Self-portait of American cartoonist George Herriman from Judge magazine’s October 21, 1922, issue. Credit: George Herriman, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

George Herriman built a crazy career by drawing a black cat, a white mouse and a bulldog.

He created “Krazy Kat,” “a comic strip whose originality in terms of fantasy, drawing and dialogue was of such high order that many consider it the finest strip ever produced,” Britannica states. It “was unique in a number of ways.” 

And simple.

Krazy loved a mouse named Ignatz, but there was no love connection. In fact, Ignatz was constantly throwing bricks at Krazy. Meanwhile, Offissa Pupp, a police officer, had a thing for Krazy and tried to protect the cat by putting Ignatz in jail.

“The strip utilized poetic dialogue, and its landscape backgrounds were stark and surrealistic, based on the Arizona desert,” Britannica states. “From these simple elements Herriman constructed an astonishing number of variations.”

According to a 2017 New York Times article, the strip “inspired several generations of cartoonists. Charles M. Schulz’s ‘Peanuts,’ Ralph Bakshi’s ‘Fritz the Cat’ and Art Spiegelman’s ‘Maus’ owe a debt to Herriman’s draftsmanship and poetic sense.” 

Born in 1880, Herriman was part of a prominent New Orleans Creole family in Treme. The Times states that the Herrimans supported court cases “to stem the tide of segregation overrunning Louisiana and the South during Reconstruction.”

In 1890, the family moved to Los Angeles, where Herriman began to hide his Creole heritage. 

“He lived as a white man for decades,” the Times states. Then in the early 1970s, someone found a birth certificate stating that Herriman was born “colored.”

Having started his first strip in 1901, Herriman debuted “Krazy Kat” in 1913. Liked by famous artists and writers, the strip expanded to a full page on Sundays in 1916. It continued until his 1944 death.

“In recognition of his original touch,” Britannica states, “the strip was allowed to die with its creator.”

For more tales from New Orleans history, visit the Back in the Day archives.

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Tammy C. Barney is an award-winning columnist who spent most of her career at two major newspapers, The Times-Picayune and The Orlando Sentinel. She served as a bureau chief, assistant city editor, TV...