Gilbert Seldes' article "The Krazy Kat Who Walks by Himself" was the earliest example of a critic from the high arts giving serious attention to a comic strip.

Herriman's work has been a primary influence on cartoonists such as Elzie C. Segar, Will Eisner, Charles M. Schulz, Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Bill Watterson, and Chris Ware.

In the strip's main motif and dynamic, Ignatz Mouse pelted Krazy with bricks, which the naïve, androgynous Kat interpreted as symbols of love.

He was a prolific cartoonist who produced a large number of strips and illustrated Don Marquis's books of poetry about Archy and Mehitabel, an alley cat and a cockroach.

[2] He was born into a mixed-race family and came from a line of French-speaking Louisiana Creole mulattoes[3] who were considered free people of color,[4] and were reportedly active in the early abolitionist movement.

[1] His paternal great-grandfather, Stephen Herriman, was a white New Yorker who had children with Justine Olivier,[5] a free woman of color, and owned a tailor shop on Royal Street in New Orleans.

He was unsuccessful at first, and survived by working as a barker and billboard painter at Coney Island, until one of the leading humor magazines of the day, Judge, accepted some of his cartoons.

Professor Otto and his Auto, about a terrifyingly dangerous driver, followed in March, and Acrobatic Archie, a "kid strip" with a child protagonist, first appeared in April.

[14] With his future as a cartoonist seemingly assured, Herriman traveled back to Los Angeles to marry his childhood sweetheart and returned with her to New York.

"[16] Herriman's work was increasing in popularity, and he occasionally had front-page, full-color strips for the Pulitzer supplements, such as Two Jolly Jackies about two unemployed sailors, which began in January 1903.

Herriman still produced syndicate work, such as Major Ozone's Fresh Air Crusade for the World Color Printing Company beginning January 2, 1904.

[18] The same month, Herriman moved from the World to the New York Daily News, where he was given a larger quantity and variety of work, including cartoon reporting on sports and politics.

[20] Rudolph Block hired Herriman for the Hearst papers with "a salary commensurate with his talents", starting April 22 at the New York American,[20] which ran no daily comic strips at the time.

[31] Mary's Home from College, a precursor to the popular "girl strips" such as Cliff Sterrett's Polly and Her Pals and John Held Jr.'s Merely Margie, ran from February 19, 1909 until January 4, 1910.

[39] The original title returned after the strip of November 15, 1911, when the Dingbats' building was demolished to make room for a department store and they and their upstairs nemeses parted paths.

[39] Critics do not regard the strip highly, but it provided the vehicle for a fruitful situation: in the July 26 episode, a mouse threw a brick at the family cat—called "Kat"—which hit the cat on the head.

[43] Only Hearst's personal support allowed the strip to continue, as the reception from the readers showed zero interest or enthusiasm according to comics historian Bill Blackbeard.

[45] But it was liked by famous artists and writers such as Willem de Kooning, Picasso and Edwin Denby, and later by E. E. Cummings, Jack Kerouac and Umberto Eco.

[48] Herriman visited Monument Valley in Arizona and similar places in New Mexico and southern Utah, and incorporated the distinct forms of the desert landscape into his strips.

In 1922, he moved back to Hollywood,[61] into a two-story Spanish-style home at 1617 North Sierra Bonita,[62] from where he made frequent visits to the Arizona desert.

The strip appeared in few papers, and after it ended in 1932, Herriman worked only on Krazy Kat, although he provided illustrations for Don Marquis' popular Archy and Mehitabel, a series of books of poetry about a cat and a cockroach.

[79] At the time, Hearst usually engaged new cartoonists when the artists of popular strips quit or died, but he made an exception for Herriman, as he felt that no one could take his place.

According to comics academic Jeet Heer, his early work is "replete with black caricatures", such as Musical Mose, in which the lead character, an African-American musician, wishes his "color would fade".

In one such episode, a brick thrown by the blackened Ignatz hits Krazy, who declares, "A lil Eetiopium Mice, black like a month from midnights.

While researching for Herriman's entry for the Dictionary of American Biography, Berger discovered the cartoonist's race was listed as "colored" on his birth certificate obtained from the New Orleans Board of Health.

[85] On reading this, African-American poet Ishmael Reed dedicated his 1972 novel Mumbo Jumbo to "George Herriman, Afro-American, who created Krazy Kat".

[91] Will Eisner[100] discovered Herriman's comics when he was selling newspapers in the 1930s and called Krazy Kat "the big strong influence" on his own work.

[102] Herriman's widespread influence on American underground comix,[103] particularly his shape-shifting, psychedelic backgrounds, lack of respect for convention and his irreverence, is evident in the work of Robert Crumb,[104] Denis Kitchen, and Bobby London.

Krazy Kat was a primary influence on other cartoonists such as Charles M. Schulz of Peanuts,[107] Bill Watterson of Calvin and Hobbes,[108] and the Italian Massimo Mattioli.

[124] In his last few years, Herriman's arthritis led to an ever-scratchier style of art; he used a knife to scratch out whites from inked surfaces, giving the artwork the look of a woodcut.