Michael Tisserand

Review also posted on my blog: https://bennilovesbooks.wordpress.com/2018/02/09/review-krazy-the-black-and-whit...

I first heard about George Herriman during my introduction to comics studies class during undergrad, and I immediately fell in love with Krazy Kat. It was a simple premise — the mouse threw bricks at the cat, the cat was in love with the mouse and viewed the bricks as a sign of affection, and the police dog was in love with the cat and kept going after the mouse because the show more mouse was hurting the cat. Such a simple story, and yet so many complexities. Race is a theme touched upon in many of the Krazy Kat strips, and gender within the comic is fascinating because Krazy’s gender isn’t static; in most strips Krazy’s gender is unspecified, and in a few “he” or “she” pronouns are used, and it’s never really implied that one is “more correct” than another, bringing into question both gender and sexuality of the characters. This book takes these and other themes found in the strip and Herriman’s other works and delves into how they relate to Herriman himself.

Herriman is a complex person who in many respects was very private about himself, and Tisserand did an excellent job of exploring Herriman’s life using what was available. Krazy Kat is Herriman’s most well-known work, so I appreciated the time that was spent covering his background and his other works that preceded Krazy Kat that hadn’t gotten so much attention. Some people seem to have found that this made the book too long for their taste, but I really liked this because it really shows how an artist of Herriman’s caliber got started in his career and centered him in his story rather than his work. I know Krazy Kat and I knew a little about Herriman already from my studies, and this book supplemented what I already knew with a rich story of Herriman’s life.

The writing in this book was also very smooth; while the book is a bit on the longer side for a biography, it flows well and is an easy and engaging read. I really enjoyed this book, and I’d recommend it to anyone who is interested in biographies about artists, comics, and complex human beings. Well worth reading.

Final rating: 5 of 5 stars show less

I picked up this biography on a whim and it has become an all time favorite.

Michael Tisserand uses his subject to weave together incredibly interesting and complex histories about newspapers, boxing, cartooning, a young film industry, and race in the early 20th century. It's an ambitious project, but Tisserand is fully up to the job and has written a book that hits the mark and is fun to read.

And that doesn't begin to mention how interesting George Herriman and Krazy Kat are, in and of show more themselves.

Tisserand treats his subject with care and does a great job describing Herriman's foundational art and work. show less

When I was a kid (we're talking 1960's here), I remember being introduced to "Krazy Kat" as a series of TV cartoons and thinking that there was something interesting going on here, but I really don't get it. Those thoughts basically lay fallow until this biography came out a few years ago, when it immediately went on the TBR list. My thoughts on having finished this work? As for the book itself, Tisserand is almost too careful of a writer at the start, as he lays out the family history that show more George Herriman was so careful to keep obscure, as having roots in the Free Black community of New Orleans would certainly have aborted the young man's aspirations to being a commercial artist. Once you get into the meat of the book, dealing with Herriman's career as a cartoonist, Tisserand treats those cartoons as a "text" to try and draw out truths about Herriman, and there's a strong argument to be made that said cartoons were a way for Herriman to vent what he was really feeling.

Apart from dealing with Herriman as an artist, Tisserand also explores the ins and outs of his subject's life, with the most interesting being how Herriman struck up a relationship with the Navajo community; outside of the company of his immediate family and peers, they seem to be the people Herriman felt most at home with. show less

Objectively, this is an excellent biography -- the writing is good, the research impeccable, etc., etc. It's also beautifully produced, with lots of examples of Herriman's work interspersed throughout the text. Unfortunately, what I have learned about myself is that I am not particularly interested in cartoonists of the early twentieth century.