HERRIMAN, GEORGE 1880-1944

Comic strip artist

One of the Greats

Born to French-Creole parents in New Orleans, George Herriman grew up in the rich culture of the southern bayous. A lifelong animal lover and vegetarian, his comic strips usually featured talking animals. He began cartooning in 1901, and when "Krazy Kat" became an independent strip in 1913, he created one of the most enduring characters of the century. Herriman was the most celebrated, and in many people's minds the greatest, comic strip artist of his time.

Crusades

Herriman's characters often went on quixotic crusades, following their plans at the expense and ruin of everyone around them. From 1904 to 1910 he drew a strip for the New World called "Major Ozone's Fresh Air Crusade." In 1909 and 1910 he played with another called "Gooseberry Sprig." It featured talking animals, off-center plots, and barely sketched settings. In 1910 he began drawing "The Dingbat Family" for the New York Evening Journal. It included a substrip or parallel story that unfolded along the bottom with smaller characters making comic commentary. Krazy Kat began in the substrip of "The Dingbat Family."

A Wise Fool

The Kat spoke in obtuse near nonsense. He turned imbecillc phrases based on his own skewed logic. His nemesis was usually a mouse, and someone usually ended up with a rock or a brick to the head. Connoisseurs dubbed it a more "literate" version of Bud Fisher's "Mutt and Jeff" strip, where a confidence man always has his plans foiled by his nincompoop sidekick. Krazy Kat grew steadily more philosophical as the strip matured.

Cabinet Meetings

In 1916 William Randolph Hearst gave "Krazy Kat" a full page in his Sunday papers, but not in the comic section. He built a new section, a sophisticated arts supplement called "City Life," around it. President Woodrow Wilson took such delight in "Krazy Kat" that he read it to cabinet meetings. Herriman drew many other strips simultaneously, but none lasted as long or drew as much praise as "Krazy Kat." In 1927 Krazy Kat's most enduring adversary, Ignatz Mouse, came to life from a prehistoric cave painting. Herriman died in 1944 at the age of sixty-four.

Sources:

Arthur Asa Berger, The Comic-Stripped American: What Dick Tracy, Biondie, Daddy Warbucks and Charlie Brown Tell Us About Ourselves (New York: Walker, 1973);

Richard Marschall, America's Great Comic-Strip Artists (New York: Abbeville Press, 1989).