Guy Lochhead, 04/03/12
Prolific American comic strip artist of many series, the best known of which is Krazy Kat comic, featuring a cat (Krazy) and mouse’s (Ignatz) sideways explorations of their world, Coconino County. Herriman had a particular way of writing dialogue, taking poetic liberties with old-style American speech patterns in a way that highlighted the naivety of his characters whilst also further developing the parallel Coconino world. Much has been made of the racial politics of Herriman’s comics as he covered up his own Creole heritage on official documents, and always wore a hat to cover his “kinky” hair. Herriman’s later life was blighted by tragedy – his wife and daughter died unexpectedly in the ’30s – and he spent the rest of his life alone, continuing to produce his comics at the same impressive rate. He was a generous man who gave a lot to charity. He died in 1944. As in all the best comics – Peanuts, Calvin and Hobbes etc. – Herriman succeeds in making profound and deeply moving observations of our world accessible through humour, beautiful drawing and loveable characters, and a fair bit of surrealism. Herriman is notable as one of the first successful African-American comic strip artists, and this awareness of race comes through in his art. Although, for him, the roots of this are sadly in prejudice and personal crisis, it actually manifests itself in quite an idealistic way – racial identities are swapped and confused without any real consequence, the characters speak in a curious patois of minority dialects and street language – and happens rarely enough not to overshadow the other messages of the strips. I will include a Krazy Kat collection. My favourite are the coloured versions from the ’20s. His other comics were sometimes pretty good, but not nearly as consistent or timeless as Krazy Kat.