Customer Reviews

The Kat Who Walked In Beauty: The Panoramic Dailies of 1920 (Krazy & Ignatz)

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Often the unexpected makes life worth living. Day by day, we roll along acquiescing in the eternal routine that inexorably mashes down time like a rolling pin over muffin dough. Then suddenly a protrusion. Wham! Something interrupts the seemingly unimpediable passage of the inevitable. Pull back the dough. A diamond. A multi-karatted glittering sparkler. Endorphins rush to pleasure centers. Eyes bulge. Tongue wags. Hopefully a full stomach maintains consciousness. If not, then plop and give in to the ecstasy. Such an event doesn't occur often. Something from nowhere has disrupted harsh workaday realities. Hope! Meaning! Such startling events probably filled the lives of Krazy Kat Konnoiseurs the nanosecond their retinas processed this sumptuous delectable volume of Golden Fleece daily strips. And who can blame them? This enormous hardcover coffee table sized miracle delights with every page. And who knew? Fantagraphics spread no rumors about printing dailies, perhaps to keep fans from vaporizing into submissive joy. The cover itself is an aesthetic wonder well worth a few million eye scans. But the strips inside, laid out like billboards two to a page, emblazoned almost in original size, might make some feel like they didn't pay enough for this shock to the system.

Krazy Kat dailies of any kind remain elusive. A few sparse collections exist compliments of Stinging Monkey (who apparently have more installments planned) and Pacific Comics club. Fans of George Herriman's Kat can hope with collective ferocious zeal that this volume presages infinite follow-ups.

Though the subtitle of this collection, stamped across the cover marquee-style, reads "The Panoramic Dailies of 1920," the strips actually date from 1911 to 1921. Three sections trisect the book: "The Emancipated Kat" includes early strips from subterranean Dingbat-era excursions. These reveal a very different Kat and mouse than later evolutions. "The Liberated Kat" jumps to 1914 when Krazy received the blessing of a solo strip extricated from "The Family Upstairs. Basement no more. I am Kat, hear me roar. These pun-filled often self-referential strips display the development of Herriman's new favorite characters. The final section of strips, "Flights of Fanciful Freedom," dives right into the panoramic strips advertised up front. They represent comic eye candy of the highest order. As luscious as the Sundays, only smaller, they reveal the strip in almost full stride. Surrealism and off-frame references abound. Among the works is the much discussed "Poor poor Injin" strip from May 24, 1920. Once again puns and linguistic peregrinations emanate from the text. Ignatz's ubiquitous brick appears with stunning and symbolic frequency. Offisa Pupp and his jail have not yet become mainstays, as they did in the 1930s and 1940s, but themes point in that direction. The quality never staggers. Krazy Kat's reputation heightens with each flop of the sometimes unwieldy pages (prepare ample space for gazing). And if that wasn't enough, a final section reprints the masterful 1922 program of the Krazy Kat jazz pantomime. Given vast space, Herriman's artwork reveals all its subtle beauty and charm. Prepare to be overwhelmed.

So did "The Kat Who Walked in Beauty" interrupt Fantagraphics's ongoing printing of the Krazy Kat Sunday pages? If so, it was worth it. To have numerous dailies spread out like gorgeous landscapes begging for repeated visits will cull any drooling anticipations for Sundays. Let's hope Fantagraphics plans more volumes of amazing Krazy Kat daily strips.

This large format book provides Krazy Kat dailies in nearly newspaper size print. After buying the Fantagraphics sunday series that are available it is interesting to view and read these larger format cartoons. The larger size adds an additional "dimension" that you don't get from the smaller format books. The majority of the book is derived from the series published over 9 months in 1920 with smaller sections from very early days. This is a different Kat than the Krazy Kat of 1920 and later but it helps to show how the cartoon character evolved. Reading this makes me hope Fantagraphics continues to put out more.

This is a wonderfully designed news strip reprint book - hefty, formidable, aesthetically pleasing in every regard. I've been a Krazy Kat fan for many, many years, and I couldn't be happier with this purchase. (Joe Sixpack, ReadThatAgain)

If you know Krazy Kat by reputation only, this handsome collection of daily strips from 1920 and 21 (with a few earlier examples tossed in for good measure) is not the place to start. It finds George Herriman the writer in something of a rut, with less of the wit and fancy common in his Sunday pages. Too often a strip will center on kat's confusion over some everyday phrase - "taking a bath" involves walking off with a tub of water; the sort of boilerplate gag that many lesser artists built their careers on. These installments often end with mouse throwing brick as punishment for kat's stupidity, rather than as sheer contempt for authority as embodied by kop, whose almost complete absence from these examples is sorely felt.

I'd be tempted to think Herriman regarded these dailies as toss-offs, except that visually, they certainly aren't. Maybe he just couldn't bring himself to phone in the artwork. If you are a commited kat lover, of course you will have to get this.

An interesting sidelight is the appearance of a few 1920 strips commenting on Prohibition, which began that year and was apparently none too popular with the animal citizens.

This splendid, wide-format book displays krazy kat in all its glory. Krazy kat is such a great, classic comic, and it's wonderful to see it back in print. This book in particular highlights Herriman's gorgeous landscapes and quirky art. Even as a young person who never saw Krazy Kat in the daily papers, I love the comic for the art, the lovable characters, and even for its old-fashioned-ness. The strip never tried too hard for lame gags, and even if there wasn't much "action," in a modern sense, I still laugh at the antics of Krazy, Ignatz, and Offisa Pup. Herriman's lovely and masterful work merits rediscovery today, after so many decades- it is still a wonderful comic.

Fast, hassle free purchase. Deserves 6 stars, at least. Classic comic strip reprints in a georgous book. Delightful.
-Richard