The Kat Who Walked In Beauty: The Panoramic Dailies of 1920 (Fantagraphics)

A unique collection of rare Krazy Kat in a handsome hardcover format.

For the past five years, Fantagraphics has been comprehensively publishing the complete Krazy Kat Sundays. Now we offer a unique, stand-alone companion to that series. The Kat Who Walked in Beauty collects many rare and unique dailies from the 1910s and 1920s. Though many readers are aware of Herriman's dynamic Sunday pages, fewer know that during 1920, in what must have been an editorially unrestrictive period for Herriman, he drew some of the most graphic and brilliantly conceived daily strips ever created; they look like "mini-Sunday" strips. This nine-month stretch of dailies, never-before-reprinted, is among the treasures included in this collection. The revolutionary layout and pictorial content of these strips ended in late-1920, but for a brief period in 1921, the expanded layouts resume and are included here. The collection includes many other Herriman gems, including the very first stand-alone Krazy & Ignatz strips from 1911, and the illustrations from Herriman's Krazy Kat Jazz pantomime / ballet, performed to captivated New York audiences in 1922.

Although Herriman's work is an American treasure, the Krazy Kat daily strip remains obscure even for the determined enthusiast. This book fills in several gaps in the daily strip history, reproduced at close to their original size.