The details of George Herriman's life―his Creole background, his connection to New Orleans―have become better known than they once were, which is as it should be. But they don't fully explain Krazy Kat. It's simply its own thing.
Born in 1870, Herriman was of the generation that basically invented daily comic strips. And if you look at samples from Baron Bean, a strip he actually created after Krazy Kat, you see accomplished art, but in the style of turn-of-the-century comics like Mutt and Jeff.
Krazy Kat had some basis in that old style as well, but it also incorporated methods from outside the mediums established rules. It was strange then and it's strange now. Funny and poignant as well, if that need be pointed out.
1 comment:
When I saw you'd written about George Herriman I immediately thought of his contemporary Winsor McCay and his Adventures of Little Nemo in Slumberland. While the cartoonists then as now had regular weekly strips George Herriman and Winsor McKay had an even better time illustrating their Sunday comics. Creative freedom is a wonderful thing and within a brief time they'd rearranged the panel format and were no longer sticking to images in little boxes. It wasn't long before both of them got out of the box entirely.. at least on Sundays. They were unbelievably inspired - Jer's been checking out their cartoons from long ago when they'd stretch those panels into hyper real dimensions. A sample of McCay's early graphics show his mastery of perspective and architectural details.
https://www.comicstriplibrary.org/search?search=little+nemo
Ignatz, Krazy Kat, and Officer Pup make up the surreal characters in the land of Coconino County, AZ. Talk about unrequited love..
The other famous cartoonist who escaped the box was Bill Watterson with his magnificent Calvin and Hobbes series that broke all the squared off barriers with his own technique of emulating those two early American cartoon geniuses.
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