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Krazy and Ignatz

Krazy & Ignatz

george herriman bill blackbeard

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The Sunday Krazy Kat strip turns to full spectacular color, with a flood of rare color extras and a revelatory essay by Jeet Heer.

120 pages, Paperback

First published October 31,2005
Series
Krazy and Ignatz

This edition

Format
120 pages, Paperback
Published
September 16, 2008 by Fantagraphics Books
ISBN
9781560976905
ASIN
156097690X
Language
English
Characters More characters

More editions

About the author

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george herriman

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George Herriman was born August 2nd, 1880. He was an African-American cartoonist whose comic strip Krazy Kat has been said by many to be America's greatest cartoon.

Herriman was born in New Orleans, but his Creole family soon moved to California. As a teenager, he contributed drawings to local newspapers. In his early 20s, he moved to New York City and freelanced until newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst hired him for the New York Evening Journal. During the first decade of the 20th century, Herriman's first success was called The Family Upstairs. Krazy Kat gained independence on October 28, 1913 as a cartoon character of his own, and ran until George Herriman died in 1944.

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.

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Community Reviews

Rating(4.1 / 5.0, 8 votes)
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8 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
Sad-Kiritsugu
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Six page stapled insert with newly found material

In depth essay with many angles about his personal Ethnicity

Only 1.5 years of Sundays-> begins mid 1935

The beginning of color.
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Halalex
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Ooooo! I just love reading Krazy Kat. Since I can't get any new Calvin & Hobbes and while Frazz meets some of my needs, I truly enjoy getting into a Krazy Kat and catching up with the characters there.



This edition is an eyeful of color, movement and scenery and is thoroughly wonderful.



When picking up Krazy Kat for the first time (or after an extended absence), it may be necessary to remember (or learn) that Krazy Kat isn't so much read with the eyes as with the ears. There's a particular "Coconino" dialect that is used that at first glance (and second and thirds) isn't readily readable. Please listen with your ears and let the words sound out before hitting your brain. Don't actually read it out loud or your bus neighbors or office mates might lock you up. But listen with your ears as the filter and processor before your brain takes up the words.



A lovely book.

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smilexbabex33
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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I really really liked the collection of historical forwards than most of the actual comic material. The forwards captivated me because it delves into the controversial topic of Herriman's race. Herriman was described as "colored" on his original birth certificate and defined as parent's of a "mulatto" which back in the 1930s could have meant anything from African-American to any other indigenous ethnic mix...Scholars have argued that at the time---this could have even covered labeling dark skinned European immigrants. Love just how deep and complicated America can get at times.

I find it horrifically fascinating that as he apparently had this internal struggle of dealing with "passing" he had part in stereotyping African Americans. I know it was the conformist thing to do---especially when everybody's doing it---- yet he almost had this juxtaposition effect as he seemed to want to understand the racial complexities in America. So I'm torn between saying

  

and dismissing these comics completely----and sympathizing with a man who was taught to be ashamed of his ancestry and "hate" people of color. I respect him for trying to create a "peaceful society on paper" it still doesn't negate the fact of the subliminal messages of race he helped perpetrate of the times.

This was my favorite out of the collection because it evoked all those strong emotions in me:

  
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beyondlaura
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Words cannot describe how much I loved this. I borrowed it from a friend but I'm going to go buy my own as soon as I return it. I need to own it and have it in my physical possession for the rest of my life. It is pure, concentrated joy.
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MPC-senpai
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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I decided to skip ahead to some of the color comics, having just read the first few years 1919 into the 1920s.

The introduction discusses Herriman's racial identification which has become a very hot topic. Youtuber Mattt has a video about it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXjlx...

I'm not enough of a comics historian to see how great Herriman's influence on comics really was.

The stories are still quite fun to read.
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cariNeo
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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As with Julian, the rating here is foregone. I love Krazy Kat with an everlasting first love, and it loves me back. In this book, I especially love Ignatz' fig tree, and the sequence of the doleful dogie.
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iSakuraSnow
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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This is poetry in comics. An eternal love triangle where a dog loves a cat who loves a mouse who throws bricks at the cat and is put in jail by the dog. It is amazing that there was room for this surreal comic strip in regular newspapers from 1913 to 1944. This volume collects the first 18 months of colored Sunday pages. There is an informative essay by Jeet Heer and lots of bonus material. A few of the strips are given some explanatory notes. This is of course brilliant and it is reassuring that these treasures are available in print. I picked this volume up at a sale at a local (Stockholm, Sweden) bookstore, apparently there is a limited audience for this type of work. My only problem with this volume is the same as I have with most poetry collections; it is to much to read over a short period of time. These poems are best devoured in smaller portions, it must have been fabulous to get a new one every Sunday.
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