Kokopelli & Company

"Kokopelli & Company" is a comic strip drawn by science historian and cartoonist Larry Gonick, aimed generally at ten- to fifteen-year-olds. Appearing monthly in "Muse" magazine, the strip relates the adventures of the nine New Muses, talented but definitely eccentric personalities tasked with helping humanity. Unlike the Muses of Greek mythology, the new lot includes Muses of Plants, Animals, Hardware, Software, Getting Along with People, Bad Poetry, Tunes and Tricks, and Factoids. The ninth New Muse, Urania, the muse of astronomy,is a holdover from the original group.The Muses appear to be somewhat clueless about their predecessor muses: Feather has been able to state only 5 or 6 offhand. When asked if there was one about pottery because the ancient Greeks were good at pottery, his reply was "Beats me. They were good at spinach pie, too, but I don't think they had a Muse for it."Gonick began drawing the strip in 1996. In April 2005, he published "Attack of the Smart Pies," an illustrated novel featuring the New Muses and an orphan girl named Emma ref|Emma-evolves.

etting

The New Muses inhabit a desert region called Kokonino County ref|Smart-Pies. This name is an homage to George Herriman's "Krazy Kat," which takes place in "Coconino County, Arizona". (An actual Coconino County, Arizona exists, but it does not possess the landmarks which Herriman gives it, most of which actually appear in Monument Valley.) The characters in "Krazy Kat" speak a bizarre dialect of puns, foreign languages, literary allusions and mispronounced words spelled phonetically. One of Herriman's habits was replacing hard "C" with "K," as in the strip's title; however, he rarely altered the spelling of "Coconino" itself, as Gonick does.

The original Coconino County derives its name from the Havasupai word for "little water" [http://www.grandcanyontreks.org/place.htm#C] . Gonick's revision makes the name parallel "kokopelli," in which the "koko-" stem is (probably) a reference to a Hopi and Zuni deity.

Characters

The New Muses are, in no particular order:

* Feather: the Muse of Plants. A genial but often slow-witted birdlike creature, he was born in Assyria and resembles the part-human, part-bird figures shown pollinating plants in Assyrian sculptures. He loves doughnuts.

*Pwt: the Muse of Animals. An Egyptian figure of indeterminate gender (much like Herriman's Krazy Kat in this respect), Pwt is usually seen trying to catch Crraw in a net. His/Her name has no vowels, thanks to the nature of Egyptian hieroglyphics. (You pronounce it PYOO-it, according to a letter someone wrote in to Muse.) The magazine writers tried to keep Pwt's gender indeterminate, but slipped up a couple times, and Pwt is now generally accepted to be a he, although some Muse readers still believe that Pwt is female.

*Chad: the Muse of Hardware, born in Mali. His invention of "Intelligent Air" is what enables the Muses to watch human beings from afar and whisper suggestions, which the self-centered humans take to be their own "inner voice". He has a twin brother named Frad.

*Aeiou: the Muse of Software, born in Ulan Bator, she speaks only by waving her sleeves in a sort of semaphore, which fellow muse Crraw can interpret. She coded the software which controls Intelligent Air. She also has a twin sister named Bcdtghjklmnpqrs, a trait she shares with Chad.

*Bo: A cow from Abkhazia, Bo is the Muse of Factoids, miscellaneous facts with no ulterior organization. She spends most of her time chewing and staring into space.

*Crraw: the Muse of Bad Poetry, Crraw is a crow from Chicago.

*Mimi: Muse of Getting Along with People, Mimi is friendlier towards humans than the other Muses tend to be (in person, that is—save for Kokopelli, they all tend to be helpful via Intelligent Air). Born in the Australian Outback, she is angular and tall, with elongated spikes emerging from her head which not even other Muses can quite idenitify: "was it hair? feathers? a bizarre hat?" ref|Smart-Pies. Because she enjoys personal human company more than the other Muses, she was less eager to make Kokonino County a human-free zone, which occasionally leads her to quarrel with her fellow Muses.

*Urania: the Athenian Muse of Astronomy, she is the only one of the original Greek Muses to continue working with the new group. She is often the target for Kokopelli's pies.

*Kokopelli: Hailing from Arizona and now the Muse of Tunes and Tricks, Kokopelli is a flute-playing, Puck-like figure with a silhouette body and wiry hair. His general form is patterned on the kokopelli seen in Native American petroglyphs. When he is not inspiring humans to play tricks upon one another, he is setting up elaborate practical jokes, which often culminate in pie-throwing. He appears to be the most popular with readers of the comic strip.

References

* [http://www.cricketmag.com/activity_display.asp?id=194 "Kokopelli & Company" official web site]
* Gonick, Larry. "Attack of the Smart Pies." (Cricket Books: 2005), ISBN 0-8126-2740-7.
* [http://www.musefanpage.com/NewFiles/smart_pies.html#reviews Fan reviews] of "Attack of the Smart Pies."
* " [http://www.larrygonick.com/html/for/archives/000014.html Emma Evolves] ", from Gonick's web forum