{"id":49033,"date":"2016-09-09T19:56:40","date_gmt":"2016-09-09T19:56:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=49033"},"modified":"2016-09-09T19:56:40","modified_gmt":"2016-09-09T19:56:40","slug":"herriman-cartoonist-who-equalled-cervantes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=49033","title":{"rendered":"Herriman: Cartoonist who equalled Cervantes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Herriman: Cartoonist who equalled Cervantes<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Telegraph<\/a>
\n2007-07-07<\/p>\n

Sarah Boxer<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Sarah Boxer marvels at the world of George Herriman, the creator of the ludicrously imaginative comic strip Krazy Kat<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

We call him \u201cCat,\u201d We call him \u201cCrazy\u201d yet is he neither. \u2013 George Herriman<\/a> on the title character of Krazy Kat<\/a><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is no comic strip simpler, on the face of it, than Krazy Kat<\/em><\/a>. In its 31-year run (from 1913 to 1944) the plot never changed much. Ignatz Mouse<\/a>, sadist supreme, aims to bean the beribboned<\/a> Krazy Kat, soulful innocent, with a brick, and usually succeeds. Krazy Kat<\/em> takes the brick, even seeks it out, as a missile of love. And Krazy\u2019s secret admirer, the police dog Offissa Bull Pupp<\/a>, throws the errant mouse in jail. All\u2019s well.<\/p>\n

Yet despite the repetition, Krazy Kat<\/em> is endlessly perplexing, energetic, deep and playful.<\/p>\n

In Krazy Kat<\/em>, George Herriman<\/a> made everything indeterminate. He set the strip among the rocky outcroppings of Monument Valley<\/a>, opening up the funnies to vast, abstract spaces. (Yes, he beat John Ford<\/a> there.) He made the trees, rocks and moons shift shape from frame to frame for no apparent reason. His free-floating page design, with its mad array of wheels, zigzags and frames within frames, kept changing…<\/p>\n

…In 1971, however, the Krazy world changed. While researching an article on Herriman for the Dictionary of American Biography<\/em>, the sociologist Arthur Asa Berger<\/a> got a copy of Herriman\u2019s birth certificate. Although Herriman died Caucasian, in Los Angeles<\/a> in 1944, the very same George Herriman, the son of two mulatto<\/a> parents, was born \u201ccolored\u201d in New Orleans<\/a> in 1880…<\/p>\n

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

Herriman: Cartoonist who equalled Cervantes The Telegraph 2007-07-07 Sarah Boxer Sarah Boxer marvels at the world of George Herriman, the creator of the ludicrously imaginative comic strip Krazy Kat We call him \u201cCat,\u201d We call him \u201cCrazy\u201d yet is he neither. \u2013 George Herriman on the title character of Krazy Kat There is no comic […]<\/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":[24945,9929,9930,24946],"class_list":["post-49033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-arthur-asa-berger","tag-george-herriman","tag-krazy-kat","tag-sarah-boxer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49033","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=49033"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49034,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49033\/revisions\/49034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}