“Your strange
interest in my efforts sure has me in a quandary – yes sir I can’t add it up at
all – It must be something you give to it.”
-George
Herriman
Krazy Kat
was a surrealist comic strip by New Orleans artist George Herriman. In 1916, Krazy Kat appeared
weekly, printed in black and white in the art and drama sections of The William
Randolph Hearst papers.
George Herriman's strip contains a sense
of wonder and simplicity, constructed around an endless love/hate triangle
between cat, mouse, and dog. Krazy
Kat believes that Ignatz mouse is in love with him/her. Ignatz’s main goal in life is to throw
bricks at Krazy’s head. Krazy
believes this is proof of his love.
The dog, Offissa Pupp, lives to protect Krazy, whom he loves, and
incarcerate Ignatz for his brick throwing. Within this frame, Herriman explores
the large questions of identity and existence in a complex society. He achieves this with great economy by
combining word and image in what was a relatively new art form, the comic
strip.
You can construct a Krazy Kat discourse between the Krazy Kat
strip and other literary works from before and after the time of Krazy Kat’s
publication. The strip is removed
from its original bibliographic space in the Hearst newspaper, and now floats
in the hypertext atmosphere where hyperlinks extend the sequence of each strip,
thickening and informing their meaning.
Find a current in the stream of consciousness.
