ComicBook Experience

From the exhibition

Krazy Kat — The Washington Times, October 26, 1919

· October 26, 1919

Krazy Kat — The Washington Times, October 26, 1919
This Sunday page from *The Washington Times* gives George Herriman's Krazy Kat a narrow left-hand column — a sequence of silent panels in which the lovesick cat wordlessly circles a table, apparently playing "Ring Around Rosie," the gag building through repeated "Ah" exclamations to a deflated punchline. The spare staging, near-abstract furniture, and expressive lettering are Herriman's signature: emotion carried by posture, not dialogue. Sharing the page are The Dingbat Family, Abie the Agent, Jerry on the Job, Polly and Her Pals, and Us Boys — a full Sunday section representing the dominant commercial form of 1919 cartooning. These syndicated pages — printed in millions of households — established the recurring character, the speech balloon, and the multi-panel sequence that directly seeded the comic book format of the following decade.

Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain