"Krazy Kat is the greatest comic of all time." Umm... why?

[hebesphenomegacorona]

*Originally posted by Not In Anger *
**I can, yes. Krazy Kat is not only the best cartoon strip of all time, it is the best visual art and concept of all time. For every day for 26 years Mr. Harriman produced a strip, each of which had the exact same plot: mouse beans cat, dog arrests mouse. **

Garfield does nearly the same damn thing, except there’s at least 2 plots.

Garfield is hated.

What’s the difference?

[dakravel]

Because in Krazy Kat the characters actually do something. They interact in a way that Garfield, Odie and Jon could never even comprehend. And Krazy Kat has way more style to it, the can be fantastic, each iteration of the plot actually introduced something new to it, rather than feeling like the same thing every time. Bottom line, Garfield = boring like making me want to rip my eyes out, Krazy Kat = entertainment, pure entertainment and enjoyment.

[sjc]

I’m just thinking about the whole “Bonds could beat Ruth if they duked it out and C&H is better than KK if you ignore the historical context” argument. I guess it makes sense, except that many of the things that make Calvin and Hobbes good are things that Watterson probably learned from reading Krazy Kat and similarly, Barry Bonds learned baseball in world that had already experienced Babe Ruth and seen what was possible.

In other words, it is useful to look at things side by side stripped of their contexts, but that won’t change the fact that the newer thing may be great at least in part because of the influence of the older thing.

[capacitor]

*Originally posted by RickJay *
**Cervaise, do you deconstruct breakfast cereal boxes?

The problem with claiming that “Krazy Kat” is the best comic strip ever, as opposed to “Calvin and Hobbes,” is the same problem as declaring what the greatest movie of all time is… is it “Citizen Kane” or “The Godfather”? It’s the Ruth-Bonds Effect; it’s impossible to adequately define “greatest” when elements of quality have changed over time.

See, you can’t really say for sure whether Babe Ruth or Barry Bonds was the best ballplayer of all time. There is absolutely no question whatsoever that if you could put them in a time machine and have them face the same pitchers, Barry Bonds would blow Babe Ruth off the field. Hell, watch a tape of the two taking a swing; Bonds’s swing is so much faster it’s ridiculous.

And so it is with “Krazy Kat.” If you put all the comic strips in the world side-to-side and asked me to pick the best, just on what’s on paper, I absolutely would pick “Calvin and Hobbes.” no question about it, no hesitation, no doubts at all. But Calvin and Hobbes started what, seventy years later? Krazy Kat = Ruth, Calvin and Hobbes = Bonds. Watterson - and I am confident he will be the first to tell you this - is standing on Herriman’s shoulders. How do you compare a strip made in the early, early years of strips to a strip made today? It’s just how you define greatness. **

The difference is that Ruth would be able to strike out Bonds (he was one of the best lefty pitchers in AL history before he converted), while Bonds cannot strike out Ruth.

The Kat’s creators turned one basic plot and found an infinite amount of permutations around it, and kept fans entertained to this day. The art and innovation of variation was a huge leap from Punch and Judy-type puppet sketches the comic strip was based on. The only equivalent leap in adaptation was from sketch comedy radio shows to the development of the sit coms in I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners, of which elements of both shows influence all sit-coms following the two.

[Wumpus]

But could Ignatz outpitch Babe Ruth, that’s the question!

[Colinmarshall]

Well, with bricks, sure.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

In a world in Pogo exists, this entire discussion is completely pointless.

[Michael_Ellis]

The greatest cartoon ever is The Far Side.

[hebesphenomegacorona]

/BloomCounty/Calvin And Hobbes/Pogo.

I tried reading Krazy Kat.
Fucking incomprehensible.

[Johanna]

Robert Anton Wilson had his share of fun with Krazy Kat in his novel Masks of the Illuminati…

There was an American newspaper in the railway carriage: a curiosity in itself, and it was open to a page of comic strips, an art form Sir John had never been able to fathom. He glanced at it idly and found that one sequence involved a malicious mouse named Ignatz who was always throwing bricks at a cat named Krazy. It was totally insane, and worse yet, the cat enjoyed being hit with the bricks, sighing contentedly as each missile bounced off her head, “Li’l dollink, always fetful.” That was evidently some debased American-Jewish dialect for “Little darling, always faithful.” Sir John shuddered. The whole thing was not funny at all; it was a bare-faced exploitation of the perversion named sadism. Or was it masochism? Or was it both? A gloomy omen, in any case…

A few pages later, after talk of a mysterious occult secret society…

On the train home, by the most implausible of coincidences—he wasn’t even sure it was in the same compartment—he again found an American newspaper and, stranger still, there was that sadistic mouse and the masochistic cat again: “Li’l dollink, always fetful.”

After four years of training in the Golden Dawn, Sir John felt exactly like that bizarre cat, and when Joyce and Einstein offered to help him on Bahnhofstrasse, he giggled inanely and said, “Li’l dollink, always fetful.”

[Mr2001]

*Originally posted by Colinmarshall *
**Well, with bricks, sure. **

What if Babe Ruth had a brickbat?

[hebesphenomegacorona]

Then he could whack barry bonds and become the greatest baseball player again.

[Kaitlyn]

I hope that it was clear that my bold declaration that Calvin and Hobbes is the greatest comic strip ever was meant to be ironic in light of what I had written just before making that assertion.

As for Ruth vs. Bonds, there should be no doubt whatsoever that Ruth is the greatest player ever.

And just in case anyone is interested, a collection of every Far Side cartoon every printed is being released on October 20.

[Skillet38]

If you really want to get your freak on, read the novel Krazy Kat, by Jay Cantor.

my dahlink, I’m too pooped to code

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0394550250/qid=1064891502/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/002-2577805-3502469?v=glance&s=books

[Skillet38]

oh btw

everything Cervaise so eloquently stated goes for me too. Herriman was the Salvador Dali of the strips

[Not_In_Anger]

Yes. Cervais’ post was greatly enjoyed in this corner.

[cuauhtemoc]

*Originally posted by dakravel *
**You know…, if you’d have bothered to read the thread, easily half the posts here would have significant clues telling you what it is. **

I did read the thread, I was just taking the piss. Although I really had never heard of Krazy Kat before this. Now that I know what it is, however, I’ve seen the light. Krazy Kat embodies absolute perfection. Evil to deny Krazy Kat! I’m calling up the Pope right now and telling him to go piss up a rope, for I have seen the One True Way, and lo, it is Krazy Kat.

[size=1]I’m still taking the piss, dakravel.

[Homebrew]

*Originally posted by RealityChuck *
**The issue with Krazy Kat is that you either agree that it’s the greatest strip ever or you don’t understand why anyone thinks it’s any good. There’s no middle ground.

The key to understanding is to read each strip several times. Reading it once doesn’t really give you the full flavor. Try rereading a few times and you may begin to see what’s going on. **

Each reread makes me like it less. Put me down on the side that doesn’t get it.

[Homebrew]

Oh yeah, I dislike Tom and Jerry, too.