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All I knew about "Krazy Kat" was its status as an influential great among early newspaper comic strips, so when I encountered a large, coffee-table-worthy volume entitled "Krazy Kat: the Comic Art of George Herriman" at my wife Honey's new (used) book store, I gleefully snatched it up.
(Technically it is not my wife's book store. It is a subset of The Way Station, a faith-based charity, and its adjacent thrift store in downtown East Liverpool. But Honey, in collusion with Way Station managers, organized it and cajoled a number of other unrepentant lovers of real books into voluntary labor to make it a reality. Credit where credit is due.)
After perusing this book for a short time, I announced to my wife that I had fallen in love with Krazy Kat and was going to run away and live forever in George Harriman's comic world.
Upon sober reflection I realized that I, like Krazy Kat, had been beaned by a brick thrown by his/her eternal antagonist and love interest, Ignatz Mouse, and that living in a comic strip world was not for mere mortals such as I.
I was enamored of comics from an early age. When just a tot, and my dear father would ask what bedtime story I would like, my answer was always the same: "Bambi." (The Disney comic book version, not the Whittaker Chambers English translation of German author Felix Salten's 1922 original. Chambers, a literati and former communist, is best known for his 1950 testimony against former State Department official Alger Hiss, a Soviet spy and darling of the American liberal establishment. I was born in 1950 but don't remember it.)
Unmoved by the failure of Bambi's mother to come back (Blam!) from The Meadow, I was eager to start first grade so I could learn to read comic books myself. I was devastated after my first day of school when I could not. Soon enough I did learn to read, and strained my eyesight at a young age by simultaneously reading ten-cent Donald Duck comic books and watching TV shows such as "The Lone Ranger" on the three television networks (not counting Pittsburgh PBS Channel 13) that were all we had back in those days.
My dad loved to read the daily newspaper comic strips to me, my mother and two sisters, if we would listen. Never mind that he would usually laugh and fumble the punch line, or that we would get only half the joke by not seeing the artwork. That did not deter my father any more than it does me now when I tell my wife, "Listen to what the mom says today in 'Baby Blues.' Ha!"
As a lifelong follower of comic strips, I am tired of the worn-out gags in hand-me-down strips such as "Beetle Bailey," "Blondie," and "Hagar the Horrible." Even worse are strips like "Funky Winkerbean" that age their characters and try to stay fresh by having them face problems of death, illness and problems of modern life. Gaahh.
Scott Adams' "Dilbert" is one of the few bright spots, remaining funny and darkly ironic about the corporate workplace. Perhaps someday another Bill Watterson ("Calvin and Hobbes") and Gary Larson ("The Far Side") will come along. We can only hope.
You can find dozens of funny, edgy comic strips existing in the distant safety of the internet, but few can do that and survive the Tyranny of the Aggrieved in local daily newspapers.
George Harriman's main characters were a naive but wise, androgynous cat named Krazy, his/her love interest in a vindictive, violent mouse named Ignatz, who hated him, and a dog, Officer Pupp, who loved and tried to protect Krazy. It was an eternal triangle in which none of the three comprehended the emotional states of the others. In nearly every daily and Sunday installment over a period of 32 years, up to Harriman's death in 1944, Ignatz beaned Krazy with a brick, an assault which the Kat perceived as an expression of endearment. Krazy Kat's groundbreaking artwork and literate, philosophical content attracted fans as celebrated and diverse as Frank Capra, e.e. cummings, Will Rogers and Pablo Picasso.
And now, me. Long live Krazy Kat.
(Fred Miller's third book, "A Dead Carp on Shadyside Ave." is priced at $10, a great stocking stuffer and available locally at Calcutta Giant Eagle, Pottery City Antique Mall, Museum of Ceramics, Frank's Pastries, Connie's Corner Restaurant, Davis Bros. pharmacies and the Old Ft. Steuben gift shop.)