comics of the 20th century; the list included both comic books and comic strips.^[29] In 1995, the strip was one of 20 included in the Comic Strip Classics series of commemorative U.S. postage stamps.

While Chuck Jones' Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner shorts, set in a similar visual pastiche of the American Southwest, are among the most famous cartoons to draw upon Herriman's work,^[21] Krazy Kat has continued to inspire artists and cartoonists to the present day. Patrick McDonnell, creator of the current strip Mutts and co-author of Krazy Kat: The Comic Art of George Herriman, cites it as his "foremost influence."^[30] Bill Watterson of Calvin and Hobbes fame named Krazy Kat among his three major influences (along with Peanuts and Pogo).^[31] Watterson would revive Herriman's practice of employing varied, unpredictable panel layouts in his Sunday strips. Charles M. Schulz^[32] and Will Eisner^[33] both said that they were drawn towards cartooning partly because of the impact Krazy Kat made on them in their formative years.

Jules Feiffer,^[34] Philip Guston,^[34] and Hunt Emerson^[35] have all had Krazy Kat's imprint recognized in their work. Larry Gonick's comic strip Kokopelli & Company is set in "Kokonino County", an homage to Herriman's exotic locale. Chris Ware admires the strip, and his frequent publisher, Fantagraphics, is currently reissuing its entire run. In the 1980s, Sam Hurt's synidicated strip Eyebeam shows a clear Herriman influence, particularly in its continually morphing backgrounds. Among non-cartoonists, Jay Cantor's 1987 novel Krazy Kat uses Herriman's characters to analyze humanity's reaction to nuclear weapons, while Michael Stipe of the rock band R.E.M. has a tattoo of Ignatz and Krazy.^[36]

[edit] Reprints

For many decades, Herriman's strip was only sporadically available. The very first Krazy Kat collection, published by Henry Holt & Co. in 1946, just two years after Herriman's death, gathered 200 selected strips.^[37] In Europe, the cartoons were first reprinted in 1965 by the Italian magazine Linus, and appeared in the pages of the French monthly Charlie Mensuel starting in 1970.^[38] In 1969, Grosset & Dunlap produced a single hardcover collection of selected episodes and sequences spanning the entire length of the strip's run. The Netherlands' Real Free Press published five issues of "Krazy Kat Komix" in 1975, containing a few hundred strips apiece; each of the issues' covers was designed by Joost Swarte. However, owing to the difficulty of tracking down high-quality copies of the original newspapers, no plans for a comprehensive collection of Krazy Kat strips surfaced until the 1980s.

All of the Sunday strips from 1916 to 1924 were reprinted by Eclipse Comics in cooperation with Turtle Island Press. The intent was to eventually reprint every Sunday Krazy Kat, but this planned series was aborted when Eclipse ceased business in 1992. Beginning in 2002, Fantagraphics has resumed reprinting Sunday Krazy Kats where Eclipse left off. Fantagraphics has released seven installments to date, designed by Chris Ware. The company plans to continue until all strips through the end in 1944 have been reprinted, and then to start reissuing in the same format the strips previously printed in Eclipse's now out-of-print volumes.^[39] Both the Eclipse and Fantagraphics reprints include additional rarities such as older George Herriman cartoons predating Krazy Kat. Kitchen Sink Press, in association with Remco Worldservice Books, reprinted two volumes of color Sunday strips dating from 1935 to 1937; but like Eclipse, they collapsed before they could continue the series.^[40]

The daily strips for 1921 to 1923 were reprinted by Pacific Comics Club. The 1922 and 1923 books skipped a small number of strips, which have now been reprinted by Comics Revue. Comics Revue has also published all of the daily strips from September 8, 1930 through December 31, 1934. Scattered Sundays and dailies have appeared in several collections, including the Grosset & Dunlap book reprinted by Nostalgia Press, but the most readily available sampling of Sundays and dailies from throughout the strip's run is Krazy Kat: The Comic Art of George Herriman, published by Harry N. Abrams, Inc. in 1986.^[40][41] It includes a detailed biography of Herriman and is currently the only in-print book to republish Krazy Kat strips from after 1940. Although it contains over 200 strips, including many color Sundays, it is light on material from 1923 to 1937.

[edit] Eclipse Comics editions

• Krazy & Ignatz (1916 strips) ISBN 0-913035-49-1
• The Other Side To the Shore Of Here (1917 strips) ISBN 0-913035-74-2
• The Limbo of Useless Unconsciousness (1918 strips) ISBN 0-913035-76-9
• Howling Among the Halls of Night (1919 strips) ISBN 1-56060-019-5 OCLC 22660089
• Pilgrims on the Road to Nowhere (1920 strips) ISBN 1-56060-023-3
• Sure As Moons is Cheeses (1921 strips) ISBN 1-56060-034-9
• A Katnip Kantata in the Key of K (1922 strips) ISBN 1-56060-063-2
• Inna Yott On the Muddy Geranium (1923 strips) ISBN 1560600667
• Shed a Soft Mongolian Tear (1924 strips) ISBN 1-56060-102-7
• Honeysuckil Love is Doubly Swit (1925 strips) ISBN 1-56060-203-1 (unpublished)

[edit] Kitchen Sink Press editions

• 1935-36 ISBN 0-924359-06-4
• 1936-37 ISBN 0-924359-07-2 limited distribution

[edit] Fantagraphics Books editions

• Krazy & Ignatz in "There Is A Heppy Lend Furfur A-Waay": The Komplete Kat Komics 1925–1926 ISBN 1-56097-386-2
• Krazy & Ignatz in "Love Letters In Ancient Brick": The Komplete Kat Komics 1927–1928 ISBN 1-56097-507-5
• Krazy & Ignatz in "A Mice, A Brick, A Lovely Night": The Komplete Kat Komics 1929–1930 ISBN 1-56097-529-6
• Krazy & Ignatz in "A Kat Alilt with Song": The Komplete Kat Komics 1931–1932 ISBN 1-56097-594-6
• Krazy & Ignatz in "Necromancy by the Blue Bean Bush": The Komplete Kat Komics 1933–1934 ISBN 1-56097-620-9
  • Krazy & Ignatz: The Complete Sunday Strips 1925–1934. Collects the five paperback volumes 1925–1934 in a single hardcover volume. Only 1000 copies printed, and only available by direct order from the publisher. ISBN 1-56097-522-9.
• Krazy & Ignatz in "A Wild Warmth of Chromatic Gravy": The Komplete Kat Komics 1935–1936 ISBN 1-56097-690-X (first volume in color)
• Krazy & Ignatz in "Shifting Sands Dusts its Cheeks in Powdered Beauty": The Komplete Kat Komics 1937–1938 ISBN 1-56097-734-5
• Krazy & Ignatz in "A Brick Stuffed with Moom-bins": The Komplete Kat Komics 1939–1940 ISBN 1-56097-789-2

[edit] Harry N. Abrams, Inc. editions

• Krazy Kat: The Comic Art of George Herriman. Various strips. ISBN 0-8109-9185-3 (softcover) ISBN 0-8109-8152-1 (hardcover)

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Blackbeard, Bill. "A Kat of Many Kolors: Jazz pantomime and the funny papers in 1922." (1991). Printed in A Katnip Kantata in the Key of K (q.v.)
• Bloom, John. "Krazy Kat keeps kracking." United Press International, June 23, 2003.
• Crafton, Donald (1993). Before Mickey: The Animated Film, 1898–1928. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-11667-0.
• Crocker, Elisabeth. "'To He, I Am For Evva True': Krazy Kat's Indeterminate Gender." Postmodern Culture, January 1995. January 12, 2006.
• Heer, Jeet. "Cartoonists in Navajo Country." Comic Art Magazine, Summer 2006. 40–47.
• Herriman, George (1990). Pilgrims on the Road to Nowhere. Forestville: Turtle Island, Eclipse Books. ISBN 1-56060-024-1.
• Herriman, George (1991). A Katnip Kantata in the Key of K. Forestville: Turtle Island/Eclipse Books. ISBN 1-56060-064-0.
• Herriman, George (2002). Krazy & Ignatz 1925–1926: "There Is A Heppy Land, Fur, Far Awa-a-ay -". Seattle: Fantagraphics Books. ISBN 1-56097-386-2.
• Herriman, George (2003). Krazy & Ignatz 1929–1930: "A Mice, A Brick, A Lovely Night". Seattle: Fantagraphics Books. ISBN 1-56097-529-6.
• Herriman, George (2004). Krazy & Ignatz 1933–1934: "Necromancy by the Blue Bean Bush". Seattle: Fantagraphics Books. ISBN 1-56097-620-9.
• Inge, Thomas (1990). "Krazy Kat as American Dada Art" Comics as Culture, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 0-87805-408-1.
• Kramer, Hilton. Untitled review of Herriman art exhibition. The New York Times, January 17, 1982.
• Maltin, Leonard (1987). Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons. Penguin Books. ISBN 0-452-25993-2.
• McDonnell, Patrick; O'Connell, Karen; de Havenon, Georgia Riley (1986) Krazy Kat: The Comic Art of George Herriman. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. ISBN 0-8109-2313-0.
• Schwartz, Ben (2003). "Hearst, Herriman, and the Death of Nonsense." Printed in Krazy & Ignatz 1929–1930: "A Mice, A Brick, A Lovely Night." (q.v.)
• Seldes, Gilbert. "The Krazy Kat That Walks By Himself." The Seven Lively Arts. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1924. See External Links.
• Shannon, Edward A. "'That we may mis-unda-stend each udda': The Rhetoric of Krazy Kat." Journal of Popular Culture, Fall 1995, vol. 29, issue 2.
• Tashlin, Frank. "In Coconino County." The New York Times, November 3, 1946, p. 161.
• Watterson, Bill (1995). The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book. Kansas City: Andrews and McMeel. ISBN 0-8362-0438-7

[edit] External links

• "The Krazy Kat That Walks By Himself" — Gilbert Seldes' 1924 essay praising the strip.
• Krazy's America - No Austerities
• Coconino County — History, bios, strip archive, bibliography and more.
• "'Some Say it With A Brick': George Herriman's Krazy Kat" — A critical essay.
• Full video of the "Krazy Goes A-Wooing" silent animated short produced by Hearst, with some similarities to the strip.
• The Columbia Crow's Nest — Includes information on the Mintz-era cartoons bearing the Krazy Kat name.