{"id":21142,"date":"2012-03-06T02:17:57","date_gmt":"2012-03-06T02:17:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=21142"},"modified":"2016-09-09T18:06:27","modified_gmt":"2016-09-09T18:06:27","slug":"symphony-in-black-and-white-krazy-kat-kontinued","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=21142","title":{"rendered":"Symphony in Black and White: Krazy Kat Kontinued"},"content":{"rendered":"

Symphony in Black and White: Krazy Kat Kontinued<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Albany Times-Union<\/a>
\nAlbany, New York
\n2008-11-20<\/p>\n

Alexander Stern<\/strong><\/p>\n

Don\u2019t Touch My Comics: The Times Union Comics Panel takes a critical look at the funny pages.<\/em><\/p>\n

Some months ago, I wrote an appreciation of George Herriman\u2019s<\/a> classic strip, Krazy Kat<\/a><\/em>; a strip frequently lauded as one of the greatest achievements in the comics medium. Omitted from that article\u2014whether by design or by accident\u2014was a biographical detail that has become increasingly controversial in recent years. It concerns George Herriman\u2019s racial background. While some might argue that such considerations should be irrelevent in art, it seems particularly pertinent in this specific time and place: It seems only fitting to note\u2014here, in the year 2008\u2014when a man with African heritage has just been elected to the highest office in the land\u2014that Krazy Kat<\/em> (arguably the greatest American comic strip) was authored by a man with a similar background. It is significant to note, however, that while the world celebrates the election and the history of Barack Obama<\/a>, the world was never told the history of George Herriman during the artist\u2019s lifetime.<\/p>\n

Throughout his life, Herriman\u2019s racial and ethnic background remained shrouded in mystery. His collegues weren\u2019t sure exactly what the olive-complexioned Herriman was. Some of his friends and fellow cartoonists began referring to Herriman as \u201cthe Greek.\u201d \u201dI didn\u2019t know what he was, so I named him the Greek,\u201d recalls cartoonist Tad Dorgan<\/a> in Jeet Heer\u2019s<\/a> essay \u201cThe Kolors of Krazy Kat,\u201d the introduction to A Wild Warmth of Chromatic Gravy \u2013 The Complete Full-Page Krazy and Ignatz: 1935-36 <\/em>(published by Fantagraphics Books in 2005). Much was also made during Herriman\u2019s life of his devotion to hats. Dorgan again: \u201dLike Chaplin<\/a> with his cane, [Herriman] is never without his skimmer. [Cartoonist Harry] Hirshfeld says that he sleeps in it.\u201d Indeed, Herriman was seldom photographed bare-headed. Some of his contemporaries claimed that Herriman \u201chad a growth on the back of his skull. He referred to it as a \u2018wen\u2019 and was embarassed to expose it in public.\u201d On the other hand, those candid photos that exist of a hatless Herriman reveal a man with short wavy hair. Herriman himself referred to his hair as \u201ckinky.\u201d Was his refusal to be publicly seen without a hat part of a concious desire for Herriman to \u201cpass<\/a>\u201d for white?…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Symphony in Black and White: Krazy Kat Kontinued The Albany Times-Union Albany, New York 2008-11-20 Alexander Stern Don\u2019t Touch My Comics: The Times Union Comics Panel takes a critical look at the funny pages. Some months ago, I wrote an appreciation of George Herriman\u2019s classic strip, Krazy Kat; a strip frequently lauded as one of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,1196,8,6462,20],"tags":[9934,9929,9930,9933],"class_list":["post-21142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-albany-times-union","tag-george-herriman","tag-krazy-kat","tag-the-albany-times-union"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21142"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49018,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21142\/revisions\/49018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}