From American Caricature and Comic Art, Part II by La Touche Hancock
The Bookman, November 1902

Art combined with poetry is the characteristic of George Herriman. Were his drawings not so well known one would think he had mistaken his vocation. Listen!

"Inspiration! Who ever heard of a comic artist being inspired? Take him out into a field where the green grasses, swept by caressing zephyrs, bend and nod in rapt delight, dodging the nibble of the frisky, hungry lamb as it gambols hither and thither, and see if he (the artist, not the lamb) can see in this any blissful clutch, grasping heart, mind and soul in a grip of steely delight. No! He’ll draw a lamb all right – a lamb so distorted that the green nodding field will rise in disgust to smite him.

"What does he know of the inspiration to be obtained from blue, azure, turquoise skies with fleecy clouds riding on and on, whither no one knows. Now take the clouds and skies of which I speak, blend them with the green grass and gambolling lambs, and a few trees, a few red-roofed barns, little hamlets in the distance, a lake, a creek, a rustic bridge, a nestling home amid clinging vines, and lots and lots of other things so dear to an artist’s heart, place them in full view of the inspired one and see the light of imagination fire him. They never will. His mind and soul have lost that delicate sense of the poetic and artistic, which one would naturally think were indigenous and he will turn away with a sigh, sit down at his desk and continue to worry out idioticies for the edification of an inartistic majority!"