Sherry Chandler

…a heppy lend furfur awa-a-ay….

The first time I saw a cartoon of of George Herriman’s was in my High School American Lit. text. It had a few of his illustrations from the 1927-40 Don Marquis book collections of Archie and Mehitabel. The one I recall best was Mehitabel floating in the Nile in half a watermelon rind, bragging “I was Cleopatra once,” trying to show Archie up for his claim to have been a vers libre poet in an earlier incarnation. She looked a lot like Krazy Kat, which is fitting since the Kat was of indeterminate sex, changing at his/her creator’s whim. It was decades later before I could find reprints of Herriman’s greatest creation. The entire set of his Sunday pages has now been collected in a series of books, first in the early 90s by Eclipse Comics for 1916-24 strips and recently by Fantagraphics for 1925-1944 when the strip was cancelled after the death of the creator. W.R. Hearst decided that no one could equal Herriman’s genius so the strip did not continue with a ghostwriter, a first for a syndicated cartoon. Fantagraphics will go back and re-issue the earlier volumes in coming years.

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Krazy Kat was never a popular success and owed its survival to the undying admiration of William Randolf Hurst. It spent a large part of its run on the Art and Theatre pages of his papers so the bulk of its Sunday pages are in black and white. It takes a lot of effort to read many of the strips since Herriman loved funny spellings, puns, Latinate inflated diction, Spanish, French, and even a bit of Greek, not to mention Yat, the argot of his native New Orleans. It was set in Kokonino Co. Arizona and featured a lot of Navaho-influenced rug and pottery designs and local topography flitting about the background. It is very like an Ode on an American Urn. It is sometimes even harder to interpret what the strips might “mean”. He was often at his best when he let the action of the strip tell the story–he spent a lot of time watching his L.A. friends make silent comedies. But he could wax lyrical and mock-epical without missing a beat.

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In a typical stript Ignatz plans to throw a brick at the Kat’s head–whether he is annoyed by his optimism/joy in nature/music/ or if he saw a perceived threat/or for revenge or just because the mouse felt “evil”. Krazy Kat always experiences the coup as an act of love–a billet-doux, a transport of ecstasy, a mind-altering moment (a brick of hashish? mara huana?-she is a wistful widow resident of Kokonino Co.) or an epiphany of religious intensity. Staid Offisa Bullpup, with his billy-club, strives to prevent the assault and often locks Ignatz in jail whether or not any unlawful transaction has transpired. Much of the genius of the strip lies in endlessly clever variations of this plot. In an early strip Ignatz believes he has finally succeeded in drowning the Kat and he begins to grieve inconsolably, bawling his eyes out while he sits on a stone; but Krazy Katfish [in his debut performance] and Ignatz’ muskrat cousin have saved the Kat and shown him how to get back to dry land, so when Krazy pops out of the hollow tree behind him, Ignatz picks up his “cushion” and….

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What gives the strip its enduring value is the unflinching view it gives of the contradictory nature of human relationships. Love and hate are inextricably bound in all friendships, marriages, families. It is Krazy who first notices that the Mouse family has been visited by Joe Stork and he sets out to get a stroller; he barrels it into Ignatz standing on a brick and Ignatz continues rolling along to his house where his long-suffering wife is charmed by hhe hubby’s “thoughtfulness”. I. takes the three babies to Kelly’s brickyard to start their “education” immediately.

Catullus in one short lyric marvels that he loves and hates all at once even though he can’t explain why. Kat and Mouse are asleep in an early daily strip, heads propped on a log. After Krazy wakes and chastely kisses a snoozing Ignatz on his forehead, the Mouse dreams of cupids and angels. There’s nary a brickbat in sight.

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How does the mouse actually work?

Frye on Cat & Mouse

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