Every so often, one institution or another will make a list of the most influential comics of all time. While these lists are by no means common, it’s an even rarer occasion when George Herriman’s Krazy Kat is left off the list. In 1999, the Comics Journal recognized this when it listed Krazy Kat as the 1 best American comic of the 20^th century. If you’re looking for somewhere to spend the money you’re saving after switching your wireless internet service, Fantagraphics’ collections of the classic strips (starting with 2002′s Krazy & Ignatz 1925-1926: “There is a Heppy Land Furfur A-waay”) are a great way to experience what everyone’s been talking about.The strip is centered around three anthropomorphic animals. There’s the titular Krazy Kat, an ambiguously-gendered feline who speaks in a dialect similar to that of Herriman’s native New Orleans (known as Yat). Herriman refused to specify a gender for Krazy, instead referring to him as “something like a sprite, an elf. They have no sex. So that Kat can’t be a he or a she.” Krazy Kat is a naively innocent counterpart to the mischievous Ignatz Mouse, who finds his greatest pleasure in throwing bricks at Krazy’s head. Nevertheless, Krazy is hopelessly in love with Ignatz. Offissa Pup, representing the “Limb of Law and Arm of Order,” often thwarts Ignatz’s plots against Krazy, ironically leaving the Kat wondering where his “l’il ainjil” has gone. The strip ran daily in William Randolph Hearst’s New York Evening Journal from 1913 to 1944. However, the characters appeared even before that as minor characters in Herriman’s first strip, The Family Upstairs.As you might guess from the title of the Fantagraphics collection, imaginative and playful spelling is a hallmark of Krazy Kat. Fellow experimental linguist e.e. cummings was a public fan of the strip and even wrote the introduction to the first published collection. However, Krazy Kat‘s linguistic playfulness would be nowhere as influential if it were not combined with a similarly poetic visual vocabulary. Herriman set the strip in an offbeat version of Coconino County, Arizona, and southwestern and Navajo motifs appear regularly. While the daily strips originally stuck to a five-panel vertical format, Herriman used the full-page Sunday strips to experiment with unique panel and layout designs. The artistic qualities of the comic made it a favorite with art critic Gilbert Seldes, abstract expressionist Willem de Kooning, journalist H.L. Mencken, and Beat pioneer Jack Kerouac.Numerous cartoonists owe a debt to Herriman and Krazy Kat. His mark can be seen most clearly Chuck Jones’ Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner cartoons and Patrick McDonnell’s Mutts, but Will Eisner and Charles Schulz have also proclaimed the comic’s influence on their own work. If you’ve never experienced Krazy Kat and his friends before, there’s no better time than the present.