I’m posting the same question on the Comics Journal message board. Maybe a passer-by here will also have some info.
Anyway … Krazy Kat sure reads like it was marijuana inspired. Of course it’s tedious to assume that pot lies behind anything strange and original; I wouldn’t say Dr. Seuss or Thurber were stoned. But Krazy Kat has that air, don’t ask me why.
Googling turned up nothing but this mention by, I think, Skip Williamson (scroll down a good ways or do a word search). And the Library of Congress lists a book on Herriman that I may track down someday.
Resources aside, what’s the comics-world conventional wisdom on the question of Herriman as pothead?
Well,
I read the McDonnell book on Herriman (a biography of sorts with essays and strips). No mention of pot. Herriman seemed like a pretty bourgeois family man (of course that doesn’t mean no pot)…He did like to hang out in Indian country in Arizona, I believe. So…the stereotypical thing to do here would be to offer peyote as the more likely alternative….
Basically, the McDonnell book is hagiography, so any mention of drugs would be highly unlikely. I also read M. Thomas Inge’s essay on Krazy Kat. More academic, so perhaps more likely to share all the known info. No drug mentions there either. Still, I wouldn’t call any of this “evidence” unimpeachable…It is kind of a trippy strip.
Not just a trippy strip, but one that explicitly mentions drugs from time to time — the “tiger tea” sequence being perhaps the most obvious. I know there were other references that made me think of either peyote or pot, though I can’t recall the specifics offhand. Whether that means Herriman himself indulged, or was just up on the existence of these things, that’s an open question that probably won’t be answered, I’d think.
I have no idea, but I think it could very well be true.
I don´t think this is a coincidence, I thought the exact same thing while being high and reading it.
I suddenly could read it and really enjoy it.
The same thing that happens to me with "Dark side of the moon".
I really beleive Herriman draw most of Krazy Kat run on marijuana or peyote. There are continous references to marijuana as "marijuana" and "wid" in the strip, there is smoking but, above all, I think you really get the strip when you smoke. It really shows the strip was made in another state of conciousness, that was beyond its time (and still it is) It wouldn´t surprise at all and now I am even closer to beleiving it.
The strip is strongly influenced by pot, in its pacing, color use and use of space and light.