The other shared quality with these two was the use of landscapes as their narrator. Landscape could create perfect timing and really strong moods for both series. This resulted the themes to be taken into really strong situations where surrealistic and unpredictable events could get proper effects. What also helped was the language. Krazy Kat is one hugely underrated mythical poetry - an epic that should be lifted next upon such masters as Homer.
Ok, so why I am writing this now is that I just bought this a moment ago: Krazy & Ignatz 1919-1921: A Kind, Benevolent and Amiable Bric. It´s a collection of sunday pages ranging three year period of adventures of Krazy Kat and her (or is it his) arch rival and secretly loved one Ignatz mouse. This is now 8th album of Krazy stories I have. First three were Finnish translations (that are actually very well done, thanks to Soile & Heikki Kaukoranta whom have done great things for Finnish Comic culture by translating so many excellent works of art past 40 years) and the rest are recent English re-publications done by Fantagraphics.
Little something about the basic story line: Krazy Kat tells about the life at Kokonino Kounty located middle of Arizona desert and close by the Mexican border. The inhabitants of said kounty reflect early 20th century American life very precisely but always quite satirically. The main characters are Krazy Kat, who is a warm hearted and naive person strongly in love with Ignatz mouse, the cunning villain who hates Krazy and shows the hatred by throwing bricks to her noodle. The third party is offisa P. Pupp, a dog in the police force that admires Krazy and keeps pushing Ignatz into jail after forementioned brick tossing. These three form the triangular basis for most of the events but they get company from the varied group of essential and interesting side characters. The list is long but here is some of the most important fellows: Joe Stork, the purveyor of progeny to prince and proletariat, ms. Kwak Wakk who delivers rumours along the characters, Bum Bill Bee who comes and goes but is never on the way to nowhere, Walther Sephus Austridge, Kolin Kelly, the baker in bricks and so on... everyone have their own important role in the life in Kokonino and everyone interfere everyones life from time to time.
Here is two examples of 1922 Kat pages:
It´s important to realise that these represent only the early period of Krazy adventures. The works continued without break till middle of 1940´s, almost 40 years. George Herriman, the artist behind all this kept evolving the art and the style through out years and while most of the early works are black & white, the final years were coloured.
Krazy´s world is open for everything. It´s a surreal realm where modern inventions come and go and doesn´t leave a mark, but merely work for the purposes of the ever caring narrator. It´s wonderfull to notice the love of lifes mysterious things and surprising events that may or may not occur. There is always something strange going on. For example, the Mexican Jumping Bean, Willie Mendoza tries to conquest Kokonino from time to time and while mr Austridge may solve the problem by swallowing the intruder, the soon to be laid egg will cause havoc among the local justice system. Background changes basically in every picture that makes the world flexible for the plot to wander into territories that would otherwise be impossible to reach.
There is actually quite a lot of writings about Krazy Kat. These new publications include very well written research about various issues of the comics history and other such things. These include the racial issue of Herrimans heritage, the love of the Mexican life and Indian culture, the problems with the original publisher and their news papers that thought Krazy was too complicated series to most of the American papers (it was Hearst that published the comic and Randolph Hearst was the person who quaranteed Krazy Kats succes by forcing the papers to include it to their pages), tha other cultural phenomenas that followed (i.e. the Jazz Pantomime, etc.) and so on... I highly recommend to read these trough!
I also recommend the Fantagraphs publications for anyone who sometimes wants to indulge themselves with intelligent stories of mindbending graphics! These are extremely well made with much much love and time sacricficed!
