George Herriman’s Krazy Kat ran in the Sunday papers from 1913 until 1944. The strip’s offbeat poetry and idiosyncratic dialect made it one of the first comics to be taken seriously by intellectuals and praised as high art (e. e. cummings wrote the introduction to the first collection of the comic to be published as a book). The premise is a deceptively simple love triangle: Ignatz the mouse despises sweet, simpleminded Krazy Kat, who nurses an undying love for him. Ignatz hurls bricks at Krazy, who takes each one as a sign of affection (“Li’l dollink, allus f’etful,” he says, as the bricks bounce off his head). Officer Pup, in love with Krazy Kat, attempts to protect him by thwarting Ignatz and jailing him. In the strip below, from 1918, Ignatz and Krazy come down with the Spanish flu, which apparently can be contracted by dreaming of bull fights.

Page courtesy of Michael Tisserand, author of Krazy: George Herriman, a Life in Black and White

George Herriman was a cartoonist, best known for the influential ‘Krazy Kat.’

Michael DeForge’s new book Familiar Face imagines a society in which the acceleration of capitalism has reached a feverish peak. In the name of optimization, the world is constantly reshaping itself. Citizens wake each morning in unfamiliar bodies, their features wholly transformed; the map shuffles weekly, sometimes even daily, resulting in inescapable culs-de-sac and sudden dead ends. “The street you were driving on,” the narrator remarks, “would fold in on itself without any warning.” The nature of these mandatory updates remains shrouded in mystery, though they’re conducted under the guise of progress. In the excerpt below, the protagonist of the book returns home from her job, contends with her new bodies, and stumbles across an old photo album labeled “Long Weekend.” 

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The below is an excerpt from Yoshiharu Tsuge’s semiautobiographical manga The Man without Talent (translated from the Japanese by Ryan Holmberg). In keeping with the customs of the medium, both the panels and the text are intended to be read from right to left.

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“There was a time when drawing and writing were not separated for you. In fact, our ability to write could only come from our willingness and inclination to draw.” So begins Making Comics, the latest book from the artist and writer Lynda Barry, who’s spent the past few years acting as a sort of patron saint of creativity. The creative impulse, Barry argues, is intrinsic to our humanity; her popular classes at the University of Wisconsin–Madison are open to students from all departments. If you’re envious of these lucky pupils, fear not: Making Comics is stuffed to the gills with Barry’s friendly wisdom, characteristic doodles, and mind-expanding exercises. An excerpt appears below.

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Artist Kim Deitch wakes up at 4 A.M. every morning. In less than an hour, he is sitting at his drawing table, doing what he has done for more than fifty years: drawing comics. His latest—and most ambitious—graphic novel, Reincarnation Stories, reflects back on his long career while being utterly unlike anything he has ever done before. In this epoch-spanning pseudo-autobiographical book, Deitch leads the reader on a time-hopping, picaresque journey through his soul’s previous incarnations, tracing a mysterious thread that runs through his personal histories, real and imagined, back to before the dawn of recorded time. Read More

A short, uplifting comic by Jason Novak.

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