Kim Deitch

From Vero - Wikipedia
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Template:Short description Template:Infobox comics creator Kim Deitch (born May 21, 1944<ref name = WhosWho />) 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.<ref name=lam>Template:Cite web</ref> 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.<ref name=lam />

Biography

Early life and education

Deitch was born in Los Angeles, California.<ref name=Apex>Template:Cite book</ref> His influences include Winsor McCay, Chester Gould, Jack Cole, and Will Eisner; he attended the Pratt Institute.<ref name=WhosWho>Template:Cite web</ref> 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.<ref name=Apex />

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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 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.<ref name=Apex />

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.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Deitch's The Boulevard of Broken Dreams, released in 2002, helped bring his work to the mainstream book trade.<ref name=Hatfield2004>Template:Cite journal</ref> The book was chosen by Time magazine in 2005 as one of the 100 best English-language graphic novels ever written.<ref name="Time">Template:Cite magazine</ref>

In 2008, the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art featured a retrospective exhibition of his work.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Waldo

Deitch's character Waldo the Cat, first created in Template:Circa 1966,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 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),<ref name=PW>Template:Cite news</ref> or as the demonic reincarnation of Judas Iscariot.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> He occasionally is even claimed to have overcome Deitch and created the comics himself.

Speaking about Waldo in an interview, Deitch explained: Template:Cquote

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

Personal life

From his first relationship, to cartoonist and author Trina Robbins, Deitch has a daughter, Casey.<ref name=comicsthroughtime>Template:Cite book</ref> Through most of the 1970s, Deitch was in an 11-year relationship with animator Sally Cruikshank.<ref name=DeitchTCJ /><ref name = WhosWho /> He met fellow artist Pam Butler in 1994 and they subsequently married.<ref name=comicsthroughtime /> Of Butler, Deitch says, "Her influence on my work cannot be underestimated. You could say that she has become my very best collaborator."<ref name=LJ2019 />

Awards

Deitch won the 2003 Eisner Award for Best Single Issue for The Stuff of Dreams (Fantagraphics)<ref name="Eisners2003" /> and in 2008 he was given an Inkpot Award.

In 2024, Deitch was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Awards Hall of Fame<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Nominations

  • 2003 Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album-Reprint (for The Boulevard of Broken Dreams)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
  • 2004:
    • Ignatz Award for Outstanding Series (for The Stuff of Dreams)
    • Ignatz Award for Outstanding Comic (for The Stuff of Dreams #2)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
  • 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)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
  • 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)<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
  • 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.<ref>Fantagraphics list, last page of Smilin' Ed</ref>
  • 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 [OOP] — 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.) Template:Isbn
  • 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

File:Lean years.jpg
Lean Years (1974), a Cartoonists Co-op Press one-shot with cover art by Deitch.

Animation

References

Template:Reflist

Interviews

Template:Underground comix cartoonists Template:Inkpot Award 2000s

Template:Authority control

Retrieved from "https://wiki.sarg.dev/index.php?title=Kim_Deitch&oldid=202229"