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Krazy Kat

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   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.

   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. 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." 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.

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.
   Enlarge
   An early colour 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., 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."). 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.

   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.

Characters

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?") phonetically
   evoking a mixture of English, French, Spanish, Yiddish, and other
   dialects, often identified as George Herriman's own native New Orleans
   dialect, Yat. 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"). 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, but Krazy's creator was more
   ambiguous and even published several strips poking fun at this
   uncertainty. 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."

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.
   Enlarge
   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.

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.

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", 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 fowl of Chinese descent who resembles a coolie and
   operates a cleaning establishment; and Krazy's cousins, Krazy Katbird
   and Krazy Katfish.

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.
   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.
   Enlarge
   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. 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 and was given
   positive reviews in The New York Times and The New Republic, 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. More recent scholars and
   authors have seen the strip as reflecting the Dada movement and
   prefiguring Postmodernism.

   Beginning in 1935, Krazy Kat's Sunday edition was published in full
   colour. 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).

Animated adaptations

   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.

   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.

   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. 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. In 1939, Mintz became indebted to his distributor,
   Columbia Pictures, and subsequently sold his studio to them. Under the
   name Screen Gems, the studio produced only one more Krazy Kat cartoon,
   The Mouse Exterminator in 1940.

   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.

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. 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, 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." Bill Watterson of Calvin and Hobbes fame named Krazy Kat
   among his three major influences (along with Peanuts and Pogo).
   Watterson would revive Herriman's practice of employing varied,
   unpredictable panel layouts in his Sunday strips. Charles M. Schulz and
   Will Eisner both said that they were drawn towards cartooning partly
   because of the impact Krazy Kat made on them in their formative years.

   Jules Feiffer, Philip Guston, and Hunt Emerson 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. 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.

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. 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. 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. 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 colour Sunday strips
   dating from 1935 to 1937; but like Eclipse, they collapsed before they
   could continue the series.

   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. It
   includes a detailed biography of Herriman and is currently the only
   in-print book to republish Krazy Kat strips from the 1940s. Although it
   contains over 200 strips, including many colour Sundays, it is light on
   material from 1923 to 1937.

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 0-913035-42-0
     * 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 0-560-60065-9
     * 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)

Kitchen Sink Press editions

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

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 colour)
     * 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 (to be released early in
       2007)

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)

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