Kim Deitch

Kim Deitch (born May 21, 1944 in Los Angeles, California) is an American cartoonist who was an important figure in the underground comix movement of the 1960s, remaining active in the decades that followed with a variety of books and comics, sometimes using the pseudonym Fowlton Means.

Much of Kim Deitch's work deals with the animation industry and characters from the world of cartoons. His best-known character is a mysterious cat named Waldo, whose appearance is reminiscent of such black cat characters as Felix the Cat, Julius the Cat, and Krazy Kat.

The son of illustrator and animator Gene Deitch, Kim Deitch has sometimes worked with his brothers Simon Deitch and Seth Deitch.

Biography

Early life and education

Deitch's influences include Winsor McCay, Chester Gould, Jack Cole, and Will Eisner; he attended the Pratt Institute. Before deciding to become a professional cartoonist, Deitch worked odd jobs and did manual labor, including with the merchant marine. Searching for a path, he at one point joined the Republican Party; at another point he became a devotee of Hatha yoga.

Career

Deitch regularly contributed comical, psychedelia-tinged comic strips (featuring the flower child "Sunshine Girl" and "Uncle Ed, The India Rubber Man") to New York City's premier underground newspaper, the '' East Village Other'', beginning in 1967. He joined Bhob Stewart as an editor of EVO's all-comics spin-off, '' Gothic Blimp Works'', in 1969. During this period, he lived with fellow cartoonist Spain Rodriguez in a sixth-floor walk-up apartment in New York's East Village.

In 1969, he moved to San Francisco, which at that point was the epicenter of the underground comix movement. Deitch was also a publisher, as co-founder of the Cartoonists Co-Op Press, a publishing venture by Deitch, Jay Lynch, Bill Griffith, Jerry Lane, Willy Murphy, Diane Noomin, and Art Spiegelman that operated in 1973–1974.

Deitch's '' The Boulevard of Broken Dreams'', released in 2002, helped bring his work to the mainstream book trade. The book was chosen by ''Time'' magazine in 2005 as one of the 100 best English-language graphic novels ever written.

In 2008, the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art featured a retrospective exhibition of his work.

Waldo

Deitch's character Waldo the Cat, first created in 1966, appears variously as a famous cartoon character of the 1930s, as an actual character in the "reality" of the strips, as the hallucination of a hopeless alcoholic surnamed Mishkin (a victim of the '' Boulevard of Broken Dreams''), or as the demonic reincarnation of Judas Iscariot. He occasionally is even claimed to have overcome Deitch and created the comics himself.

Speaking about Waldo in an interview, Deitch explained:

Later in the interview, however, Deitch offered this admission:

Personal life

From his first relationship, to cartoonist and author Trina Robbins, Deitch has a daughter, Casey.
Through most of the 1970s, Deitch was in an 11-year relationship with animator Sally Cruikshank. He met fellow artist Pam Butler in 1994 and they subsequently married. Of Butler, Deitch says, "Her influence on my work cannot be underestimated. You could say that she has become my very best collaborator."

Awards

Deitch won the 2003 Eisner Award for Best Single Issue for ''The Stuff of Dreams'' (Fantagraphics) and in 2008 he was given an Inkpot Award.

In 2024, Deitch was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Awards Hall of Fame

Nominations

* 2003 Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album-Reprint (for ''The Boulevard of Broken Dreams'')
* 2004:
** Ignatz Award for Outstanding Series (for ''The Stuff of Dreams'')
** Ignatz Award for Outstanding Comic (for ''The Stuff of Dreams'' #2)
* 2005 Angoulême International Comics Festival Prize for Best Album (for ''Une tragédie américaine'' 'The Boulevard of Broken Dreams''
* 2006 Ignatz Award for Outstanding Comic (for ''The Stuff of Dreams'' #3)
* 2014:
** Ignatz Award for Outstanding Graphic Novel (for ''The Amazing, Enlightening and Absolutely True Adventures of Katherine Whaley'')
** Ignatz Award for Outstanding Artist (for ''The Amazing, Enlightening and Absolutely True Adventures of Katherine Whaley'')
* 2016 Ignatz Award for Outstanding Story (for "Shrine of the Monkey God," from '' Kramers Ergot'' #8)

Bibliography

Creator series and books

: Books arranged in order by original published date (publication date shown first, then title, publisher, number of pages, date drawn, and availability). OOP = Out Of Print.Fantagraphics list, last page of ''Smilin' Ed''
* 1972–1973 ''Corn Fed Comics'' (Honeywell & Todd and Cartoonists Co-Op Press, 2 issues)
* 1988 ''No Business Like Show Business'' (3-D Zone)
* 1988 ''Hollywoodland'' (Fantagraphics, 76 pg) — 1984 story (OOP)
* 1989 ''Beyond the Pale'' (Fantagraphics, 136 pg) — 22 stories produced in the period 1969-1984 (OOP)
* 1990 ''A Shroud for Waldo'' (Fantagraphics, 158 pg)
* 1993 '' The Boulevard of Broken Dreams'' (Fantagraphics, 48 pp.) — 40-page original story published in '' Raw'' in 1991 OP— with Simon Deitch
* 1992 ''All Waldo Comics'' (Fantagraphics, 60 pg) — 5 Waldo stories published in the period 1969-1988 (OOP)
* 1993 ''The Mishkin File!'' (Fantagraphics, 32 pg) original OOP; reprinted in '' The Boulevard of Broken Dreams'' (Pantheon 2002)
* 2001 ''A Shroud for Waldo'' (Fantagraphics Books, 64 pp.)
* 2002 '' The Boulevard of Broken Dreams'' (Pantheon, 160 pg)
* 2002 '' The Stuff of Dreams'' (Fantagraphics, 136 pg) — original OOP; collected and released by Pantheon as a hardback in 2007 as '' Alias the Cat!''
* 2006 ''Shadowland'' (Fantagraphics, 182 pg) — 10 stories (OOP)
* 2007 ''Deitch's Pictorama'' (Fantagraphics, 184 pg) — co-authored with Simon Deitch and Seth Kallen Deitch; includes 78-pg "Sunshine Girl"
* 2010 ''The Search for Smilin' Ed'' (Fantagraphics, 162 pg) — serialized in '' Zero Zero'' beginning in 1999
* 2013 ''The Amazing, Enlightening and Absolutely True Adventures of Katherine Whaley!'' (Fantagraphics, 176 pg) Hardback
* 2019 ''Reincarnation Stories'' (Fantagraphics, 260 pg) Hardback

Publications appeared in

*''Apex Treasury of Underground Comics'', Links Books/Quick Fox, 1974,
*'' Arcade''
*'' Bijou Funnies'' — issues #2, 3, and 8
*''Corporate Crime Comics''
*'' East Village Other''
*'' Gothic Blimp Works''
*'' Heavy Metal''
*''High Times''
*''Laugh in the Dark''
*''LA Weekly''
* ''Lean Years''
* '' Mineshaft Magazine''
*''Pictopia''
*''Prime Cuts''
*'' Raw''
*''Swift Comics'' (Bantam Books, April 1971) — with Art Spiegelman, Allan Shenker and Trina Robbins
*'' Southern Fried Fugitives''
*''Tales of Sex and Death''
*''Get Stupid''
*''Webcomic Hurricane Relief Telethon''
*'' Weirdo''
*'' Young Lust''
*'' Zero Zero''

Animation

*''Easy Groove'' ID, Nickelodeon, 1987
*''Farmer & Cat'' ID, MTV, 1996
*"Dallas", '' Venue Songs'', They Might Be Giants, 2005

References

External links

*
*

Kim Deitch's entry in the Webcomic Hurricane Relief Telethon


"The Ship That Never Came In!," an animated cartoon based on a Waldo strip that Deitch originally wrote for ''Pictopia'' in 1992.

*

Interviews

* Ford, Jeffrey
"An Interview with Kim Deitch", Fantastic Metropolis (Oct. 9, 2002)
* Heller, Steven
AIGA.com: "Underground Comix Come of Age: An Interview with Kim Deitch" (March 27, 2007).

{{DEFAULTSORT:Deitch, Kim
1944 births
American comics artists
American comic strip cartoonists
American comics writers
American humorists
Inkpot Award winners
Jewish American comics artists
Jewish American comics writers
Underground cartoonists
Raw (magazine)
Living people
People from the East Village, Manhattan
21st-century American Jews