The Illustrated Krazy

 
 
 

Four years ago, I made a promise, and I’m finally keeping it. 

In 2016, when I published Krazy: George Herriman, A Life in Black and White, I included an author’s note promising that all of Herriman’s works cited in the book would be featured online. This seemed especially important as many of those works have not been seen since first appearing in newspapers. And although Krazy includes numerous comics and photographs, there was no way to publish all of Herriman’s works nor publish full Krazy Kat strips at an appropriate size. 

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So finally, here it is: The Illustrated Krazy.

There are two ways to read The Illustrated Krazy. You can just browse the comics to get a taste of Herriman’s varied works through the years. Or you can use the images to follow along his biography. Arranged by chapter are all the comics I discuss in Krazy. If Krazy features a single panel to illustrate an idea in the text, The Illustrated Krazy now has the entire comic. Additionally, I’ve thrown in some of my own photos and copies of primary source documents, such as Herriman’s draft cards and the first pages of his will. I never get tired of looking at these documents and I hope you also enjoy them as well. 

Each chapter has a brief introduction to the images. Some of these images are very detailed, such as the glorious daily comics pages of William Hearst’s Evening Journal (which someday should be published as a book). To see the details in these and other images, you might wish to download the pages, depending on the platform you’re using. You also might have to do some work to match the comics with the biography. But Herriman didn’t make things easy for his readers, either.

I tried to select comics that aren’t readily available elsewhere. For example, I only chose a few examples from Herriman’s years at the Los Angeles Examiner, as historian Allan Holtz has done an incredible job posting and explicating this work on his blog (http://strippersguide.blogspot.com/). I included very few Sunday comics as those are widely available in recommended volumes from publishers such as Fantagraphics Books, Sunday Press Books, and Taschen. The LOAC Essentials series offers up three years of daily Baron Bean and one year (1934) of daily Krazy Kat reprints. All these books include essays and other contextual material, some of which I’ve been fortunate to contribute. 

My most difficult decision here concerned the history of Herriman’s minstrel, or blackface, comics, most of which he drew between 1900 and 1910. When I give readings and show Herriman’s works, I usually include these sparingly or not at all. In a relatively brief presentation, the immediate shock of seeing these images can overwhelm the conversation. I include them because the archive is necessary for any serious discussion about Herriman’s work. Beyond that, I believe that one of the wonders of Herriman’s legacy is how, more than any cartoonist at the time, he could take visual tropes originally designed to stereotype and diminish, and use them instead to critique and triumph. In Musical Mose, for example, Herriman walked both the color line and the tightrope between comedy and tragedy by transforming the common minstrel character “Mose” into a musician whose work was embraced until his audience saw his face. When you recall that Herriman drew these comics when he was a Black 21-year-old cartoonist trying to get a foothold in an all-White industry, it becomes hard not to see Musical Mose as an illustration of Herriman’s own fear of exposure, as well as a remarkably pointed commentary on people who allow their racism to interfere with life’s fleeting opportunities to experience art and pleasure.

The vast majority of Herriman’s minstrel comics are sports cartoons leading up to the racially explosive 1910 prizefight between the Black champion Jack Johnson and White challenger Jim Jeffries. In them, Herriman uses blackface comics with a shocking directness and candor. In a mainstream press, he openly mocks White fear and rage about a Johnson victory. For just one example, included here is a cartoon of Jack Johnson painting a “lily white” crown “royal black,” announcing in dialect that he is just like artist Charles Dana Gibson. At the time of that cartoon, the “Gibson Girl” was an icon for White feminine beauty. Johnson, meanwhile, was feared and hated by Whites not just for his athletic ability and keen intelligence, but also because he dated White women. Herriman, then, is crossing the era’s multiple color lines in one image. The original intent of minstrelsy to ridicule blackness is thwarted as Herriman imagines “taking power away from the narrative attached to the image,” in the words of comics scholar Rebecca Wanzo, writing in her 2020 book The Content of our Caricature: African American Comic Art and Political Belonging. 

Harvey Leake points out Herriman signatures in the Wetherill guest book to Dee Cox. Photo by Michael Tisserand.

Harvey Leake points out Herriman signatures in the Wetherill guest book to Dee Cox. Photo by Michael Tisserand.

Wanzo goes on: “Black caricature always deals in pain because historically it has been a way of inflicting injury. But in the hands of those interested in justice, it can be a manifestation of injury.” Such a manifestation is felt in Herriman’s Johnson-Jeffries cartoons, giving them even more power. Staged as Herriman’s version of a minstrel show, White panic and rage over a boxing match is ridiculous and pathetic. Like the Black minstrel performer Bert Williams, Herriman employs racist caricature as a tool against racism itself. These works can be appreciated even more when you consider their role in the creation of the transgressive, transcendent Krazy Kat. I further discuss race and identity in Herriman’s work in Krazy, in this essay, and in an upcoming Fantagraphics volume of Krazy Kat comics. I also strongly recommend Wanzo’s book as well as essays by Gabrielle Bellot and Chris Ware that are appended to the paperback edition of Krazy. 

Finally, I am indebted to the individuals and organizations who provided images for use in Krazy, among these the late Kim Thompson and Fantagraphics, Sunday Press Books, the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, Heritage Auctions, and Wetherill family historian Harvey Leake. I am especially indebted to Dinah “Dee” Cox, Herriman’s beloved granddaughter, who passed away this past year. I had the opportunity to join Dee on several adventures over my years of research, including an unforgettable evening visiting Herriman’s old house in the hills overlooking Hollywood, and I will always treasure our conversations. George Herriman could not have asked for a more sensitive custodian of his legacy, and The Illustrated Krazy is dedicated to her memory.