The cult favorite comic strip Krazy Kat originated in the hands of George Herriman, an artist who worked for the Hearst newspaper publishing chain in the first decades of the twentieth century. Herriman was an unconventional figure, as were many of his "funny-page" colleagues, and much liked by his peers.

Krazy Kat, which ran for thirty-three years beginning in 1911, had numerous fans in its day, including President Woodrow Wilson, who reportedly read it aloud at cabinet meetings. Describing Krazy Kat, a New York Review of Books contributor in 1985 observed, "The drawing was remarkable, with certain surrealistic inventions, especially in the improbable lunar landscapes, deliberately intended to divorce the events from any verisimilitude." The critic went on to describe the conceit of Krazy Kat as an "absurd situation without particularly comic ingredients" out of which the cartoonist nonetheless "drew an infinite series of variations" that with the accumulated wealth...