Krazy & Ignatz: The Kat Who Walked in Beauty: The Panoramic Dailies of 1920

Befitting its status as one of the masterworks of comics art, Herriman's Krazy Kat has been reprinted many times over the decades. But this new volume stands out. While most collections focus on the Sunday pages, this book reprints, for the first time, a series of unusually large and graphically inventive daily strips that Herriman created over nine months in 1920. This book's distinctive 15”×7” format permits these strips to appear at nearly their original publication size. Herriman's celebrated shape-shifting landscapes often transform into abstract geometrical patterns, as the eternal triangle of Kat, Mouse and brick is played out over and over. Many of these gags are not particularly funny, but readers will be won over by the charm of Krazy's character and the marvels of Herriman's artwork. Aficionados will be delighted by one daily in which the Kat addresses the notorious question of her/his ambiguous gender. The book also reprints examples of Herriman's earlier strip, The Dingbat Family—in which Krazy and Ignatz made their debut—which explained the origin of Ignatz's crusade to clobber “kats” with bricks. This superb volume concludes with Herriman's strikingly handsome illustrations for the program book for the 1922 Krazy Kat jazz ballet. (Sept.)