George Herriman, Creator of Krazy Kat: A Mind Bubble
George Herriman died on this day, the 25th of April, in 1944.
I’ve read that his creation Krazy Kat was likely more influential than popular. And that’s probably so. But he certainly had a fan base beyond other cartoonists. Me, for instance. I adored the strip. And in the years since Herriman’s death his recognition as a major figure in the advancement of the comic has become a critical tidal wave. Among the professionals he has an impressive following. Modern cartoonists from Charles Schulz to Art Spiegelman, Robert Crumb and Bill Patterson have all acknowledged his influence.
Herriman was a black Louisiana Creole born in New Orleans on the 22nd of August, 1880. At ten the family moved to Los Angeles. Right out of High School he went to work as an engraver and illustrator. He started publishing cartoons by 1901, quickly developing many of the themes we consider standard for comic strips. 
Herriman developed the character Krazy Kat in 1910 for the strip the Dingbat Family. Krazy was featured in a strip starting in 1913. Much of the storylines followed Ignatz Mouse throwing bricks at Krazy. Which Krazy would interpret as signs of Mouse’s love. Eventually Offisa Pupp enters the picture and there is something of a three way tug for affection. Interestingly, to me, anyway, Kat’s gender is never quite clear. Sometimes referred to as he and sometimes as she.
Unlike the fate for too many artists with limited followings, Herriman’s genius was recognized where it needed to be. The publisher William Randolph Hearst gave the artist a lifetime contract with his King Features Syndicate, guaranteeing him a living and freedom to do his work, even though he lack a significant popular following.
Among the small things I love about the Krazy Kat strips as a native Californian who also has lived in Arizona for some years was the backgrounds are filled with Southwestern and Mexican allusions, and in fact the strip takes place in a surrealistic Coconino county, which in our universe is the part of Arizona with Flagstaff. It doesn’t hurt for me that Herriman also illustrated Don Marquis’ Archy & Mehitabel.
Sadly in his lifetime he was ambiguous about his racial heritage, and largely “passed” for white. He was sometimes referred to as “the Greek.” But, as Wikipedia tells us “Sociologist Arthur Asa Berger made Herriman’s mixed-race heritage known in 1971. While researching for Herriman’s entry for the Dictionary of American Biography, Berger discovered the cartoonist’s race was listed as “colored” on his birth certificate obtained from the New Orleans Board of Health. The 1880 census for New Orleans listed his parents as “mulatto”.
For me this is important in that in our time and place it is critical that we acknowledge the contributions of people of African descent as such. They’ve been marginalized, abused, and demeaned for too long. Herriman’s decision to pass a sad example of the abuse that has shadowed African American lives to this day.
That Herriman was one of the creative geniuses at the dawn of our contemporary culture, someone in whose debt we all live, but had to mask this essential part of who he was, only makes this reality more poignant. While today, the 79th anniversary of his death, things are better, we’re a long way from where anything that looks like justice should be.
With all that, a pause. To recall the master…
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