Krazy Kat

i'm surprised to see they just reissued the (extremely ODD) '60s cartoon version of this on dvd.

what's it like?

well, it's like the comic strip, only it's a cheap-looking cartoon (made by the same studio that made the later made-for-TV Popeyes, if that tells you anything). and Krazy Kat is a gurl cat from Texas who lisps a lot. and there's a lot of stupid old-cartoon-type plots - Ignatz trying to give up throwing bricks at Krazy, western parodies, that kind of thing. it's really, really, really weird. i have a bargain-bin videotape with about 10 of them.

I've two collections of the cartoons, and they aren't much like the strip. They're inoffensive, but everything that made the strip great, for me, is missing.

weird I have been a Krazy Kat fan since I was a kid, have read tons of collections, seen photos of him, etc. and yet I had never realized before yesterday that he was black.

in the running for the NBA - http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2010_p_youn.html

more details to dig into (& more fun) than John Ashberry's fantasia on Henry Darger, but if you are a big Krazy fan you will definitely enjoy this book regardless of your orientation concerning modern poetry

gah, such a weird combo of loudmouth bullshit and intelligent discussion upthread (was thinking the same after reading that old erykah badu thread on ILM). ilx these days seems so much more civilized, in ways both good and bad. less dumbass flexing, but a lot less unguarded intellectual exploration, too.

particular incensed by ethan's, "i can't stand this wave of shitty indie cartoonists endorsing to their adoring fans which old comics are cool to like..." so fucking myopic and self-centered. i grew up with crazy kat cuz my stepdad (a cartoonist in his heart) had adored herriman all his life. of all the shit he collected, it was the crazy cat stuff that, for teenage me, resonated most immediately and intensely. i think that if you've spent any portion of your life putting pen to paper in hopes of stealing images from other planets, then you can't help but love what herriman did. has nothing to do with what's "cool to like" or whatever. sometimes people just love things, you know?

particularLY

monica youn book sounds intriguing. thanks for the tip MP, will look for it this afternoon...

I don't miss ethan a bit

xp

or momus

i interviewed youn for an article about a KK-related reading she was giving at my university several years ago. i remember nothing about what she was like on the phone (nice, i guess, otherwise i'd remember), but the poetry was decent.

weird I have been a Krazy Kat fan since I was a kid, have read tons of collections, seen photos of him, etc. and yet I had never realized before yesterday that he was black.

You've seen photos of a comic strip character?

he means George Herriman, the creator of Krazy Kat.

and it was in something famously shitty indie cartoonist Bill Watterson wrote that I first heard about Krazy Kat. Though I didn't get to read much of it until Ware and Fantagraphics reissued them, so thank god for indie comics i say.

Ah, okay. Now that I think of it, I remember reading an article about Herriman's racial identity... IIRC he was a light-skinned black man and was able to pass as white for most of his adult life.

(x-post)

[/Tuomas]

Michael Tisserand is working on a book about Herriman's race, which is a complex subject I gather. More here: http://dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2010/10/15/festival-of-cartoon-art-keynote-on-george-herriman/

Yeah, according to this article it didn't even become common knowledge his parents were "colored" until 1971:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3666365/Herriman-Cartoonist-who-equalled-Cervantes.html

weird I have been a Krazy Kat fan since I was a kid, have read tons of collections, seen photos of him, etc. and yet I had never realized before yesterday that he was black

After all these posts I figure out that you mean George Herriman was black. I thought you meant Krazy was. I just thought I'd whistle past that one. I mean, I was surprised you were this comfy out & out calling Krazy a "he"! Oh, me.

i know monica and heard a reading of that book with matmos performing
dunno if i can recommend the poetry? the music was awesome
i think herriman is generally thought of as mestizo or black depending on what point you're trying to make.

Herriman always seemed like a very mysterious guy to me. I knew he was Creole before this thread but I'm not sure where I learned that.

stonar

all that "tiger tea" i mean really

What else is good in the way that Krazy Kat is?

lionel fyninger's work?

ok...who is that?

I just want to say that I reread my Krazy Kat anthology book a couple months ago and I grew a new found appreciation for Herriman's works. The black and white era has some great art. It's still not a very funny strip (like how Tom & Jerry never had any real laughs for me) but it's a hell of a lot better than Tom and Jerry and much more creative

What else is good in the way that Krazy Kat is?

― Pizzataco Five (admrl), Thursday, September 1, 2011 4:47 PM (11 minutes ago)

I know there are dissenters on ilx, but Richard Thompson's "Cul de Sac".
http://www.gocomics.com/culdesac/

Martin Skidmore loved Krazy Kat, as he says above, and wrote a long and thoughtful piece on Herriman and Modernism late last year, at FA. There's things in it I wanted to argue about with him, a bit, but of course he became ill round about then, and somehow after that there was never the time :(

the last strip ran 70 years ago today. can't find it online, but if you've never seen it it's one of the eeriest and most poignant endings to any comic i've ever seen.

I've been slowly making my way through the Sundays chronologically over the past few years but I couldn't resist peeking at the last one and yeah, it's pretty damn eerie! Wish it was online...

Huh, that is pretty eerie/poignant -- kind of follows from the one the week before as well.

found it:

https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3229/2704014905_1fb85b89c1.jpg

of the available collections, what would be a good place for a Krazy Kat neophyte to begin?

Krazy and Ignatz 1916-1918 is a pretty good starting point imo.

This collection has a nice overview of his work. If you just want the comics, any of the collections from 1916 to 1924 or 1925 will be great, they tend to have his most expansive and experimental work, before the his pages got more standardized.

^^^ yeah that book is terrific. really you can't go wrong with any of the collections, but the earlier ones are best to start with -- the later color sunday pages are so stripped-down and succinct that they're almost opaque at times if you don't already know the characters and their relationships.

nb my post from this morning was made before I had any coffee so I totally forgot about that book, which was actually the first one I owned, too, and is a great starting point, probably better than a collection because there's a pretty good bio and tons of examples of his pre-KK stuff.

lovely, thanks for the recommendations!

If you just want the comics, any of the collections from 1916 to 1924 or 1925 will be great, they tend to have his most expansive and experimental work, before the his pages got more standardized.

working my way through these and they are so endlessly entertaining, love the Herbert Hoover jokes

new Herriman bio

http://www.nola.com/arts/index.ssf/2016/11/krazy_kat_herriman_tisserandne.html

remarkable thread here

During this time I want to offer you one of the purest expressions of grief and faith I've ever seen, which is a Krazy Kat comic by George Herriman. 1/7 pic.twitter.com/31NtwwWiIf

— Michael Tisserand (@m_tisserand) April 3, 2020