Krazy Kat, Little Nemo, and Comic Strips

            I had a look at some of the old Little Nemo and Krazy Kat strips for this week’s reading.  Thanks to History of Illustration sophomore year, I was familiar with Winsor McCay’s work like Little Nemo, as well as the animated shorts he created, but had never really considered looking at George Herriman’s Krazy Kat because of the simplistic art style (which was poor judgment on my end).

            The experimental nature of Little Nemo makes up a large part of why I enjoyed reading it: McCay was traipsing through somewhat unknown territory during this time, most notably playing with panel sizes and layouts (and his struggle with leaving enough space in his speech balloons for all the necessary dialogue is always entertaining).  I emphasize his panel and layout experimentation the most due to my love of two more sequences, The Walking Bed and Befuddle Hall (especially the latter).  You can really tell McCay was enjoying himself just playing around with a simple aspect most artists in the same field overlooked during that time, along with some of the techniques he would later utilize when creating some of his animations.

            I was surprised that, after being given a volume to read during class, I wound up really enjoying Krazy Kat as well.  Admittedly, the thick accent of the titular character is a bit hard to read at times, but the story itself provides entertainment for a large range of ages, and for some reason I was very fond of the feud between the baker and the brick maker and the results from using their own wares as ammunition during their fight.  As a whole, Krazy Kat had a very slapstick sense of humor that probably later influenced cartoons like Tom and Jerry, Itchy and Scratchy (from the Simpsons), and a good portion of the body of work created by Tex Avery (particularly Looney Toons).  It was actually quite refreshing to read, due to both the light-heartedness of the strip’s writing and it’s simplistic style: the images are clear and concise, and the dialogue gets the point across without being  too heavy or too simplistic in its form.