The sort of people who proclaim such things have declared (somewhere or other, now and then) that George Herriman's (1880-1944) Krazy Kat was the best comic strip ever, and for once, I am inclined to agree with those sort of people. Officially running from 1913 to 1944 (with earlier appearances for several years in The Dingbat Family and The Family Upstairs), Krazy Kat is the poetically pixilated portrait of the komedic kritters dwelling in Coconino County, a southwestern desert setting of constantly shifting (from panel to panel at that) appearance. Prominently... Krazy, a daft kat of konfused gender, who loves Ignatz Mouse, who loves to bean Krazy in the kabeza with a well-thrown brick (which Krazy receives happily as a token of Ignatz's affection). And then there is Officer Bull Pupp, canine cop, sworn foe of mouse and protector of kat. Thus the eternal triangle and its endless variations, augmented with digressions into the activities of the many other denizens of Coconino, including Joe Stork, Don Kiyoti, Mr. Bum Bill Bee and of course, Kolin Kelly -- manufacturer and purveyor of those essential bricks. Beginning as a compact daily strip with a definite vaudevillian quality, in 1916 Herriman was permitted to add a sprawling full-page Sunday strip (in those days when such lavish excesses were a matter of course) which opened up the stories and art into symphonic proportions. Mr. Herriman's art is a treat, delicately scrawly, easily elaborate, gently rough, intricately scratchy (generations before Gary Panter's ratty line theory) -- conveyed in fabulously creative layouts -- rectangles, squares, circles, ovals, triangles (get out your geometry book!), fancy borders, no borders, blank space, black space, and did I mention those ever-shifting backgrounds? Objects and sometimes characters can become nearly abstract shapes, always with funky eye appeal, right down to the omnipresent flower pots. And then there is the poetic prose and dialogue, a sometimes phonetically-rendered blend of real and imaginary ethnic dialects and elaborate wordplay. Little wonder James Joyce was a fan. If you haven't read Krazy Kat, you need this experience in your life. It's a comic from an entirely more elegant, leisurely, thoughtful and silly universe. It can be a bit obtuse at first, and while I would not say it's an acquired taste, one's appreciation does grow with more reading, especially from different eras of the run. In our modern age you can read a few of the strips online at some of the links scattered through here, though the selection is a bit sparse and the computerized rendering rather dodgy. It's no substitute for a well-printed book in your own two hands. The current main source for a Krazy Kat fix is Fantagraphics Books, who are publishing a series of volumes collecting two years a piece of Sunday pages -- beginning in 1925 and currently up to 1932. Back in the 1980s, the earlier Sunday strips were collected in a series of volumes from Eclipse Books/Turtle Island Foundation, beginning in 1916 and running up to 1924, but sadly these are long out of print and available only used (and no doubt for a pretty penny). Meanwhile, Pacific Comics is offering some collections of 1920s dailies. For a starter book though, your best bet would probably be Krazy Kat: The Comic Art of George Herriman (by Patrick McDonnell, Karen O'Connell, and Georgia Riley de Havenon), which combines a biography of Herriman, a history of his work and a fine selection of strips from the full span of his career. "Zip" "Pow" "Heart"