{"id":53086,"date":"2017-03-30T01:48:02","date_gmt":"2017-03-30T01:48:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=53086"},"modified":"2017-03-30T01:48:02","modified_gmt":"2017-03-30T01:48:02","slug":"krazy-george-herriman-a-life-in-black-and-white-by-michael-tisserand-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=53086","title":{"rendered":"Krazy: George Herriman, A Life in Black and White by Michael Tisserand (review)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Krazy: George Herriman, A Life in Black and White<\/strong> by Michael Tisserand (review)<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society<\/a>
\nVolume 1, Issue 1, Spring 2017<\/a>
\npages 117-120<\/p>\n

Christopher Jeansonne<\/strong><\/a>, University Fellow, Graduate Teaching Associate
\nDepartment of Arts Administration, Education and Policy
\nOhio State University<\/em><\/p>\n

Michael Tisserand, <\/strong>Krazy: George Herriman, A Life in Black and White<\/a>. <\/strong><\/em>Harper, 2016. 550 pp, $35.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Michael Tisserand\u2019s<\/a> Krazy: George Herriman, a Life in Black and White<\/em><\/a>, a work of passion and sagacity, not only gives a comprehensive overview of Herriman\u2019s<\/a> oeuvre but insightfully situates it in personal and socio-cultural context. Krazy Kat<\/em><\/a> is perhaps one of the most lauded newspaper comic strips of all time, and yet this is the first book-length biography of its creator. Nine years in the making, Tisserand\u2019s book has been much anticipated by scholars and fans of the artist. As suggested by the double meaning of the title, Tisserand argues that an awareness of Herriman\u2019s complex racial background is central to reading both Herriman\u2019s life and his work. Herriman was listed as \u201ccol.\u201d (or \u201ccolored\u201d) on his New Orleans<\/a> birth certificate and \u201cCaucasian\u201d on his California<\/a> death certificate\u2014and these two arbitrary classifications form the frame to Tisserand\u2019s study.<\/p>\n

Tisserand\u2019s prose has a lively clarity learned from a career working extensively as a journalist, and this comprehensive biography will certainly be sought out by both academic and lay audiences interested in newspaper comics, or comics in general. As an exhaustive historical account of Herriman\u2019s life, it will be an indispensable resource for scholars working in sequential art; thanks to Tisserand\u2019s meticulous research, even those deeply familiar with Krazy Kat<\/em> will cull new insights from the details he has unearthed. Perhaps most importantly, this comprehensive and nuanced account of Herriman\u2019s life and work in parallel in a single volume reveals new depths to the \u201ckomplexities\u201d of the Krazy Kat<\/em> with whose challenges many of us thought we had already grappled.<\/p>\n

Part 1, \u201cWatta Woil,\u201d opens with an account of the posthumous uncovering of Herriman\u2019s ambiguous racial heritage by scholars in the 1970s, and the debates that ensued: How reliable was this information? To what degree was Herriman aware of his racially mixed background? What is the relevance of racial identity for understanding Herriman\u2019s work? Tisserand ends the opening chapter with a question that resonates throughout the rest of the book: \u201cDid this revelation, whatever it was, find its way into his wondrous comics? Is it a source of the wonder?\u201d Tisserand then describes in detail the complicated web of Herriman\u2019s mixed-race ancestry and the challenges his ancestors faced during the post-Civil War<\/a> and Jim Crow<\/a> eras; some of the most powerful moments in this section are provided by the concrete, personal, and tragic features of the racist and reactionary post-slavery Deep South<\/a>. These challenges finally led to his parents\u2019 decision to move to California and pass as white<\/a>. Throughout the remainder of Part 1, we follow Herriman\u2019s early life and schooling, and his budding interest in a life of drawing comics\u2014opportunities, Tisserand notes, that he may not have had as a \u201ccolored\u201d youth in the New Orleans of the time.<\/p>\n

Part 2, \u201cThe Greek,\u201d traces Herriman\u2019s development as a professional cartoonist. For many hectic years he lived like a bi-coastal yo-yo, moving from Los Angeles<\/a> to New York<\/a> and back again as he switched jobs from newspaper to newspaper. He worked in the macho world of first-generation newspaper comics, with cartooning greats such as Tad Dorgan<\/a> and Jimmy Swinnerton<\/a>, building a name for himself with his inventive sports and political comics even as he struggled to find an audience for his numerous daily strip comic ideas. In this period Herriman\u2019s work became increasingly concerned with social pretense, language, and mistaken or fluid identities, and central motifs such as minstrelsy began to take hold. While careful to note that \u201cat times his comics did not rise above the ugly stereotypes of the day,\u201d Tisserand also provides insightful readings of the ways Herriman was already challenging racism and complicating notions of racial identity even in his early comics (188). Particularly memorable are Tisserand\u2019s passages on the \u201cimpussanations\u201d from Herriman\u2019s short-lived Musical Mose strip (in which a black musician poses as a Scotsman), and his cartoon coverage of interracial boxing matches, most notably…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Tisserand\u2019s Krazy: George Herriman, a Life in Black and White, a work of passion and sagacity, not only gives a comprehensive overview of Herriman\u2019s oeuvre but insightfully situates it in personal and socio-cultural context. Krazy Kat is perhaps one of the most lauded newspaper comic strips of all time, and yet this is the first book-length biography of its creator.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,1245,5,459,8,6462,20],"tags":[26718,9929,26720,26719,9930,25524],"class_list":["post-53086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-biography","category-book-reviews","category-history","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-christopher-jeansonne","tag-george-herriman","tag-inks","tag-inks-the-journal-of-the-comics-studies-society","tag-krazy-kat","tag-michael-tisserand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53086","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=53086"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53087,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53086\/revisions\/53087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}