Reading through a few of these strips of Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, I've noticed more than a few common themes and devices used. One constant is that each of them end with the dreamer waking up. The text leaves not too much to the imagination, as it really does spell out most of the information from the scene. Each starts with some sort of issue that they spend the remainder of the comic trying to solve, but something always goes wrong and they end up waking up. The style of the comic is very simple; mostly linework, little to no shading except to define dark clothing and some shadows. The panels jump around between scenes spastically as do many dreams. I think the point of these comics is realizing our own fantasties or fears, but at the same time understanding that reality has to kick in, and you have to wake up. For that matter, you can escape whatever problems you may have encountered in your dream state by waking up.
Krazy Kat confused me mostly because of the spastic style of sequencing and writing. The dialect takes a double take to really start to understand. We can expect that Krazy Kat and Ignatz Mouse are literally playing the cat and mouse game, and of course the tables are turned as well. It's expected that in the end Ignatz's plan is going to fail miserably. Krazy Kat also seems to take Ignatz's plans as affection. While watching the animated version of Krazy Kat I started to notice more that he's very dense. Again, this whole idea lends itself well to the comic strip format because it's a story that can be continued on without end.
--David
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