Customer Reviews

Krazy & Ignatz In Tiger Tea

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

A wonderful little book containing about 90 daily strips of Krazy Kat's mystical quest for "Tiger Tea" inevitably leading to the unanswerable question: Was Tiger Tea alcohol, marijuana, or something even more powerful? The strips are reproduced one per page of about 8 by 7 inches, perhaps the largest reproductions of these daily cartoons, enabling the reader to appreciate the details of Herriman's exquisite drawing style.

The book itself is beautifully designed and manufactured, with a printed hardcover, and with enlarged single panels on the endpapers and on several preliminary pages, some of which have added color highlights or backgrounds. There also is a wonderful photograph of Herriman wearing a Mexican sombrero, holding a hand rolled cigarette, with a look that is purely enigmatic. The book will make a wonderful gift, especially for those new to the world of Krazy Kat, and at a list price of $12.99 (even less on line), is a true bargain. (How can they make any money at that price?)

The primary criticism I have is that the book does not expressly inform the reader that it contains only a portion of all the daily strips comprising Krazy Kat's Tiger Tea adventure. According to the printed text, Krazy was on his quest for TT from May 15, 1936 through March 17, 1937, so there should be about 255-260 daily strips (excluding Sundays which were independent and did not follow the daily story line). From this one can deduce that the strips reproduced are only a "selection", yet there is no statement on the title page or cover of this fact. There is absolutely nothing wrong with reproducing a sample of the strips (which will whet the desire of readers for the complete series), but the fact that the book is not complete should be made clear to the reader. I mistakenly assumed it contained the entire series.

A few other minor points: Paul Krassner's (an odd choice here) introduction includes a gratuitious swipe at Obama, something completely irrelevant to Herriman's inscrutable work of timeless beauty and jarringly out of place here. Both printed introductions are double spaced and reproduce a little image of Krazy above the text each time he is mentioned, an unnecessary affectation that interferes with readability. Also, although a number of Sunday cartoons involving catnip are included, it is not explained that those originate from other decades and are not part of the Tiger Tea saga.

Finally, the book is printed on a fancy stock resembling hand made paper and containing irregular inclusions in the paper. This makes the book a lovely object, but it also results in a dusty or dirty background for the cartoons, to which purists might with some justification object. It does detract a little from any photocopies one might make to post on one's wall.

If you're still thirsty for Tea after finishing this book, it's because it is not complete. Containing 91 days worth of the Tiger Tea storyline, there is a great deal of work left to be desired. This book also contains two introductions, one by Craig Yoe and one by Paul Krassner. Both introductions contain no information that has not been printed many times before in other Krazy collections or on wikipedia for that matter. Yes, it's better than nothing, but not much more than nothing (over half the story is absent, sometimes entire months worth).

Keep in mind, Kim Thompson of Fantagraphics said on the company blog:
"We have all of these strips ourselves (scanned, ready for the eventual complete KRAZY KAT dailies books we'll get to after we finish the Sundays) and a spot check from our resident scanmaster/organizer Paul Baresh confirms that most or all of the ones missing from the Yoe book are in fact part of the 'Tiger Tea' continuity..."

Just wait for the Fantagraphics collection to come out. This is a half empty cup of tea...literally.

If you can't wait, then buy my copy used.

The most notable things that have been said about "Tiger Tea" -- by far, George Herriman's most notable "experiment" in the KRAZY KAT daily strip -- are either demonstrably false or completely unprovable. It is not "Herriman's great adventure story," as some folks would have it; it's more like a running theme that recurred at intervals for almost a year (May 1936 to March 1937), probably because Herriman was able to mine more gags out of it than he had expected at the beginning. I also rather doubt that it was Herriman's surreptitious lobby for legalizing marijuana or celebrating its use, as some of the great cartoonist's "artsy-fartsier" fans would no doubt LIKE to believe. Herriman was probably aware of the existence of hallucinogenic substances, thanks to his friendship with the Navajos of Monument Valley, but, as Michael Tisserand (the author of an upcoming Herriman biography) admits in Craig Yoe's introduction, there is no evidence that Herriman ever "indulged" in any way, and that he simply took the idea of an elixir that caused individuals to act out of character as a convenient excuse to have some fun with his cast. I'm nonetheless happy to have the entire (I think...) collection of "Tiger Tea" strips between hard covers at long last. It doesn't measure up to the spectacular work Herriman did in his Sunday pages, but, as a window into Herriman's thoughts on the whole subject of continuity, it is a valuable piece of work.

"Tiger Tea" begins with katnip (yep, that's how it's spelled) magnate Mr. Meeyowl going bust. Feeling sorry for Meeyowl, Krazy follows his/her nose through several days' worth of desert perils (this is the closest the sequence gets to true "adventure," with Herriman generally eschewing dialogue in favor of letting pictures tell the story) and ultimately returns to Coconico County inside a bag of Tiger Tea (don't ask). Tiger Tea is the ultimate katnip, capable of giving a docile worm the attitude of a "King Kobra" or, more to the point, giving Herriman an excuse to allow the perpetually passive Krazy to "act up." "That I should have lived to see this!" groans Offissa Pupp upon seeing Krazy tippling like Foster Brooks on a particularly bad day. I think that Herriman intended this one scene as the real payoff, but that ideas just kept popping into his head, and he ran with them. This was, after all, an artist who mined 30 years' worth of strips out of a conceit (bricks, jail... you may know the drill) that is surely the slenderest reed upon which a comics masterpiece was ever draped, so you know he would have been sensitive to any promising new riff on his well-worn theme. We get subsequent strips of Krazy attempting to hide his/her stash of Tea, using some magic pollen to help unmask individuals who have stolen from his/her Tea sack, and, finally, Ignatz, Pupp, and other characters swearing off the brew. The whole sequence resembles one of those lazy, meandering POGO storylines more than a tightly controlled narrative of the kind favored by the likes of Harold Gray -- and even Walt Kelly didn't wander off the reservation the way Herriman did before ceasing his "Tea Bagging" for good. Ultimately, Herriman's interests simply didn't lie in the direction of telling a continuing story, even while his competitors were rushing to introduce long narratives into their strips. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why KRAZY KAT's popularity gradually waned in the 1930s. If Herriman had followed the crowd, though, he wouldn't have been Herriman.

Another in the handsome series of books produced by Craig Yoe and his wife and partner, Clizia Gussoni, this tidy tome arrived in time to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Krazy's konception by reprinting a thoughtful selection of what is undoubtedly the most famous sequence in Herriman's katalogue and the longest serialized storyline, the legendary "tiger tea" strips. Very little of this notorious continuity has been published since it ran in newspapers for nearly a year, May 15, 1936 until March 17, 1937, and herein, we find 91 of the 230-plus strips of the series, printed one to a page on flecked paper that imparts an appropriate aura of antiquity.
The story is sheer simplicity: Krazy learns that the "kollepse" of Katnip Konsolidated has left its owner, Mr. Meeyowl, impoverished, and so the fond feline tries to help by finding a way to restore the magnet's fortune, which, with typical Krazy logic, he decides can best be achieved with a fresh supply of catnip. The catnip he finds and delivers is the famed Tiger Tea, which, imbibed, turns our erstwhile tame tabby into a tiger, a pup dog into a wolf and a worm into a cobra, revives a dying tiger lily, and heartens the downhearted Mr. Meeyowl. The denizens of Coconino County try to learn the secret of Tiger Tea, but Krazy guards his stash ferociously, keeping it in a mysterious cave behind a rock that blocks the entrance and changes identity from day to day. More antics ensue, but for learning about them, I'll not deny you the pleasure of reading the book yourself.
The simplicity of Herriman's story has become complicated and encrusted with mysterious meanings. Nevin Martell at washingtoncitypaper.com in the fall of 2010 cites what he calls "a rogue theory" that "tiger tea" is actually a code word for weed."
Yoe, in an interview with Steve Bunche at publishersweekly.com, displays a somewhat larger grasp of the Herriman, er, reality: "By combining comics, fine art, and poetry George Herriman's Krazy Kat transcends all three. The writing is enigmatic. It has depth that invites and rewards continuous rereading. Each perusal is a terrific experience and new nuggets of desert gold are found. The art is breathtaking. Herriman is like a Zen master. I imagine the process was like automatic writing--or drawing in this case--when Herriman put pen to paper. He must have been channeling a benevolent cartooning god. ... You see the art and you experience a soul, Herriman's, and realize he was a gentle, whimsical, romantic, yet complicated person that you would enjoy conversing with, learning from, getting to know. The strip is, of course, ultimately about love, not in a sappy greeting card way, but love with its highs and lows."
And Yoe, too, sees in the Tiger Tea episodes a meaning somewhat below the surface of the narrative: "The Tiger Tea series of strips is a rare instance where Herriman did explore a topical theme along with his other usual discourses. Prohibition was happening. Anti-marijuana legislation was being enacted. These Krazy Kat episodes are famous--or infamous. Krazy and the other citizens of Coconino County imbibe an illegal mysterious substance called Tiger Tea and have psychedelic experiences and extreme personality changes. This is also the longest period where Herriman explored one theme, possibly inspired by the success of adventure strips like Terry and the Pirates and Flash Gordon. But the Tiger Tea strips aren't exactly a straight narrative plot, but dreamy little sequences."
Yoe includes in the book a photograph of Herriman wearing a Mexican sombrero and smoking "a funny-looking cigarette," but, he says, "I make no claims that Herriman himself was a toker, but he certainly seemed to have a good time exploring a getting high experience in his High Art comic in Tiger Tea."
As much fun as we can have with such interpretations, I suspect that Herriman soon saw that the personality changes wrought by ingesting Tiger Tea changed the core of the strip's ambiance. And so he headed off in a different direction. Krazy abandons his plan to become a Tiger Tea tycoon. And Tiger Tea disappears from the strip. And so do weed and booze, both mind altering substances, both rejected by Krazy and his kreator. If, indeed, Herriman had them in mind at all. In the last analysis (which is somewhat more elongated in my online magazine Rants & Raves than it is here), I find myself agreeing with Martell: "The thing is though, these outlandish slices of absurdity are just plain funny. Not necessarily laugh out loud funny, but the kind of funny that tickles your brain and sticks with you over time. Who cares what was in Herriman's cigarettes? He was a brilliant soul no matter how he achieved it."
And this handsomely designed book unveils a tantalizing hunk of his achievement.

Yoe Books has done it again with a beautifully made book of rare comics material. There's an attention to detail in these books that make them special. Aside from the selection of brilliant and timeless Krazy Kat comic strips (about which nothing more has to be said) Yoe has added a thoughtful essay, plus a thought-provoking introduction by Paul Krassner. The cover is nicely designed and the book is signature bound.

I keep harping on these aspects of books because we're entering an era in which "books" can mean downloaded digital files or audio books from iTunes. While that has its advantages in certain cases, books like this one need to be enjoyed in physical, paper form. (Can you imagine listening to a comic book without seeing the pictures?) I don't want to see books like this replaced by Kindle files. That's fine for novels but not for art books.

For this reason, Krazy + Ignatz in Tiger Tea is a book-lover's book and it will make a great gift.

My only "complaint" (if you can call it that) is that the list price is only $12.99, with the Amazon price much lower. Geez, a birthday card from Hallmark is $4.99! I'm afraid that Yoe Books won't make much profit at these prices and I want them to stay around for years to come.

George Herriman's original Krazy Kat, Ignatz, Offica Pupp inhabit a dreamy landscape where "a moiety of life" involves an illegal "tonic"- a Tiger Tea. The effect of the tea creates a bit of a surreal world enhanced by Herriman's beautiful ink work. The telling of the Tiger Tea tale is not quite linear, but rather in telling vignettes. This IDW/Yoe books volume is a wonderfully edited best of the Tiger Tea vignettes with an introduction by Paul Krassner. Kudos to Yoe Studios for their lovely design work and for keeping the book price affordable.

With all the hardcover/library edition/archive/looks important on my bookshelf collections of old comics these days (which are all great, don't get me wrong) Tiger Tea brings it back to basics: funny, crazy COMICS. This little book is so fun, funny, and nutty and bouncy (like Krazy) and cheap!!!!!. Perfect not for filing away in a mahogany bookcase, but for throwing on the coffee table or nightstand where you won't be able to resist READING it! Can you imagine? As always, great design by Yoe (turn the cover for a hilarious photo to intro the book). Really great.

Perfect for the superhero crowd too -- esp. those who didn't get Grant Morrison's "tiger tea" references in Final Crisis...

Well worth the money -- I used to love these little, strange-sized comics collections when I was a kid. Great gift, too.

This book is a gem! Its design is beautiful to begin with, and I'm a Paul Krassner fan from way back. But the real appeal, of course, are George Herriman's wonderful strips. Yoe has chosen the best of the year long sequence and they're a fantastic read. The strips make you wonder what Herriman was smoking in that funny looking cigarette he's holding in the incredible photo in the front! Buy it--I can't believe the bargain price--you won't be disappointed. I'm giving it 5 stars easily!

I love this! Every strip showcased is a treasure! This is a great compilation of the kookiest Krazy Kat strips...The ones involving Tiger Tea! Krazy and Ignatz are by far the best cat and mouse team in comic history! Plus, it has this rare photo of Harriman smoking his own "Tiger Tea" which is hilarious!

I happened to read few days ago something that made me cancel this order immediately: it lacks big chunks of continuity! While IDW needs the support from every comics fan for its various projects, you should give this a miss. Wait for Fanta's complete dailies, which should start to come out soon after the last Sundays collection.
Edited to add: For Herriman's sake I decided to up my stars for it. The fact remains that it's not complete. But the pictures and included strips are most likely a joy to watch and read.