Shifting Backgrounds: Identity in Krazy Kat

Krazy is a black cat. Ignatz is a white mouse. The cat is in love with the mouse, the mouse, however, hates the cat and is most content when beaning the cat with a brick. Meanwhile a cop, who happens to be a dog, and who also happens to love the cat, tries his best to disrupt this daily routine and stop them from reaching that inevitable final panel. Within this repetitive simple framework, and for over 40 years, George Herriman layered lyrical dialogue, shifting surreal backgrounds, social commentary, abstract cultural symbolism, and, evidently, ruminations on identity.

In its time, Krazy Kat was never particular popular; when the final strip ran in 1944, it appeared in less than 40 newspapers. So how did it survive for so long? It was often regulated to the arts section, away from the more universally agreed funnier comics, which maybe points to the secret to its longevity. America's "intellectuals" loved it, and so did the famous newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, who kept Herriman's career going despite the falling numbers.

Perhaps it was due to this unpopularity or vague feeling of "artiness" that Herriman was able to get away with the experimentation that he did. Plenty of readers admitted to "not getting it," but if they had, how would the themes of the strip have come across at that time, or where they even noticeable in the daily, disposable way they were being parceled out?

It was a secret during George Herriman's lifetime that he was Creole; something he supposedly kept to himself because of the hostile times hes lived in, often claiming he got his looks from time spent in Greece. But later historians and fans, in light of the discovery of his ancestry, have devoted a lot of writing to re-examining his work within the context of race. For instance, was Krazy a black cat or actually being coded as black?  Chris Ware argues that actually, yes, people would've picked up on this aspect in the 1920s; he even makes the argument that, to audiences steeped in that culture of the early 1900s, Krazy possibly read as an African American character, even a stereotype.

There's a reoccurring motif of Ignatz finding himself attracted to Krazy only after Krazy's fur has turned white. I found at least two Sunday page examples. One from 1921 finds Krazy turned white by an accident with whitewash:

And another from earlier, 1918, in which Krazy purposely patrons a salon to have their fur bleached:

This comic also serves as example of the other way Krazy Kat addressed identity, and that is the way it questioned and played with Krazy's gender. In some strips, Krazy is male, in others, Krazy is female. Sometimes these shifts in gender were to serve that strip's particular story. For example, when Krazy needs to wear a dress for a ball, she is a she, but when Krazy dresses to drive a car, he is a he.

But this isn't always the case, as pronouns used for Krazy (by both themselves and other characters) could change several times in just one strip, meaning that a male character frequently openly declared love for another male character. Various supporting cast attempt to discover what Krazy identifies as and are perplexed or discouraged by Krazy's refusal to label themselves. In a daily strip from 1915 (only five years after the duo's first appearance), Krazy laments to Ignatz (quite plainly) that they don't know if they want to "take unto a wife or a husband." Probably the only thing in Krazy Kat that changed more often between panels than Krazy's gender were those famous shifting desert backgrounds.

As Krazy Kat was adapted into other mediums-- in particular mediums with sound-- creators were faced with the challenge of how to present Krazy and their fluid gender. Their answer, for the most part, was to pretty much ignore the aspect entirely. Except for one entry that did attempt to capture the strip in animated film, most of the cartoons released by Columbia Pictures in the 1930s were more along the lines of a generic Mickey Mouse or Felix the Cat analogue, casting Krazy as male with another cat serving as his Minnie-esque love interest.

Krazy Kat and his unidentified female companion go to the beach for a picnic

Another series of cartoon shorts, released by Kings Features Syndicate in the 1960s, attempted to capture the trappings and imagery of the strip if not quite the spirit. This iteration of Krazy was quite clearly female and voiced by a voice actress named Penny Phillips.

Uploaded by Cartoon for Kids on 2016-08-24.

A Dell Comics series in the 1950s, written and drawn by John Stanley, casts Krazy as male, turning Krazy and Ignatz's relationship into more of a frenemy vehicle for slapstick situations and seemingly dropping the romantic angle. In Jay Cantor's 1988 novel, Krazy seems to have been given the definitive pronoun of "her."

How much of Krazy was a cypher for Herriman's musing on his own identity, or at least the idea of how one chooses to present themselves? Herriman put a lot of what interested him into his work-- from tall tales to poetry to Navajo art to the deserts of Arizona, so it would be silly to argue that identity wasn't something Herriman actively sought to explore.

Herriman died in 1944, long before the discovery of his race in the 1970s, so we can't ask him how he thought of himself. Krazy Kat can be read and enjoyed without any of these questions in mind, of course, and the strips focusing on identity-- race, gender, status-- aren't so much about hiding your true self as they are about showing the malleability of identity.

When asked by the director Frank Cappa, just what is Krazy Kat's gender, Herriman had this to say, "I fooled around with it once; began to think the Kat is a girl—even drew up some strips with her being pregnant. It wasn’t the Kat any longer; too much concerned with her own problems—like a soap opera. . . . Then I realized Krazy was something like a sprite, an elf. They have no sex. So the Kat can’t be a he or a she. The Kat’s a spirit—a pixie—free to butt into anything."

Krazy and Ignatz make their first, unnamed appearance at the bottom of a different feature by Herriman, one of his many other comics before creating Krazy Kat. From this first comic, the poetic world and shifting deserts of Cococina County would one day grow, but for now, and for the duo's first several appearances, there was no deeper meaning. Barely more than doodles: a cat, a mouse, and a hurled brick. Though, in a way --even there, right from that vaudeville duo beginning-- the traditional roles of a cat and a mouse were already being reversed, their identities being questioned. Because it was the mouse who attacked the cat.

The images in this post are thanks to:    
Krazy Kat: The Art of George Herriman and
Fantagraphics' Krazy and Ignatz collections

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Additional Reading:                                          
Some Say It With a Brick by Elisabeth Crocker
Krazy Komic by Anna Clark
The Gender Fluidity of Krazy Kat by Gabrielle Bellot                  

Nightmare in Slumberland: The Many Deaths of Little Nemo

In the very first strip of Little Nemo in Slumberland (October 15, 1905), King Morpheus of Slumberland sends a messenger to summon Nemo to his palace in the dream world. This messenger, resembling a clown and called an Oomp, presents the little boy with "a little spotted night horse," named Somnus, to ride across the night sky to Slumberland, but warns him "you mustn't whip him or drive him fast." Of course, Nemo and Somnus are almost immediately challenged to a race by a pink monkey and a green kangaroo. You can probably see where this is going.

While Nemo does accept the challenge, it is not without reservation. He tries to heed the Oomp's warning and slow Somnus down, but the horse is now beyond his control. He is bucked from his steed, calling out for his mother and father as he falls through the infinite vaccum of space.

A lot of parallels can be drawn between Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland and books like Frank L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) and especially Lewis Carrol's Alice in Wonderland (1865). I'm not sure if there's a name for this genre of kids trapped in surreal fantastical realms filled with "irrational taboos, forbidden places, and terrifying creatures" (as put by Maurice Sendak in his introduction to John Canemaker's book, Winsor McCay: His Life and Art), but there is a big difference between Baum's and Carrol's most famous works and McCay's. Nemo, at least at first, doesn't have Alice's calm curiosity and stubbornness or Dorothy's matter-of-fact determination. While Alice responds to the maddening world she finds herself in with "Curiouser and curiouser," Nemo's most frequent expression is a tearful howl of "Oh Papa! Oh Mama!' as he reals from whatever fresh doom Slumberland has served him.

Nemo is kind of scaredy-cat. He is not a coward, as we'll get into later, but he spends a good portion of his time in Slumberland scared out of his wits. That's what sets him apart from his more plucky literature counterparts. He approaches Slumberland with awe, but an awe heavily tempered by caution, dread, and genuine panic. And for good reason-- because in Slumberland, Nemo dies A LOT. Between 1905 and 1909 alone, Nemo is:

SQUASHED BY GIANT MUSHROOMS

SPEARED BY A CACTUS (ALSO GIANT)

PIERCED BY NO LESS THAN 30 ARROWS

FALLS DOWN A VERY LONG FLIGHT OF STAIRS

DROWNS MORE THAN ONCE

MELTS

AND IS THROWN FROM HIS HOUSE BY A MONSTEROUS TURKEY

Even though he knows he will always awake from these deaths and find himself safely in his bed (or more often, on the floor, after falling out of his bed), it's still kind of a lot for a seven year old to handle.

Little Nemo in Slumberland is often called "an epic," and while I would not argue with that, it's also true that it is very light on story. The strips are vignettes, the plots mostly being a framework to hang McCay's beautiful art and imaginative sequences on, and you'd be forgiven for thinking, at first glance, that they are one-off tales. But that actually isn't the case. There are very few truly stand alone strips. The majority of Little Nemo is made up of a series of pretty lengthy narratives, usually sending Nemo and his cohorts on long quests across Slumberland (or, later on, other dream worlds).

In fact, that quest presented in the very first Little Nemo strip (Morpheus summoning Nemo to his palace) goes on for months and months. The King wants Nemo to meet his daughter, the Princess, and be her playmate. This deceptively simple end goal drives almost the entire first year of the comic's run. It also leads to Nemo's character arc. Though he still finds many of the sights of Slumberland terrifying, as Nemo gets closer and closer to meeting the Princess, his demeanor upon waking up from his dreams begins to shift. Earlier strips always ended with a frightened Nemo untangling himself from his sheets or being shook awake by his mother, relieved to be home. Later strips, however, show him resenting his return from the dream world.

This desire to now actually stay asleep is complicated by the introduction of a new character, Flip. Initially presented as an antagonist, Flip is determined to wake Nemo up as frequently as possible. From wearing a cigarette-looking top hat emblazened with the words "Wake up!" to calling in the favor of an early sunrise from his uncle, Dawn, nothing pleased Flip more than disrupting Nemo's quest.

On July 8, 1906, nine months after his journey began, Nemo finally reaches the Princess. But as a resident of Slumberland, she does not share Nemo's fearful nature, and he soon finds himself fretting through several stressful play-dates.

In November of that same year, Flip is sentenced for his crimes against Slumberland, and Nemo demonstrates a real act of bravery. As Flip faces execution, Nemo throws himself between his enemy and the firing squad. After this, Nemo and Flip become friends and they never really leave each other's side while in the dream world again. Flip's  trouble-maker personality balances out Nemo's caution, and the two go on to have many adventures together, bonding over an awareness (evidently not shared by the rest of Slumberland's residents) of just how crazy this place really is.

Saving Flip wasn't Nemo's last act of heroism. In 1908, he helps people out in a shanty town, and-- in a harrowing sequence from 1910-- he literally saves two children from a burning building. Perhaps it's because he-- more than anyone else in Slumberland-- knows what it's like to feel totally helpless, but for all his fearful nature, Nemo can't stand seeing anyone in trouble.

I still think he's kind of a scaredy-cat though.

The images in this post are thanks to: The Complete Little Nemo in Slumberland

Manu Larcenet's Ordinary Victories

ORDINARY VICTORIES is the story of Marco, a war photographer looking for a little peace of mind. Done with taking pictures of victims of violence and starvation, he returns to his home country of France hoping to find a new clarity in life. This search is complicated though by the everyday struggles of normal life and Marco's tendency to collapse into violent panic attacks at a moment's notice.

Marco is kind of a jerk. But he is also relatable and identifiable. He's anxious, frustrated creatively, has trouble connecting with others, socially conscious but has no idea what to do about it. The world only makes sense to him through his photographs, and when he takes a months long respite from his work, he finds himself feeling more lost than ever. His biggest flaw, perhaps, is his inability to truly see beyond himself. He looks at everything through his lens, and though he may think that offers him insight, he's still only looking at things from his side of the camera.

ORDINARY VICTORIES consists of four books (collected in English in two volumes). The characters are drawn cartoony (big-foot style) against the backdrop of a beautifully rendered, full color France. I'll talk more about the art, because it is gorgeous, later. Scattered through out the books are one page, 8 panel, sepia toned segments. Drawn in a sketchy but much more realistic style than the rest of the book, these pages are also more poetic—bordering on elegy-- as we get a more clear insight into Marco's thoughts: ruminations about death, relationships, fatherhood, grief, anxiety, overlaid some of Marco's photography. It makes it even more clear just how important Marco's work is to him and his attempts to understand the world. But it also shows how his photography is just as much about trying to find some sort of important truth in himself as it is in his subjects.

Marco begins three new relationships in ORDINARY VICTORIES. The first is a new friendship with a kindly but enigmatic old man who lives near him. The second is with a veterinarian, Emily, he begins dating. And the third is with his late father. It's these three people and their impact during a period of change in Marco's life that most affects him.

And if there's one thing Marco is bad at, it's change. It's the scenes with Emily that most highlight this. Marco is content (or as content as Marco knows how to be) to continue living their life together as is. He likes his drafty little cottage in the country side. He's terrified of the idea of moving in together, or of having children, and this fear makes him shortsighted when it comes to his relationship.

If I have one criticism of ORDINARY VICTORIES, it's that Emily is a little thinly drawn. You'll find yourself coming down on her side rather than Marco's in most of their disagreements, so I wouldn't necessarily say she's not a rounded character-- but I would have liked to have seen more of who she is and where she came from.

Change is scary, because sometimes it's easier to just limp along then take a risk. Marco would much rather weather things than face them head on. But change happens whether by choice or not, and it's better to embrace those changes with someone by your side. "Everything is better with you than without," he tells Emily at the end of the first volume, and though this isn't the end of his deep reluctance to deal with the curveballs life has in store, it's an important start.

Marco meets Mr. Mesrin while on a stroll one afternoon. Kind and gentle and wise, he is harboring a dark wartime past; a past with ties to Marco's father, leading Marco to realize the limits to ever truly knowing anyone. This is further compounded when Marco's father is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, than later dies. He begins to understand how little he really knew of the "man trapped inside his father." And as he begins to come to terms with his discovery of Mr. Mesrin's past, Marco must decide how to reconcile the old man's past with his present, or if he even can. Even up to the very end, he is still discovering there are things he didn't know about him.

This idea of knowing (or not knowing) others, is a thread throughout ORDINARY VICTORIES. In his father's waning days, Marco returns to his hometown to embark on a new photography project: portraits of the workers at the shipyard his father spent his whole career at. Like his father, the shipyard itself doesn't have much time left, and Marco captures the images of men clinging to their dying livelihood. He reunites with a high school friend, now working those docks, and is appalled to discover his far right politics and his bitterness towards Marco for fleeing to Paris. "Don't start your big city speeches with me!" he yells. "You no longer know what's going on here! You no longer know how we live!"

In some ways, Marco agrees with his old friend's outburst, that he has somehow betrayed his roots in a way. That-- by gaining the larger context of the outside world-- he's forgotten the context of the world he came from.

"It keeps us stuck in place," though, his mom tells him later. "It stops us from moving ahead. Roots are only good for ficuses."

ORDINARY VICTORIES is set against the French political climate of the early 2000s, and I won't pretend that I understand all of its context. But I'm not sure I need to, because it is sentiments, like the quote above, that highlight how similar this backdrop is to my own. This is the story of Marco and his family, but, like real life, he doesn't exist in a bubble. He's worried about the rise of a far right party; of an increased and more militant police force, of the people back home and their anger and fear towards immigrants-- how to rectify this new, tarnished image of old friends with his memories of them.

After his father's death, Marco's mother gifts him a box of old photographs and his father's diaries. He's startled to discover that the diaries never mention him, or his brother, or even his mother. Rather they're one or two sentence entries marking, sometimes poetically, very mundane observations. Marco is in constant pursuit of a big meaning to it all, but here was how his father saw the world: through the little things.

As I said, the art in ORDINARY VICTORIES is beautiful. Manu Larcenet draws his characters as real cartoon characters. Charmingly designed, with big noses, dot eyes, exaggerated expressions-- all of this lends a lightness to the otherwise weighty subject matter. The colors, provided by Patrice Larcenet, are truly striking. If you flip through its pages, the bright and varied hues are probably the first thing you'll notice. They're expressionistic and bold but mostly representational, tied to the realism of the scene and scenery. Except, that is, for when Marco has a panic attack. As Marco's eyes turn into scribbled scratches, all colors drop out and are replaced by a violent, single shade of red.

The drawings get a little sketchier as the story progresses, the colors more muted. Whether this is intentional or not, as Marco matures, the world becomes less defined and clear, not more so. Those poetic photograph segments fall away as Marco grows older. From four interludes in the first volume to only two in the final one, the last sequence being entirely close ups of his daughter's stuffed animals.

Though his drawings are looser and scratchier than you'd find in the ligne claire style, ORDINARY VICTORIES does stick to that tradition's evenly paced panel arrangements. There are slight variation of panel size, but he only breaks the four tier layout a handful of times. The panel pacing doesn't even change for Marco's panic attacks, and I think that's intentional. These episodes are terrifying and horrible for Marco every time, but it's as much a part of his normal life as playing video games with his brother or walking in nature with his cat.

Marco only really begins to understand his father once he is also a father, and only then does he begin to understand himself. And that understanding is that he can't and won’t ever understand everyone. But that doesn't mean you should stop trying. Life doesn't promise clarity; but Marco does find a sense of purpose, at least for a while, through his photographs of the shipyard. Ultimately, his pictures have no impact at large. The dock is still closed. The workers lose their jobs. The shipyard is demolished. But he still found purpose through taking them, from doing what he could because it was what he ought to.

ORDINARY VICTORIES opens with Marco quitting his therapist. But by the end he is working with a new one. He never has an epiphany really, there is no "aha!" moment. Life is work, and you just have to keep working at it, every day. Happiness or contentment or clarity or empathy or whatever you want to call it, it's a never ending process.

ORDINARY VICTORIES’ original French title is LE COMBAT ORDINAIRE, and it probably sums up the story better. Because this book IS about ordinary victories-- but more than that, it's about ordinary losses and, mostly, ordinary struggle. The highs and lows of the ordinary and of trying to make sense of it. It's a sad story but, upon close examination, a hopeful one. There are joys to be found... in family, in strolls in the country side, in art, in doing something worthwhile. It's a comical but serious and poignant book; a universal but deeply personal work, and one I think I'll only identify more with the older I get.

Nate Powell's Swallow Me Whole and Any Empire

It is difficult to talk about Nate Powell's SWALLOW ME WHOLE or ANY EMPIRE without discussing their respective endings. What happens in the conclusions of both stories will likely color readers' ultimate impressions, but I think focusing too much on these final scenes and their dives into surrealism does a disservice to the great moments and insights that come before. I want you to READ these comics, so I'd rather not spoil everything before you have a chance to read them yourselves.

SWALLOW ME WHOLE (2008) is the story of Ruth and Perry, step-siblings navigating their way through their teenage years and also their respective mental and neurological disorders. Perry is fed messages by a wizard pencil topper, convincing him to go on missions, most of which involve rendering time intensive drawings. Ruth obsessively collects (or steals) and organizes mason jars of bugs before she begins hallucinating terrifying swarms of cicadas. The true heart of the story is the relationship between these two step-siblings, as various adults (well-meaning or otherwise) continually fail to adequately help them. They understand each other in a way that no one else is able to.

While Ruth and Perry (for everything they're going through) at least have each other, the same can't really be said for the characters of ANY EMPIRE (2011). A reflection on growing up amid the casual violence and militarism of American culture, our three protagonists are pretty isolated. Lee spends entire pages completely alone, wandering the countryside, suburbs, and construction sites of his southern town. His only friend is Purdy, and their relationship is a fraught and intense one, mostly defined by their convenient location to each other. Both kids are obsessed with military imagery and entertainment: Lee reads GI Joe comics and constantly imagines his soldier action figures fighting valiant battles; Purdy aggrandizes the acts of his father (a member of the National Guard, not a Green Beret like he claims) and spends afternoons browsing the defunct grenades in an army surplus store. Sara exists on the peripheral of the two boys' day-to-day lives, investigating a rash of box turtle mutilations that Lee ends up helping her solve. Even this brief partnership, though, plays out only in notes passed in class. The two do not move toward forming a real connection with each other until much later.

SWALLOW ME WHOLE, after a brief prologue set a couple of years before the main story, mostly focuses on a few months of one school year. Ruth is diagnosed with schizophrenia, while Perry's issues mostly go ignored or are wallpapered over. They begin to drift apart, finding solace in new relationships and experiences, but the danger of what's going on in their minds never really leaves, and, eventually for Ruth, it all comes crashing down. ANY EMPIRE moves backwards and forwards through time, showing how the influences and choices of childhood have ripples well into adulthood. Lee trades in his GI Joe comics for punk music and an aimless twenties and Sara redirects her empathy towards helping children. Purdy joins the military, his life of being both the bully and the bullied continuing almost uninterrupted.

Both SWALLOW ME WHOLE and ANY EMPIRE begin somewhat fairly rooted in reality. There are intrusions of this by the imagined, but there's a clear distinction. As the stories progress, the line between the two becomes increasingly blurred, the walls coming completely down in their finales. Can humans really flip a tank with their bare hands? Does Purdy actually find redemption? For Ruth, what she sees IS REAL to her, and whether her family can see it or not doesn't change that they, too, are affected by it. In that sense, is what happens to Ruth a tragic inevitability or does it, in some way, offer her validation? What is real and what isn't? How important is the answer?

Dialogue is used quite sparingly, and when it does appear it is often naturalistic. There are insightful passages (such as a lovely conversation between Ruth and Perry hanging upside down in a nighttime playground, which is probably my favourite scene outside the climax), but for the most part the story is told through the art.

Nate drenches his work in so much ink that you're almost sure it might still be wet to touch. But he also excels in his use of negative space. He's a master of both, swinging back and forth between airy compositions and oppressive swaths of black. His drawings are both realistic and stylized: highly rendered sketchy lines dissolving into oceans of ink or blank page. Both books take place in the town of Wormwood, Alabama, but it could be anywhere in the South or Mid-West. There's something about his art style that perfectly captures the extremes of hot summers and freezing winters and of growing up conflicted in quote-unquote "Real America." I think I once read someone describe his style as "humid," and I think that about sums it up.

His work is emphatic. He shows what Ruth and Perry are going through, and offers no judgment. He doesn't pretend to know what they should or shouldn't do. In ANY EMPIRE, he isn't just criticizing an element of American culture, he's reflecting on it. He's not treating it as an outsider perspective -- he's as much a part of it as anyone, going so far as to give the character of Lee his own last name.

When it comes to the themes in his work, Nate Powell seems more interested in provoking questions than providing clear answers. You're left to form your own conclusions, which to some might prove frustrating, while others might find the experience illuminating. Either way, you'll be left thinking.