Krazy And Ignatz 19191921 A Kind Benevolent And Amiable Brick George Herriman by George Herriman 9781606993644, 160699364X instant download after payment.

This is the second of thirteen volumes reprinting every Sunday page of George Herriman’s masterpiece for the first time since their original publication almost a century ago. 

Each page is a hilarious, poetic masterpiece, crackling with verbal wit and graphic brilliance. Those were the days...! New readers may find the amount of dialogue in these early strips challenging. In the 1900s, people paid money to go out and listen to speeches. In the style of his times, Herriman’s characters fill their speech balloons with grandly meandering, dramatic and ridiculous talk packed with alliteration, classical and topical references, puns, songs and other wordplay. The Kat, in particular, has a very distinctive way of mangling language and it takes a while to become used to it. It’s worth persevering. What seems simply odd or tiresome at first turns into poetic and hilarious silliness once you’re tuned in.

This is an absolutely marvellous restoration of one of the most highly regarded of all American comics. The cover designs by Chris Ware are beautiful and the interiors are excellently presented. If you have never read Krazy Kat before, spend some time with these volumes. You may need some patience and perhaps a dictionary for some of the language, but once hooked on George Herriman’s unique whimsy, there’s no going back.

As usual, the cover is designed by Chris Ware, featuring a striking two-color look that will set this latest volume apart from the previous eleven.