Krazy by Michael Tisserand - Harper (2017)
What is high art, what is low art, and who can we trust to fence the murky swamplands in between? Is there anyone capable of making unassailable objective statements about such a subjective field of thought? These are some of the questions that artists and critics alike have been raising in regards to the ‘funnies’ for well over a hundred years. Can transient humor touch upon the same deep-rooted cultural anxieties as more ‘serious’ works of art?
George Herriman, the creator of Krazy Kat and the surreal anthropomorphic characters of Coconino County, would probably answer in the affirmative. Although his concentrated narratives disappeared from newsprint long before my time, I recognize some of the main components from the comics of my own youth. Herriman plays with dynamic issues like race and gender but remains ambiguous through his use of whimsical animals, alien landscapes, and a fathomless wardrobe of illusions and disguises. His legacy can be traced through the storylines of Garfield, Calvin and Hobbes, and Peanuts, and he has inspired numerous cartoonists to nurture their own imaginations. Until recently, the extent to which Herriman identified with the elusive identities of his characters was greatly underestimated. Not until 1971, nearly three decades after his death, was Herriman’s birth certificate produced to confirm his status as an African American, ‘passing’ as a white man during one of the most violent and bigoted periods of American history. One can only imagine what this ‘father of graphic art’ felt working for the very newspapers in which “the discovery that a person was racially passing was treated as a front-page scandal.”
George Herriman’s incredible story is offered in what could easily be called his ‘definitive biography.’ In Krazy, Michael Tisserand leaves no stone unturned, and grounds his arguments and conclusions in an impressive collection of the artist’s own sketches. This biography is certainly the most visually-appealing I have ever read, and its whimsy and humour will be relatable to anyone who has ever looked forward to reading the comics each morning—even if Krazy Kat was never among them.
Michael Tisserand is a native of New Orleans (Herriman’s own hometown) and is committed to preserving the history and culture of the ‘Big Easy.’ Besides Krazy, his other books include The Kingdom of Zydeco, and Sugarcane Academy: How a New Orleans Teacher and His Storm-Struck Students Created a School to Remember. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Tisserand wrote an eleven-part series of articles titled ‘Submerged’, which appeared in numerous publications nationwide. His fierce celebrations of New Orleans have been featured in The Oxford American, The Nation, and The Progressive. When not writing, Tisserand organizes the annual New Orleans Chess Fest and volunteers his time at the Laissez Boys Social Aide and Leisure Club, of which he is a founding member. To say that Tisserand’s love of New Orleans is evident in his writing would be a serious understatement. His efforts at creating a more interactive experience for readers should also be noted, as he offers a collection of Herriman comics on his website and is an active and entertaining member of Twitter.
George Herriman’s comics did for graphic art what Shakespeare did for the English Language—he helped to establish a vocabulary that would be recognizable across distances and generations. Perhaps this is why Krazy Kat feels intimate and familiar to a reader whose first exposure is in a posthumous biography. Writes Tisserand,
A comic strip is, most broadly defined, a series of pictures that tell a story, usually combined with words and most often published in a newspaper or magazine or, more recently, online. Over the years, comics developed their own visual language: word balloons, radiating worry lines, droplets of nervous sweat, hats popping off heads, and “grawlixes,” the term coined by cartoonist Mort Walker for typographical symbols indicating profanity…the comic strip’s unique integration of these three elements—words, pictures, and symbols—allows it to tell a story, whether humorous or serious, that can’t as effectively be told any other way.
Through statements such as these, Tisserand confirms his position as a proponent of the ‘comics as art’ school of thought. And he is persuasive. His main intent, besides pinning down and organizing every piece of biographical detail, is to convince readers that comics must be viewed and analyzed in a category of their own. They are not ‘low’ versions of paintings or novels. The characters and conversations may be reduced, but they are rarely one-dimensional. Comics can convey things that traditionally ‘high’ pieces cannot. Cartoon characters can say things that celebrities and politicians cannot. And not all comics concern themselves with trivial or domestic matters, although some, like Blondie, certainly do. Herriman was both highly educated, and naturally intelligent—a fact that any astute reader can ascertain if they look at Krazy Kat with more than a cursory glance. Writes Tisserand:
Herriman was bringing everything he had to Krazy Kat: gags about boxing and Prohibition; quotations from Shakespeare and Tin Pan Alley; references to fate and spiritualism, including a postwar Ouija board craze; Navajo and Japanese myths; topical jokes about trusts, wartime profiteering, and the League of Nations; a new character named the Widow Marijuana Pelona…and frequent greetings to friends such as Seldes, Pinky Springer, and Tad Dorgan.
Although George Herriman is no longer a household name, his influence on other cartoonists cannot be overstated. He is the invisible artist whose shadow survives in the panels we all know and love. Gilbert Seldes, one of Herriman’s biggest fans and the author of The 7 Lively Arts writes that,
…whether he be a primitive or an expressionist, Herriman is an artist; his works are built up; there is a definite relation between his theme and his structure, and between his lines, masses, and his page…The little figure of Krazy built around the navel, is amazingly adaptable, and Herriman economically makes him express all the emotions with a turn of the hand, a bending of that extraordinary starched bow he wears round the neck, or with a twist of his tail.
Herriman’s power and prestige can only be truly appreciated in the words of his contemporaries. They worshipped him, despite his mysterious background, and welcomed him into the restless club of American journalists whose escapades would come to define a certain paradoxical period of idealism and disenchantment. Writes Tisserand of Herriman and his colleagues Charles Van Loan and Beanie Walker:
The trio worked and caroused together, attending show matinees and political conventions, ball games and fights, and taking automobile excursions to out-of-town events. They traded stories about their adventures in print, at times turning the Examiner into their private journal of the Los Angeles sporting life. They reported from Tom McCarey’s and Jim Jeffries’s blood-stained fight clubs and joined the “plungers” who sought fortunes at the track. As Examiner men, they had reserved seats for both minstrel plays and opera; a true Sport never missed a good show, “whether operatic, dramatic, or pugilistic,” as Herriman described it. For meals, they jostled with journeyman fighters—the “pork-and-beaners”—for stools at tamale stands and countertop steakhouses.
George Herriman never explicitly commented upon his own racial background, and his life might have turned out differently had he done so. But now that the mystery of his origins has been debunked, his comics attain a new and bittersweet tenderness that adds to their complexity. Describing one comic titled “First White—Then, Black—Then, White Again!” Tisserand writes:
The gags begin when Van Bones drops a stovepipe on Alexander [his cat], blackening him in soot. Alexander dashes upstairs, where Leila [Van Bones], not recognizing her pet, shoos him off. Alexander then leaps into a tub of water being carried by a black servant, who warbles a minstrel song about possums and banjos. The servant brings the cat, now returned to sparkling white, to her grateful employer, while Van Bones slips his servant a dollar to keep quiet…Herriman has introduced multiple color reversals into a world of animals.
Even today, ‘passing’ is a subject spoken about only in furtive whispers. Speculation is rampant and documentation is scarce, but Herriman continues to ask—through his comics—what the color of an animal has to do with his fundamental being. White Alexander is the same cat as Black Alexander, and the tragedy lies in the fact that his own ‘parent’ is unable to recognize him. The color of his fur negates the existence of a singular personality. Perhaps this is why Herriman never spoke up about his own roots in New Orleans—he knew that if his ‘blackness’ were revealed, his friends and colleagues would cease to recognize him as George Herriman. In his tender and beautifully-illustrated biography, Michael Tisserand accompanies George Herriman as he explores sensitive questions of race and identity in a world of minstrel kats and brick-throwing rats.
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