Portal:Cats/Selected article/3
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Krazy Kat is a comic strip created by George Herriman that appeared in U.S. newspapers between 1913 and 1944. It was first published in William Randolph Hearst's New York Evening Journal. Set in a dreamlike portrayal of Herriman's vacation home of Coconino County, Arizona, Krazy Kat's mixture of surrealism, innocent playfulness, and poetic language have made it a favorite of comics aficionados and art critics for more than eighty years.
The strip focuses on the relationship triangle between its title character, a carefree and innocent cat of indeterminate gender (referred to as both male and female), her antagonist Ignatz Mouse, and the protective police dog, Officer Bull Pupp. Krazy nurses an unrequited love for the mouse, but Ignatz despises her and constantly schemes to throw a brick at her head; for unknown reasons, Krazy takes this as a sign of affection. Officer Pupp, as Coconino County's administrator of law and order, makes it his unwavering mission to interfere with Ignatz's brick-tossing plans and lock the mouse in the county jail.
Despite the slapstick simplicity of the general premise, it was the detailed characterization, combined with Herriman's visual and verbal creativity, that made Krazy Kat one of the first comics to be widely praised by intellectuals and treated as serious art.
