Shifting Sands Dusts It's Cheeks In Powdered Beauty
2006
120 pgs.
Written and Drawn by George Herriman
Edited by Bill Blackbeard
Designed by Chris Ware
Published by Fantagraphics
Fantagraphics continues it's paperback collection with the seventh overall book of Krazy Kat cartoons. Crossing the 1935 line brought these books into the color years of Herriman's classic work--they also depressingly bring the reader 3 books away from the year of Herriman's untimely demise. Still, there's a morbid gratitude in the small output that George Herriman had--when someone's work was perfect everytime, it can be easier to deal with when there isn't too much of it. In an apt comparison, Herriman's Krazy Kat is similar to Cervantes literary output: not having any more means that one has more time for Quixote. The impulse that strikes one as the pages get turned in Krazy Kat isn't just "how much better can this possibly get?" but also "When will i find the time to read this again?" As we near the seventy-fifth anniversaries of both the creation and end of Krazy Kat, the amount of impact this brief cartoon continues to make itself felt in animation, newspaper strips and the written word. What was once a strange cartoon taking up space in all of William Randolph Hearst has, years later, become one of the strongest libraries of poetry and art that any American can claim. The likelihood that George Herriman was a black man "posing" lends an even more fascinating aspect to an already near-perfect piece of history.
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