The creator of the zenith of comic strip art, Krazy Kat, George Joseph Herriman was born in 1880, in New Orleans. As a teenager, his family moved to Los Angeles to escape the restrictions of the Jim Crow laws.From 1901 and 1910, Herriman produced his first regular strip, Musical Mose, as well as other features like Acrobatic Archie, Professor Otto and His Auto, Major Ozone's Fresh Air Crusade, Mary's Home from College, and Gooseberry Sprig. 1910 launched The Family Upstairs, for The New York Evening Journal, a Hearst paper. The strip would feature the first appearance of Herriman's most well-known characters, Krazy Kat and Ignatz the mouse, who received their own strip in 1913. When The Family Upstairs ended in 1916, Herriman began another project, Baron Bean, which would run for three years. The subtlety and surrealism of Krazy Kat never made it a hit with the general public, but it was popular in artistic and intellectual circles, and William Randolph Hearst was an ardent supporter. With Herriman's passing in 1944, Hearst ordered the strip cancelled, rather than continued with another artist.
