Krazy Kat Bob Naylor Special
Here’s a whole month of Bob Naylor’s version of Krazy Kat, all signed Herriman. These originally appeared from 2-21 to 3-18-1944. These strips are pretty good, they represent Herriman’s spirit well, and Naylor has the personalities of the characters “Nayled” (sorry). You’ll notice that the gags mostly center around bricks and Offissa Pupp putting Ignatz in jail. Even Kolin Kelly appears. In Herriman’s 1944 strips, the brick tossing is mostly implied, not shown. Ignatz often ends the strips by starting to pick up a brick, but not actually throwing it. Herriman starts introducing other characters, dogs, birds, and so forth. But Bob Naylor has reverted back to the earlier days of “Krazy Kat”, with the original cast. The strips from 3-13 to 3-18-44 all refer to “frozen” bricks. This is a reference to World War Two rationing, in which products were “frozen”, in other words, no longer made. “Frozen” also referred to fixed price controls during the war. Here, Naylor makes humorous comparisons between frozen products no longer made, and frozen products literally sold from an electric freezer. In 1944, fresh frozen foods, such as orange juice, were just starting up. It took until 1945 and post war years, for frozen orange juice to be perfected so that it tasted good and households could afford electric freezers. So this storyline by Bob Naylor is quite futuristic, wouldn’t you say?
I’ve been having a lot of trouble with WordPress lately. A lot of the image displays are distorted vertically, and I don’t know how to fix the problem. Can any of my WordPress expert readers help me? I am willing to pay you if you can fix the distorted images. In the meantime, just right-click on the image, select “View Image”, and the picture displays in normal proportions. Sorry to make my readers and viewers work so hard to use my blog, but that’s the way things are for right now. If you want to blow these comics up to full screen, just right-click the image, select “View Image” to put it in to a new window. Then press “Crtl” and press the “+” symbol repeatedly. The image will enlarge to the limit of your system’s settings. Enjoy, sorry it’s been so long since the last post.
Charles Brubaker says:
These are fascinating! I never knew about Bob Naylor doing “Krazy”. Thanks for sharing, Mark!
Mark says:
Thanks Charles! Bob Naylor obviously had talent as a Herriman imitator; style mimic. The big weak spot is his lettering, doesn’t look like Garge’s font at all. Herriman is back in the next batch of dailies, and stays with the strip to the end. Naylor never did come back, nor was he invited back to continue the strip after Garge passed on. If Krazy Kat had been a big profit center for King Features, they would have continued the strip. But I think it was in less than 30 papers in 1944, so they pulled the plug.
Snorre Smari M. says:
Yes, thanks so much for posting these “Krazy’s.” And I agree — it’s been widely claimed that King Features didn’t continue Krazy after Herriman’s death because of the strip’s “uniqueness,” but Naylor actually does more than a passable job in the strips here. Had Krazy appeared in 800 papers, I think it’s quite likely that Naylor would’ve been expected to keep drawing the strip.
Eyal Amiran says:
Thanks for posting! Is this the complete run of Naylors? Where is there reference info for this?
One tell is that Naylor doesn’t include the period after JAIL. His syntax is also a little off, though that’s harder to explain. For ex. he puts dashes at the end of sentences only. Herriman figured out apostrophes earlier, but kept some other features of his charming sentences, which tend to retain an ineffable incompleteness. I’d love to hear more. amiran@uci.edu
Mark says:
Hi Eyal, I’m glad you are reading the latter-day Kats. Your observations about Bob Naylor’s style seem quite sharp. I’ve never noticed the writing differences as much as the art. I don’t know if Naylor used quotation marks as artistically as Garge did, Herriman’s character speeches are LOADED with quotation marks. I’ve often wondered, just WHO or WHAT are Krazy and the gang “quoting” so liberally? Thanks for your comments, Mark