and to unmask that family. Herriman would complete the daily comics about the Dingbats, and finding himself with time left over in his 8-hour work day, filled the bottom of the strip with slapstick drawings of the upstairs family's mouse preying upon the Dingbats' cat. This "basement strip" grew into something much larger than the original cartoon. Krazy Kat first appeared as its own daily comic strip in 1911, and then again in the summer of 1912, although only temporarily at the time. It again became a daily comic strip (running vertically down the side of the page) in October 1913, and was thereafter to remain in syndication for more than thirty years. A black and white, full-page Krazy Kat Sunday comic was launched on April 23, 1916. Possibly due to the objections of editors, who did not think it was suitable for the comics sections, Krazy Kat originally appeared in the Hearst papers' art and drama sections. It has been claimed that Hearst himself, however, enjoyed the strip so much that he gave Herriman a lifetime contract and guaranteed the cartoonist complete creative freedom, although according to Michael Tisserand's biography on Herriman (2016), there exists no proof that this alleged lifetime contract was ever made or signed. Despite its relatively low popularity among the general public, Krazy Kat gained a wide following among intellectuals. In 1922, a jazz ballet based on the comic was produced and scored by John Alden Carpenter; though the performance played to sold-out crowds on two nights and was given positive reviews in The New York Times and The New Republic, it failed to boost the strip's popularity as Hearst had hoped. In addition to Seldes and Cummings, contemporary admirers of Krazy Kat included Willem de Kooning, H. L. Mencken, P. G. Wodehouse, Jack Kerouac, and artist Paul Nash. In 1931, Nash wrote that "No country has produced, in the narrow limits of this medium, a fantastic philosopher such as George Herriman." More recent scholars and authors have seen the strip as reflecting the Dada movement and prefiguring postmodernism. In the summer of 1934, the Krazy Kat Sunday page was temporarily shelved, although the daily strip continued as before. Beginning in June 1935, Krazy Kat's Sunday page returned, and was thereafter published in full color. Though the number of newspapers carrying it dwindled in its last decade, Herriman continued to draw Krazy Kat, creating roughly