Krazy and Ignatz 1943-1944 covers the last two years of Herriman's masterpiece. With this volume, Fantagraphics and its precursor Eclipse will have reprinted the entire 29-year run of the Krazy Kat Sundays! Like Charles Schulz, George Herriman was a cartoonist to the very end. Aside from collecting the last masterful year and a half of "Krazy Kat," this new volume will offer a retrospective look at Herriman's life at the drawing table, offering many never before seen samples of his original art (which the cartoonist often lovingly hand-colored for friends). Gathered from many scattered collections, these pages testify to Herriman's invererate passion for drawing. Rounding out the volume are scores of Krazy Kat daily strips also from Herriman's last years, further testament to the cartoonists vitality. Series editor and veteran comics historian, Bill Blackbeard, also provides a concluding, wide-ranging essay on the life and art of Herriman. More than a simple reprint collection, Krazy and Ignatz 1943-1944 portrays the full range of a cartoonist who remained an artist all his life.
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Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
The lavish reprinting of Krazy Kat Sunday color installments reaches the end of the strip’s three-decade run (further volumes will corral early, uncollected black-and-white examples). Herriman’s health had long been declining, but only the last few weeks of Krazy Kat show any diminution of his skill. If the final Sundays show a slight visual simplification of characters and backgrounds, the exquisite design and clever wordplay remain sharp as ever. When Herriman died of nonalcoholic cirrhosis in 1944, Krazy Kat ended, too. The syndicate wisely saw that the brilliantly unorthodox cartoonist was irreplaceable. --Gordon Flagg
Review
“Don't read Krazy Kat because it's good for you. Read it because it is you, an American being, immigrant-infused, with a light-hearted sense of infinite promise. Herriman's art, word and line, is so damn deep, so damn wonderful and so damnably us.” (Laurel Maury - Los Angeles Times )
“Endlessly perplexing, energetic, deep, and playful.” (Sarah Boxer - New York Review of Books )
“A testament to the creative power of the comic book form.” (Tony Brownfield - Newsarama )
“The exquisite design and clever wordplay remain sharp as ever.” (Gordon Flagg - Booklist )
“In truth, nothing less needs to be propped up on the ivory stilts of 'fine art' than Krazy Kat. On a daily basis, in a medium designed to provide simple diversion, Herriman went about his business unpretentiously, seemingly effortlessly, leaving an American masterpiece in his wake.” (San Francisco Chronicle )
“Herriman's panels convey an irrepressible sense of movement and incorporate distinctly surreal touches, such as the thronged mushrooms that 'rise to feast in florid fungushood,' blooming like umbrellas under a cheese-slice moon.” (The New Yorker )
“This beautifully produced series is a must for any reader interested in great art.” (Publishers Weekly )
“One of the very great artists, in any medium, of the 20th century.” (Michael Chabon, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay )
“Language, as deployed by Krazy, is a fluid and fantastic thing, a patois from a people of one…it has a poetical allure and a cadence all its own. The art, rendered in scratchy quill and ink, was endearingly personal…many of his arrangements retain their innovative delight until today…Thus the world is set for a world of fantasy and elastic language. And despite its unvarying central theme, Krazy Kat has a freshness of cartooning and language to it, one that was held to for the entirety of its thirty-year run. This, as any storyteller will readily admit, is nothing short of miraculous.” (David Mathews - The New Indian Express )
“Endlessly perplexing, energetic, deep, and playful.” (Sarah Boxer - New York Review of Books )
“A testament to the creative power of the comic book form.” (Tony Brownfield - Newsarama )
“The exquisite design and clever wordplay remain sharp as ever.” (Gordon Flagg - Booklist )
“In truth, nothing less needs to be propped up on the ivory stilts of 'fine art' than Krazy Kat. On a daily basis, in a medium designed to provide simple diversion, Herriman went about his business unpretentiously, seemingly effortlessly, leaving an American masterpiece in his wake.” (San Francisco Chronicle )
“Herriman's panels convey an irrepressible sense of movement and incorporate distinctly surreal touches, such as the thronged mushrooms that 'rise to feast in florid fungushood,' blooming like umbrellas under a cheese-slice moon.” (The New Yorker )
“This beautifully produced series is a must for any reader interested in great art.” (Publishers Weekly )
“One of the very great artists, in any medium, of the 20th century.” (Michael Chabon, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay )
“Language, as deployed by Krazy, is a fluid and fantastic thing, a patois from a people of one…it has a poetical allure and a cadence all its own. The art, rendered in scratchy quill and ink, was endearingly personal…many of his arrangements retain their innovative delight until today…Thus the world is set for a world of fantasy and elastic language. And despite its unvarying central theme, Krazy Kat has a freshness of cartooning and language to it, one that was held to for the entirety of its thirty-year run. This, as any storyteller will readily admit, is nothing short of miraculous.” (David Mathews - The New Indian Express )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Resolution of a Long Sonorous Cadence...,
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This review is from: Krazy and Ignatz, 1943-1944: "He Nods in Quiescent Siesta" (Krazy Kat) (Paperback)
Let's recap this heroic tale, shall we?
Way back in the now rather crusty year of 1988, an obscure publisher called Eclipse grasped the reins of a Quixotic quest. They set out, sans astrolabe and almost no backwind, to publish all of George Herriman's illustrious eye candy know to komic fanatics as "The Krazy Kat Sunday Pages." That first slim volume contained some trepidation in its accompanying essays: "...the problems of establishing a complete run of Sunday Krazy pages can prove to be a real nightmare for any enterprising archivist... no Hearst newspaper archive offers the student a complete record of Herriman's achievement." So, busier than Bum Bill Bee, the editors and archivists set out to spackle the gaping holes in the primary sources. They dubbed this series, thankfully spelled korrectly, "The Komplete Kat Komics." Culling from multifarious sources, they managed to release nine volumes, stretching from 1916 to 1924, of rich tapestries of lost history. Intriguing titles such as "The Limbo Of Useless Unconsciousness," "Sure As Moons Is Cheese," and "Inna Yott On the Muddy Geranium" graced each issue. Sadly, the vicissitudes of publishing, the free market, and the costs of undertaking such an epic journey took their toll. In 1992 Eclipse published their last volume, unbeknownst to readers that it was the last. Oh, tribulation! These pencil thin books instantly became collectors items, sometimes fetching three figures for a single volume. The quest seemed at a dusty and humiliating end. Ten years passed. [fill in with appropriate memories of Krazy Kat gap anguish] Then, just as all hope coagulated, the year 2002 arrived with a fog-cutting beacon: Fantagraphics, the magnanimous king of classic comics, announced the exhumation of the Krazy Kat Sunday Series. Aptly titled "There is a Heppy Land, Fur Fur Awa-a-ay," this volume picked up right where Eclipse dropped off. The difference: these volumes had twice the thickage. Two years of Sunday pages were packed into these colorful bales of manna rather than one. This heppy land presented 1925-1926 along with essays and the triumphant return of editor Bill Blackbeard, who was also present at the christening of the Eclipse series. As joy permeated the streets, Fantagraphics bravely steered this series through financial problems, research snafus and the additional burden of color, excuse me, kolor, beginning in 2005 with the 1935-1936 volume. Tasty tidbits such as intriguing essays, Herriman art, and even the occasional daily strip permeated the installments. But the nagging question lingered: would they make it to the end? Would Fantagraphics fall into the same pit as Eclipse? Drama is as drama does. With this latest release a resounding YES! echoes off the valleys of Coconino County. Finally, some twenty years later a complete run of the beautifully beguiling Krazy Kat Sunday pages has popped into existence. Those who possess all volumes possess everything Sunday from 1916 - 1944. Krazy. They did it. Yay! But of course when the fanfare dies out and the joy-inebriated crowd disperses, humbling finitude descends. Though the series is happily complete the series is also sadly complete. No more new volumes await drooling Krazy Kat fanatics. The polymorphous nature of reality strikes again! On an equally sad note, this wonderful volume also shows Herriman's melancholy decline. Bad health plagued his final years and his penlines and storylines manifest his suffering as 1944 unfurls. The final pages of June 1944 have a creepy, oblique, and ominous tone. Unlike the equally acclaimed Peanuts gang, the group at Coconino County never said goodbye. Herriman passed from this world with strips still unfinished on his drawing board (included in this issue's first section along with an essay on his final years). Nonetheless, these years still contain some great unmissable material that's up to the usual snuff, though the brick beaning had become largely suggestive by this point. Plus, this volume burgeons with additional material: handpainted strips, photos, a foldout page, Walt Disney's letter of condolence to Herriman's daughter, and a final epitaph. Fantagraphics has showed great kindness to Krazy Kat fans worldwide. They have given this strip, one of the greatest of all strips, the attention and wide release it has always deserved. Poetic justice, too. Krazy Kat was widely neglected in its later years as Hearst editors tried to extinguish it from their paper's pages. Those editors would likely be shocked at the illustriousness of this twenty year series and the fortitude shown in reprinting the strip so many of them derided. In the end, the challenge was met. It is accomplished. Now to end on a happier note. Perhaps things are not at an end. This volume reiterates the promise made back in 2002 of reprinting the Eclipse series. This will apparently happen in "three fat volumes." Plus, suggestions of daily strip reprints and volumes of Herriman's other work waft in the introduction by Bill Blackbeard. Hope remains. Keep watch, and celebrate this, the resolution of a long sonorous cadence.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Finally, the last volume (sort of) in this long series.,
By Michael R. Brown (Tamarac, FL) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Krazy and Ignatz, 1943-1944: "He Nods in Quiescent Siesta" (Krazy Kat) (Paperback)
Long being a fan of Krazy Kat, but there being no comprehensive collection of the strips (sundays or dailies), I was happy many years ago when Eclipse started to reprint all the sundays.
Then they went belly up, after only 5 volumes (which I have). Thankfully, a few years ago, Fantagraphics took up the mantle, this time with larger and more elaboratly design volumes, twice the size as Eclipse. They didn't bother to reprint the stuff Eclipse had done (promising to do those later), and started into the rest. With this volume, they've finally completed the last of the KK Sundays. But in some cases, it should not be the last. They've promised to go back and re-publish the stuff in those early Eclipse volumes in 3 new ones in this series (which I look forward too!), AND reprint what dailies are out there. The dailies are an unknown area for me. I'm uncertain how long they lasted, and I understand they are incomplete out there. There have been a few reprint volumes of them, but I always avoided them, wanted a more comprehensive collection. I hope we get that, but I have no idea how the one daily collection Fantagraphics has done so far will fit into that. PLUS, Fantagraphics plans to reprint all of Herriman's other strips, which also have seen reprints in only bit or pieces, or in lesser known collections. What fun!!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Mystique of George Herriman,
This review is from: Krazy and Ignatz, 1943-1944: "He Nods in Quiescent Siesta" (Krazy Kat) (Paperback)
It just doesn't get better than this in the history of cartooning. When I was a kid, Krazy Kat was a mystery to me but a highly appreciated one. I mean, a Kat in love with a mouse that in every strip beans her with a brick? Wow, how weird is that?
This is the final edition of GH's Sunday strips, with information on the end of his life. Fabulous colors, whimsical and unique fractured language that was one of GH's trademarks and the astoundingly creative and eye-catching layouts of the strips, make this book a keeper. I just wish it was hardcover. I suspect that eventually a compendium of the Sunday strip books will be issued, as was done with the dailies a few years back.
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