The premise is deceptively simple: a black cat loves a cunning white mouse who constantly throws bricks at the cat’s head, while the dog policeman Offissa Pupp — secretly in love with the cat himself — tries to prevent it all. Krazy Kat, George Herriman’s legendary newspaper strip published from 1913 until his death in 1944, endlessly reinvented this scenario with such wit and originality that the young medium of comics gained admirers from circles not usually associated with comic art. Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, James Joyce, President Woodrow Wilson, Jackson Pollock, Charlie Chaplin, Frank Capra, P. G. Wodehouse, and Willem de Kooning were all outspoken admirers of Krazy Kat.

That these absurd and melancholic variations on unrequited love were allowed to continue for so many years was due largely to media tycoon William Randolph Hearst, himself a devoted fan, who granted Herriman complete creative freedom in his newspapers. Herriman used that freedom without restraint, radically expanding the possibilities of the comic medium, breaking formal conventions, and confronting readers with surreal, dada-like settings and a language that blended slang, neologisms, phonetic spellings, obscure references, and literary allusions. At the same time, the strip deliberately blurred gender roles, making Krazy Kat arguably the first gender-fluid star in the history of comics.

This volume collects all of the Krazy Kat color stories from 1935 to 1944 and includes an extensive introduction by comics historian Alexander Braun, who examines Herriman’s multiethnic background and explores the enduring originality of this timeless Gesamtkunstwerk centered around a queer cartoon cat.

DETAILS • Author: George Herriman • Publisher: Taschen • Format: Hardcover