Archy, a cockroach, is a poet suicide, reincarnated. He discovers he can still write, but only by painfully banging one key at a time, with his head, on a typewriter[1]: he is most fascinated by, and most frequently records, the exploits of the utterly amoral cat, Mehitabel, who is determined to squeeze whatever joy she can out of life while she can (no matter how many bad choices she has to make in order to do so).
Children's animation was a lot different in 1971.[2]
I saw
Shinbone Alley on television when I was 7.[3] It disturbed me in that very specific, seared-indelibly-in-one's-unconscious, possibly formative fashion. So, of course, when I was some years older, I tracked down the source material: collections of poetry by Don Marquis, written in the teens through the '30s and subsequently illustrated by George Herriman (
archy and mehitabel,
archys life of mehitabel and
archy does his part, amassed in
the lives and times of archy and mehitabel). I promptly fell in love with it (which fits right in with Marquis' themes: his characters are always falling in love with that which will mess them up).
I didn't love the illustrations, though: the characters were "off model," they lacked the thick, brushy, voluptuous line of the animation. (In retrospect,
Shinbone Alley's two sequences that are a tribute to Herriman —
one in a Krazy Kat-esque style, and
another in which they recreate a few of his illustrations from the book as pictures in a photo album — are a lovely homage. Overall, however,
Shinbone Alley has a more squalid, sexualized tone: for example, in Marquis' poems, Archy, in his human existence, merely died, rather than killing himself. Also, the film adds a romantic dimension to Archy and Mehitabel's relationship.)
But, I read the books at least once a year (though I've never managed to keep copies on hand: I keep buying them and then either lending them or gifting them to friends) and Herriman's illustrations grew on me: a youthful, beribboned Mehitabel trailing behind a larger cat, hopelessly infatuated; Mehitabel managing to both fish and contemplate a flower while lounging in a boat, pyramids on a distant shore.
Though Mehitabel resembles a gendered (Mehitabel is both intensely feminine and pointedly undomesticated), more feline version of Krazy Kat, Herriman's Archy suggests, more than resembles, a cockroach (if one
could pinpoint what kind of cockroach Archy is, in my humble opinion it would be an American one): it may be the hat. Which is not to say that Herriman's version of Archy isn't definitive: it is. Other illustrators, before and after Herriman, have tried their hand (including Edward Gorey), but none have matched Herriman: his rendering of Archy is simply a whole other layer of characterization. And, though the font (and the lack of capitalization) is diegetic, Marquis couldn't possibly have found an illustrator more sensitive to language: when certain lines are transcribed in Herriman's lettering, they seem especially to sing (they're so full of life, they're practically vibrating).
Nowadays, I can't look at
Krazy Kat without thinking of Herriman's Archy and Mehitabel.[4] I daresay that the illustrations, resembling one-panel cartoons, may be a more accessible starting point to his work. As might be evident by this point, Marquis' and Herriman's visions were so simpatico, I sometimes have a hard time, even as an adult and as a professional, separating the film and the book from both each other and Herriman's comic strip (according to Patrick McDonnell in his book
Krazy Kat: The Comic Art of George Herriman, Herriman was very happy with his illustrations).
Though Archy and Mehitabel are Marquis's creations, visually, it's sometimes difficult not to picture Mehitabel, especially, as a Krazy Kat who has tasted the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and been cast out of Eden (or Coconino County, as the case may be) into New York's urban streets, left to face her mortality. Still: irrepressible.
Notes:
[1] This is a metaphor I appreciate more and more as I get older.
[2] One might argue that it's not really intended for children, but when I picked up the DVD to do some additional research for this piece, it was filed in the "children's animation" section in a highly respected, local video store.
[3] Fittingly, Shinbone Alley was a Broadway show in a previous incarnation: Eartha Kitt was cast as Mehitabel, which made the production interracial at a time it was still controversial to do so. For those who are aware of Herriman's mixed racial heritage, this is an interesting bit of trivia.
[4] For some strange reason, it took a long time for me to connect the two: years. Though, other than that small excerpt in The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics, Krazy Kat wasn't too widely available. (Full disclosure: Krazy Kat is being reprinted by my employer, Fantagraphics.)
Image credits:
George Herriman archy and mehitabel possibly ©1930 Doubleday
Shinbone Alley ©1971 Fine Arts Films, Inc.
Strip from Krazy and Ignatz: 1933-1934.
Kristy Valenti currently works for The Comics Journal and Fantagraphics Books, Inc.
Uncharted Territory is © Kristy Valenti, 2008
