George Herriman (1880-1944), the creator of Krazy Kat, was born in New Orleans and lived most of his life in Los Angeles, California. He is considered by many to be the greatest strip cartoonist of all time. Bill Blackbeard, the founder-director of the San Francisco Cartoon Art Museum, is the world's foremost authority on early 20th Century American comic strips. As a freelance writer, Blackbeard wrote, edited or contributed to more than 200 books on cartoons and comic strips, including The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics, 100 Years of Comic Strips, and the Krazy & Ignatz series. Franklin Christenson Chris Ware is an American cartoonist known for his Acme Novelty Library series (begun 1994) and the graphic novels Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth (2000), Building Stories (2012) and Rusty Brown (2019). His works explore themes of social isolation, emotional torment and depression. He tends to use a vivid color palette and realistic, meticulous detail. His lettering and images are often elaborate and sometimes evoke the ragtime era or another early 20th-century American design style.