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Krazy and Ignatz, 1916-1918: Love in a Kestle or Love in a Hut by George Herriman, Bill Blackbeard
meepelous's review
3.0
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/10.16995/cg.97/
This kat was krazy influential, but few knew his creator's secret: https://www.dallasnews.com/arts-entertainment/books/2016/12/29/this-kat-was-krazy-influential-but-few-knew-his-creator-s-secret/
Is George Herriman the Greatest American Visual Artist?: https://hyperallergic.com/512766/is-george-herriman-the-greatest-american-visual-artist/
The Gender Fluidity of Krazy Kat: https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-gender-fluidity-of-krazy-kat
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/10.16995/cg.97/
This kat was krazy influential, but few knew his creator's secret: https://www.dallasnews.com/arts-entertainment/books/2016/12/29/this-kat-was-krazy-influential-but-few-knew-his-creator-s-secret/
Is George Herriman the Greatest American Visual Artist?: https://hyperallergic.com/512766/is-george-herriman-the-greatest-american-visual-artist/
The Gender Fluidity of Krazy Kat: https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-gender-fluidity-of-krazy-kat
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