THE KAT WHO WALKED IN BEAUTY

In the spirit of an absolute krazy konquest, Fantagraphics Books published in June 2007 The Kat Who Walked in Beauty (114 15x11-inch pages in b/w; hardcover, $29.95), a museum-quality compilation of  daily strips from the 1920s, when, for a short time (March 4 to October 30, 1920), Herriman was investing the daily Krazy with the kind of fanciful backgrounds and varying layouts that elevated his Sunday pages to high art. The book also includes the illustrations Herriman supplied for the program booklet for “Krazy Kat: A Jazz Pantomime,” a 1922 theatrical extravaganza by John Alden Carpenter. Herriman’s drawings reprise the Carpenter action, which, based upon the strip, reenacts the ritual romance that binds the Kat, the Mouse and Offisa Pup together in an eternal triangle with Krazy, whom Carpenter calls “the world’s greatest optimist—Don Quixote and Parsifal rolled into one,” at the apex.

Incidentally, the book’s title, which is probably supplied by Derya Ataker, from whose collection the content is culled (and who edited the book and furnished its introduction), recalls a Navajo poem, a night chant:

With beauty before me, I walk / With beauty behind me, I walk / With beauty above and about me, I walk / It is finished in beauty / It is finished in beauty.

Herriman, who had a deep affection and abiding admiration for the Navajos, whose venues he regularly visited (and depicted in the shifting landscapes in Krazy), would doubtless have appreciated the tribute inherent in Ataker’s title.