Abstract
Krazy Kat is a comic strip that ran from 1913 to 1944 in the newspapers of William Randolph Hearst. Created by cartoonist George Herriman, it had a core plot that was repeated day after day: mouse throws brick at cat, then arrested by dog. Krazy Kat highlights the corresponding problem of emphasizing story information rather than the language-specific formal features of literary writing. This chapter examines Herriman’s use of language in the Krazy Kat cartoons and its literary effects through the lens of structural semiotics. It demonstrates how wrong critics are to dismiss language in comics. The chapter deliberately sidelines visual (and thematic) content in favor of linguistic content to illustrate how comics might truly be approached as literature and to argue for their literary potential. It also considers language’s minimal units and how Herriman plays with them, as well as his use of synonyms and his fondness for alliteration.
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