…fascinating…Tisserand does a truly exhaustive job detailing Herriman's private and public lives…Krazy is absolutely an essential companion to any deep dig into Herriman's work via the many critical books and blogs on comics and, of course, the original Krazy Kat cartoons in anthologies and online.
The New York Times Book Review - Nelson George
10/17/2016
One of the many virtues of Michael Tisserand’s richly illustrated biography of George Herriman, the creator of “Krazy Kat,” is its evocation of the early 20th-century newspaper world from which it sprang.” — Wall Street Journal
“Essential reading for comics fans and history buffs, Krazy is a roaring success, providing an indispensable new perspective on turn-of-the-century America.” — Kirkus (starred)
“Who was the man behind “Krazy Kat”? This fascinating biography and guide to the work of the cartoonist, who passed for white, tells the full story.” — New York Times
“Tisserand … has written the rarest kind of book: scholarship that is accessible and captivating, genuinely fun to read. His prose sparkles, smooth and flowing, rich with metaphor and invention.” — Chicago Tribune
“... one of the year’s best biographies.” — Boston Globe
“Krazy , so rich in anecdote and so warm in affection, succeeds in adding a good deal to the wonder of George Herriman’s legacy – mainly by putting the artist in last place on Earth he liked to be: in the spotlight, center stage.” — Christian Science Monitor
“It’s one of the best true stories told in 2016.” — Philadelphia Inquirer
“... engaging, revealing…. Herriman’s adventures in newspapering in the early years of the 20th century are alone worth the price of the book.... Whether you’re a longtime Krazy Kat fan, as I am, or a new acquaintance, this biography will enrich your knowledge of the Kat and its creator.” — Tampa Bay Times
“Perhaps no one in his field is as deserving of a top-notch, in-depth biography as Herriman. And with Michael Tisserand’s Krazy we now have a most valuable, studiously researched, and, indeed, definitive profile of the man that does him full justice.” — Print
“Herriman’s delight in anarchic transformation and gentle subversion had personal roots, as Michael Tisserand reveals in this scrupulously researched, luminously written and eye-opening biography.” — The Times Literary Supplement
“A visionary strip. Who drew it, and wherefrom? Tisserand’s robust research illuminates, without diminishing, the mystery.” — Roy Blount Jr.
“An athletic feat of scholarship and an effort of love—like one of Ignatz’s bricks to the head. Tisserand’s immaculately researched and super-readable biography captures the madcap modernist Herriman and the weird America of surreal racial realities and publishing superpowers that shaped his revolutionary art.” — Hillary Chute
“George Herriman was a poet in a new visual language. As a man, he was an enigma to match his greatest creation, the sublime Krazy Kat . Michael Tisserand has done a masterful job of illuminating this life lived in the shadowy borderlands of racial identity; along the way he also gives a brilliant overview of the golden years of American cartooning. Krazy is a monumental work of biography about a true American genius.” — Tom Piazza
“This is a gripping read at the intersection of pop culture and American history.” — Publisher’s Weekly
“An absorbing study of a genius with a secret.” — New Orleans Times-Picayune
“Rich in original research, New Orleans writer Tisserand’s encyclopedia biography of Krazy Kat artist George Herriman is also an enlightening history of modern comic strips.” — Shelf Awareness
“Tisserand presents a well-researched, engaging biography of George Herriman (1880-1944), creator of the comic strip Krazy Kat .... At every step, this work brilliantly re-creates the milieu of its subject’s life by shading in the historical context. A significant book for comics scholars and those interested in tracing Herriman’s development from novice to master of the medium.” — Paul Steins, Library Journal
Perhaps no one in his field is as deserving of a top-notch, in-depth biography as Herriman. And with Michael Tisserand’s Krazy we now have a most valuable, studiously researched, and, indeed, definitive profile of the man that does him full justice.
... engaging, revealing…. Herriman’s adventures in newspapering in the early years of the 20th century are alone worth the price of the book.... Whether you’re a longtime Krazy Kat fan, as I am, or a new acquaintance, this biography will enrich your knowledge of the Kat and its creator.
It’s one of the best true stories told in 2016.
Who was the man behind “Krazy Kat”? This fascinating biography and guide to the work of the cartoonist, who passed for white, tells the full story.
One of the many virtues of Michael Tisserand’s richly illustrated biography of George Herriman, the creator of “Krazy Kat,” is its evocation of the early 20th-century newspaper world from which it sprang.
Tisserand … has written the rarest kind of book: scholarship that is accessible and captivating, genuinely fun to read. His prose sparkles, smooth and flowing, rich with metaphor and invention.
Krazy , so rich in anecdote and so warm in affection, succeeds in adding a good deal to the wonder of George Herriman’s legacy – mainly by putting the artist in last place on Earth he liked to be: in the spotlight, center stage.
Christian Science Monitor
... one of the year’s best biographies.
Herriman’s delight in anarchic transformation and gentle subversion had personal roots, as Michael Tisserand reveals in this scrupulously researched, luminously written and eye-opening biography.
The Times Literary Supplement
An absorbing study of a genius with a secret.
New Orleans Times-Picayune
This is a gripping read at the intersection of pop culture and American history.
Tisserand presents a well-researched, engaging biography of George Herriman (1880-1944), creator of the comic strip Krazy Kat .... At every step, this work brilliantly re-creates the milieu of its subject’s life by shading in the historical context. A significant book for comics scholars and those interested in tracing Herriman’s development from novice to master of the medium.
An athletic feat of scholarship and an effort of love—like one of Ignatz’s bricks to the head. Tisserand’s immaculately researched and super-readable biography captures the madcap modernist Herriman and the weird America of surreal racial realities and publishing superpowers that shaped his revolutionary art.
Rich in original research, New Orleans writer Tisserand’s encyclopedia biography of Krazy Kat artist George Herriman is also an enlightening history of modern comic strips.
George Herriman was a poet in a new visual language. As a man, he was an enigma to match his greatest creation, the sublime Krazy Kat . Michael Tisserand has done a masterful job of illuminating this life lived in the shadowy borderlands of racial identity; along the way he also gives a brilliant overview of the golden years of American cartooning. Krazy is a monumental work of biography about a true American genius.
A visionary strip. Who drew it, and wherefrom? Tisserand’s robust research illuminates, without diminishing, the mystery.
One of the many virtues of Michael Tisserand’s richly illustrated biography of George Herriman, the creator of “Krazy Kat,” is its evocation of the early 20th-century newspaper world from which it sprang.
Tisserand … has written the rarest kind of book: scholarship that is accessible and captivating, genuinely fun to read. His prose sparkles, smooth and flowing, rich with metaphor and invention.
Tisserand tells a big story and a compelling one. Equally spellbinding is the deeply personal portrait of a man with a secret — and a man who had many friends, loved his family, endured his share of tragedy but kept, as Tisserand puts it, ‘his sense of wonder and delight.’
Krazy: George Herriman, a Life in Black and White by Michael Tisserand, skillfully returns context to “Krazy Kat,” revealing that it could have come from no other time or place than during the accelerated rise of the American media empire.... Tisserand’s work is impressive. His seating of Herriman’s achievements among other battling art forms of the time is essential for understanding comics history.
A wonderful biography of one of our greatest American comic-strip artists… the surreal, Kafkaesque adventures of besotted Krazy Kat and the indifferent Ignatz are examined in this massively researched book as commentary on the artist’s racial identity and the uneasy place of African-Americans in U.S. society in the early 20th century.
A visionary strip. Who drew it, and wherefrom? Tisserand’s robust research illuminates, without diminishing, the mystery.
For decades I’ve been hoping for a new, experimental African-American voice to emerge in the language of comics, but Michael Tisserand’s Krazy draws back the curtain on the one who’s been with us all along. A true archeological dig through the details of George Herriman’s Creole origins and the racial bigotry his family faced in Louisiana before reinventing themselves in California as white, Krazy reconnects the leads of the greatest comic strip ever to its tragic source, illuminating not only its poetic complexities, but also allowing it to burn as brightly as all of the great art of the twentieth century. Tisserand’s irresistible, rollicking re-creation of the insane world of early newspapering, the unsettled West, and especially our unsettling country proves George Herriman’s individual lyrical voice—an equal, I think, of Baldwin’s, Ellison’s, and Angelou’s—was really asking the saddest single question of all: Why do they hate us so much?
Krazy is crazy good—a powerful and endlessly entertaining treatment of one of our most original artists. Michael Tisserand has given us a book as bold, brilliant, and beautiful as Herriman’s own body of work. This will surely stand as the definitive biography, one that will be read for generations to come.
A remarkable work documenting how one of the most singular achievements in twentieth-century popular culture came to be. Michael Tisserand has dug deep in the archives and examined George Herriman’s work with ingenuity and insight, emerging with a riveting narrative that wears its impressive scholarship with lightness and grace. Especially revelatory is Tisserand’s probing account of how Herriman negotiated—through Krazy Kat and his other work—the contentiousness and contradictions of race in America.
Michael Tisserand’s lovingly baked brick of a biography is essential for every comics and art lover’s library. Krazy Kat was highly acclaimed as a work of art generations before almost anyone—Herriman included!—thought of putting ‘comics’ and ‘art’ meaningfully into the same sentence. But beyond this book’s obvious urgency for comics lovers, Tisserand conscientiously explores the enigmatic traces of a great artist’s life hidden in plain sight. He follows the diffident and elusive Herriman’s journey through thickly crosshatched surrealist mesas right into the heart of America’s darkness-the color line that shaped and looped through all of Krazy Kat’s other lines to intersect with so much of America’s culture. Zip! Pow!
★ 01/01/2018
★ 2016-09-17
