Krazy & Ignatz 1925-1926: "there Is a Heppy Lend Fur Fur Awa-A-Ay"

by George Herriman

Fantagraphics is proud to re-present Krazy Kat to a new generation of readers. Each volume in this series reprints two full years of Sunday strips, or 104 full-page, black-and-white Sunday strips (Herriman did not incorporate color into the strip until 1935). Krazy Kat is a love story, focusing on the relationship of its three main characters. Krazy Kat adored Ignatz Mouse. Ignatz Mouse hated Krazy Kat, the expression of which was in throwing bricks...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1560973862
• ISBN13: 9781560973867
• Release Date: April 2002
• Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
• Length: 120 Pages
• Weight: 1.16 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 9.1" x 12.0"
• Age Range: 16 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 11 and higher

Customer Reviews

To everyone who claims comics are just for children...

I'm absolutely blown away every time I pick up this book. I'd heard it referred to by everyone from Max Speigelman to Bill Watterson himself, artist of Calvin & Hobbes, but hadn't ever seen it, being born a number of decades after it had left the papers. I decided to pick it up, since as an aspiring comic artist, I figured it'd be a good idea to take a look at something credited by Bill Watterson. The comics are absolutely amazing. The art is playful, sometimes delicate, sometimes bold, but masterfully executed and always artistic, a quality so often missing from modern comics. And the text is just as amazing - it always strikes me as poetry in word bubbles. Anyone and everyone who enjoys art, poetry, comics, or humor owes it to themselves to pick up at least one of these volumes.

Yes

Every man, woman, and child should own a complete set of George Herriman's Krazy Kat, but that's currently impossible cos so much of it is out of print (or has never been reprinted). Thanks for getting this thing started again, Fantagraphics, and hopefully you'll get the financial support to see this thing through.If you know nothing of Krazy and Ignatz, I can only invite you to slide into their surreal world. Words won't do it justice. Krazy is yin, Ignatz is yang. You figure it out.

The heppy land is not too furfur a-waay...

Wow. There is justice in the world. After Eclipse stopped their "Kompleat Krazy Kat" series I feared that no publisher would dare take up the cause for a loooooooong time. I'm having spasms of joy over the continuation of the series. There was indeed no comic (even the best ones) that came close to the subtlety, detail, and substance of Krazy Kat. The irreconcilable love triangle between Krazy, Ignatz, and Offica Pupp provided enough material for decades of brutally good material. These volumes also carry on Eclipse's tradition of good and helpful notes at the book's end to elucidate anachronisms that will inevitably arise in nearly anything approaching a century in age.More good news is Fantagraphic's pledge (near the end of this book) that once they complete the Krazy Kat cycle (kompleat with the kompleat Kolor Komiks in full Kolor), they will go back and republish the years covered by the Eclipse volumes! I was never able to find all 9 volumes, and those that appear on E-bay tend to get VERY pricey ...This is good news for all of the Kat's devoted followers. May Fantagraphics march on.

"THE BEST WOT IS--BLLLVE ME!"

Readers of the Eclipse Krazy Kat reprint series (which died out in the early nineties after collecting nine years' worth of KK Sunday pages) will only need to know that this book picks up where those left off, and that the new design is consistent with the Eclipse volumes, though it incorporates a number of improvements (the off-white, better quality paper, and the inclusion of the original titles atop the strips, for example). More great material, a bargain price, no reason to hesitate over this one. Of course it merits "five stars," or fifty.For those who are not familiar with Krazy Kat--a larger group, alas--there isn't room here for the superlatives that this strip inspires, let alone for an explanation of the many facets of the work. When you first read it, you may be puzzled at all the praise heaped on this thing--this is because so much of the effect of KK is cumulative. In my experience, it is the richest example of variations-on-a-theme in all of art, regardless of medium. (And there are hundreds of Krazy Kat strips that I've never seen!)The best introduction to Herriman remains the the bio by McDonnell, et al, which samples the breadth of his work. But there's much to be said for reading a group of strips sequentially.The 1925-26 Sunday strips collected here show Herriman in fine form, even though his inventive page design is straightjacked much of the time. Herriman's publisher W.R. Hearst imposed a strict format on Herriman from mid-1925-29, in an effort to promote the strip (this is explained in the book). But Herriman manages to make the best of the restrictions, and Herriman's best is fine indeed.It is scandalous that this material has remained unavailable for so long. Kudos to Fantagraphics, and lucky for all of us that Herriman's glorious work is again becoming available. If there's anything I could add that would make my recommendation more emphatic, consider it said.

five stars is not enough; this needs a constellation

I first encountered Krazy Kat as a twelve-year old, years, even, before the Eclipse collections started coming out. (This series picks up where Eclipse left off). I was hooked from the start. With the sole possible exception of the works of Jim Woodring, Krazy is the apex of comics and equal to anything in twentieth century art in any form. How much that was taken seriously by the "intellectuals" of its day remains on our radar screen now? And yet Krazy is with us still. This particular collection is from the prime of the strip, the black-and-white era before Herriman's line got a little fat and his strips a little abstruse. The sole flaw this book has is its too-cute graphic design; for some reason the cover images are upside-down, and the lettering is all pseudo-old-fashioned. I guess that's what passes for creativity today. The content, of course, needs no such silly devices to prop it up; even after seventy plus years every single strip is as fresh as a daisy.Here's to seventy more.