Since it’s anniversary month here at AG, here’s another June blast from the past: our Keith Knight interview from June 2006. As I said in the post about this month’s cover, I felt like that issue was really worth celebrating since it was our first anniversary after Katrina and we asked Keith Knight to draw me and editors Noah Bonaparte and Patrick Strange into the mix, which he did brilliantly. Keith happened to be in New Orleans that month to promote The Beginner’s Guide To Community-Based Arts to the librarian’s conference, so we put together a slideshow for him at Handsome Willy’s.

Here it is:

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We’re in an era of unparalleled awareness for the art of cartooning. Between George Bush’s uncanny ability to stimulate political cartoonists, the now-infamous Danish Muhammad cartoons, animated series based on strips like Aaron McGruder’s Boondocks, and–while much tamer to audiences, for sure–the domination of the box office by comic icons Spider-Man, Superman and Batman, more people are aware comics exist than ever before. One comic strip that can run the gamut of emotions all the above can inflict is Keith Knight’s The K Chronicles, a unique foray into politics, pop culture and human emotions. Knight is just as likely to reference Star Wars as he is to mention his mother, and in any given strip you may be treated to the lighthearted optimism of “Life’s Little Victories,” a theme that celebrates when the simple things in life go your way, or an unabashed send-up of Dick Cheney’s latest hunting misadventure. When you may least expect it, though, Knight can deliver a heartwrenching or heartwarming slice of life, whether it’s his wife’s cancer-scare (she’s okay), the death of an influential person (like comic great Will Eisner) or a tribute to the people of the Gulf Coast.

Knight’s not a Johnny-come-lately, some hanger-on to McGruder’s faux-provacativeness–he’s been a professional for over twelve years. He started out as a caricature artist in his hometown Boston and, once he moved to indie-comic Mecca San Francisco, worked his way from ‘zine artist to full-fledged newspaper comics page contributor. Since the K Chronicles became entrenched in publications nation(and world)wide, he’s started a second strip, (th)ink, a comic done in single panel style (a la a serious Far Side) meant to take on race and political issues. He’s also illustrated a book called The Beginner’s Guide To Community-Based Arts, a book that tells the stories of several activists who use art to make their communities around the country better.

The man’s got legs, as they say, and one method he’s used to accumulate fans is his slideshow, an indie-comics convention favorite. Knight hosts the show like a comedian, moving through pics of his strips and elaborating on their history like the college professor you always wished you had. ANTIGRAVITY has been on the Keith Knight train since its beginning–The K Chronicles was the first strip we decided to run, and when an opportunity to host a slideshow presented itself we pounced on it. AG presents the Keith Knight slideshow in the latter part of June, and we spoke with Knight about his growing up in Boston, working for ESPN and MAD, and some of his more controversial strips, like the one where he smoked crack with God.

ANTIGRAVITY: Let’s talk about The K Chronicles a bit. What were some of your influences for the strip at the beginning of your career? How have those influences evolved?

Keith Knight: Early influences include MAD, Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury, Berke Breathed’s Bloom County, Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes, Warner Bros. cartoons (especially Chuck Jones, but also Robert McKimson’s stuff), the cartoons in Parliament/Funkadelic albums and Charles Schulz’s Peanuts. Then, after moving to San Francisco, I discovered the legacy of underground comics. Matt Groening, Nina Paley, Jaime Crespo, Pete Bagge, Robert Crumb, Harvey Pekar and Harvey Kurtzman, plus the humor of Paul Mooney, Richard Pryor and Bill Hicks helped shape the strip into what it is now.

AG: How did growing up in Boston influence you becoming a cartoonist?

KK: Well, you’re totally influenced by your surroundings and Boston’s known as a pretty racist place, though you don’t really realize it when you’re growing up there. When you go someplace else they’re like, “Oh my God, you grew up in Boston, that must’ve been crazy.” I grew up with different types of people, so that was a big influence. And lobster rolls and the Red Sox. Hip-hop was a big thing, but they never let hip-hop groups play in Boston; it was pretty much banned. You had to go to Providence, Rhode Island to see a lot of bands and stuff. I remember Run DMC played at the Metro in ‘83, and Madonna played there too.

AG: Was cartooning a big deal in the Boston area?

KK: It was a big deal for me, obviously, but I don’ t know that it was a big deal in the area. My cousin Joel and my friend PJ used to do comics too. We’d all do the same characters, like it was our own company or something. I was influenced by them and I’m sure they were influenced by me. And by influenced I mean that they quit. [Laughs] I know I learned a lot from those guys.

AG: When did you realize cartooning was what you wanted to do?

KK: When I was a junior in high school I read Animal Farm in an English class. I had all these other books, Catcher in the Rye, one by Jack London, Treasure Island–I never read any of them, but I really liked Animal Farm. For some reason I could relate to farm animals. We had to do book reports and I told my teacher, “There’s no way I can do justice to this,” and he let me do a parody of Animal Farm in comic form. Instead of animals taking over a farm, I did students taking over my high school. I had myself, my friends and all these other people in it, and caricatures of teachers. Instead of rules like “four legs good, two legs bad,” it was like “under 18 good, over 18 bad.” The teacher loved it, and my only regret is that he scribbled over the whole thing. I got an A++, and he said I should be doing a syndicated cartoon strip.

AG: What did that lead to?

KK: It was the first time I’d heard “syndicate,” and was like, “whoa.” I had no idea about anything, so I did up a bunch of cartoons and went to my local paper and said, “I’m ready to be a cartoonist.” The guy was like, “You’re such a cute little boy, but we get our strips through a syndicate.” So, as a junior in high school I sent my strips off to a syndicate and never heard back. [Laughs] I got into my high school newspaper, then my college newspaper, then I moved to San Francisco and did a ‘zine, and then got into some papers and magazines out there.

AG: What prompted you to move to San Francisco?

KK: I had a job drawing caricatures in Boston that was the cushiest job in the world. You sit on your ass all day, in the sun, and it’s beautiful women all over the place. I was good at drawing gags and making people laugh, so I made a lot of money at a young age. In the late ’80s I was making anywhere from $15 to $30 an hour and then meeting women, going on break during happy hour, just having a good time. There was a guy who worked at the caricature place for like 30 years. He was a very large man who sat there all the time, and I saw me and him there 30 years from then. He was like, “Get out now.” I don’t even think he said that, It might have been a vision I had. Then there was another artist there who was very good, and he’d get sent nationwide for jobs, and he got sent to San Francisco. He came back and said that it was a gigantic version of all the places I hung out at in Boston. When I got out of college I just saved over that last summer, then took a few thousand bucks to San Francisco and never looked back.

AG: What are some of the differences in moral sensibilities in different parts of the country that your strips run?

KK: There’s this East Coast mentality I have that’s way different than the California mentality. I think it helps that I live on the West Coast but have that East Coast mentality. A lot of people get that humor. The only way to describe it is that in California people have an insincerity almost, like “I’ll call you, blah blah blah” and you never get a call, where on the East Coast they’ll just say “Eff you, get out of my face.” That I miss, and I live vicariously through my comics.

The places I have the most trouble running things are in San Francisco and Orange County, just over the Golden Gate bridge. There’s this kind of bizarre, uptight sensibility of “Oh no, we’re afraid of offending white people.” I drew myself smoking crack. It was a joke, and the fact that Charleston, North Carolina and all these places would run it and this one editor wouldn’t is just weird. Living out here, there’s almost an arrogance that everyone’s so open-minded that they have a stick up their butts. Again, at least on the East Coast they’ll tell you. I did this thing called “Cruel Joke To Play On a Black Jogger,” which is this white guy walking down the street and sees a black jogger pass by. The white guy screams “Thief!” The next panel the cops show up and start beating the jogger, and the white guy’s walking away and whistling. People called me a racist. I’d actually done the strip a long time ago, and nothing happened, and reran it not long after the whole Danish Muhammad cartoon thing, so I think people were bent out of shape about that. It happened in Colorado and on a college campus in Salem. The whole country got tight, I guess.

AG: And that was after the “Smoking Crack With God” strip.

KK: That ran everywhere.

AG: So there are two strips with you smoking crack. [Laughs]

KK: Yeah. “Smoking Crack With God” was just so over the top. The other one I wasn’t really smoking crack. I said, “Oh, lookee here, all this crack and no one to smoke it with,” and it was me standing next to this giant rock. I did “Smoking Crack With God” after because it was so over the top, and it’s me and God smoking crack. You’d think they wouldn’t run that one, but I guess that’s less realistic than God hating people. I mean God made crack, why wouldn’t he smoke it?

AG: Besides the controversial ones, what strips have you gotten the most feedback from?

KK: I did a series of strips where my wife was diagnosed with a tumor in her chest. The strips had her going in for the operation. That garnered more e-mails than I’d gotten in years. Tons and tons of e-mails and letters. People offering everything from their thoughts and stories to doctors from WebMD writing and a hospital in Boston offering their services. Amazing, nice letters. It was overwhelming, and I didn’t realize how many readers I had until that happened. I saved all of those, and some day I’m going to incorporate them into a slideshow.

After 9/11, when I started questioning what George Bush was doing–some people just don’t believe you should question the government.

AG: Was that feedback from actual readers or people who just stumbled upon it? You wouldn’t think people who read the strip on a regular basis would be that surprised.

KK: You’d be surprised. There were people who wrote me saying that I shouldn’t do politics, or that I should watch my mouth. Some people were concerned. Granted, I did get more political after 9/11, but it’s not like I was doing something completely different than I was doing before. I’m sure if people looked back at what they wrote then they might be ashamed.

AG: How’d you get your gigs at ESPN and MAD?

KK: This is advice for any cartoonist coming up–it’s perseverance. I’ve been around for twelve years now, and people who grow up liking your strip then work at papers or magazines and they get into positions where they can hire you. The guy at MAD, Jon Bresman, was a fan who lived in Berkeley. He was an intern at MAD and rose up to editor. That’s one of the highlights of my career, being in MAD. It’s one of those magazines that, when people ask where I’m printed, you can tell them and they get it. ESPN happened because a friend of mine, Dave Eggers, worked on the magazine. We did cartoons for the same paper for awhile. They were looking for a cartoonist and he recommended me. When I talked to them I told them I was from Boston and grew up with the Red Sox (before they won the ‘04 World Series), so it may have been a little sympathy on their end.

AG: What are some of the challenges in doing sports strips?

KK: It’s funny you say that, because I’m on deadline now. Because the magazine comes out every two weeks, it’s got to be good ten days from now, so it can’t be of the moment. I did a strip about how Detroit was suddenly a big sports town–they’d just held the Super Bowl, the Red Wings were favored (to win the Stanley Cup), the Pistons are favored to go all the way, the Tigers are in first place, but all of a sudden the Red Wings get knocked out in the first round, the Pistons might get knocked out, and by the time the magazine comes out the Tigers may not be in first place.

AG: Politically, how do you incorporate your views into the strips, and is there a worry that you might get too overbearing?

KK: Sometimes you don’t know you’re being overbearing until it happens. I haven’t done too many political strips lately because I’m worn out by it. If someone had suggested all the things that have happened since 2000, how ludicrous would it have been? At this point, nothing would surprise me, even if they said they were grinding children in the White House basement and selling the meat to McDonalds. I’m starting to focus on other things because that’s so depressing and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to change any time soon. So much stuff has happened, who wants to become President next?

AG: It’s like the sports coach mentality. You don’t want to be the guy who follows the guy, you want to be the guy who follows the guy who followed the guy.

KK: I might incorporate that into a strip soon. We hold our sports teams and coaches more responsible for their behavior than we do our government. Grady Little got fired from the Red Sox because he didn’t take Pedro out early enough, but we don’t have that kind of accountability with our government.

AG: You’ve been to New Orleans a number of times–what are some of your New Orleans experiences?

KK: I first came to New Orleans during an Association of Alternative Newsweeklies Convention. I was part of a group of indie cartoonists that was being ignored by all the editors. We’d all go out into the night and have an amazing time drinking, partying and complaining. At the same time, my friend (and writer of The Beginner’s Guide to Community-Based Arts) Mat Schwarzman had just moved to town and was living in the Treme. I was staying there and checking out the Mardi Gras Indian Museum just around the corner and hitting a lot of local spots and meeting some amazing people. I was getting both the tourist and the local experience at the same time. I remember meeting Ray Nagin while he was campaigning for Mayor the first time. Man, it seems so long ago. Anyway, I fell in love with the city like everybody else does and came back a number of times for JazzFest and to work on Beginner’s Guide. And I try to do New Orleans right when I mention the city in my strips.

AG: You’re coming to New Orleans because of The Beginner’s Guide To Community-Based Arts. What’s the book about, and how did you get involved with it?

KK: It was all Mat Schwarzman’s idea. The idea behind the book is that there are all these amazing artists around the country using their art to address community issues and create change, yet there was no book that encompassed the methods and celebrated the outcomes of what everybody was doing. He had me contribute to a sort of teaser version of the book that he could show to funders and it received some good feedback, so we started to move forward on the real version. Mat went around the country and interviewed different artists and organizations that used art to address and confront issues in their community. He transcribed the interviews, sent them to me and I formulated these comic strip stories from them. It was a five year project that was a grueling process, but it was worth it in the end. Since being released this past October, the book has been added to the curriculum of ten different colleges around the nation, including Harvard University and Columbia in Chicago.

AG: What are some of the differences in drawing for The Beginner’s Guide and doing the K Chronicles or (th)ink?

KK: Going beyond one page is neat, and I get to draw larger. Plus it wasn’t just coming from me. Mat interviewed people, and while it was a nightmare listening to all that tape, it was fun making a story out of it. I didn’t meet any of the artists until years after I’d finished the drawing, though I’d looked at tons of pictures. I picked up on things that I didn’t realize before, like their senses of humor. The best thing about it is that it brought me to New Orleans for the first time.

AG: One of the more popular aspects to your convention appearances is your slideshow. How are these put together and how does the audience get to interact?

KK: Well, I look for strips that read like I’m doing stand-up comedy. The drawings make it all the more effective. And I’ve done it enough to hone it to a smooth-running machine. Hopefully, the audience finds the strips funny, and I hope they think about stuff, too. I also have a post-slideshow Q & A that usually yields some really great questions.

AG: Finally, when you get to New Orleans, what are you looking forward to the most?

KK: Gosh, there are too many things. I think the biggest thing is reconnecting with all the folks I know and hearing from them how the rebuilding of New Orleans is going. I really want to hear the personal stories instead of the frustrating bullshit that we get in the mainstream media and political hot-head talkshows. And a few more: Verti Marte, Hubig’s pies, Jacque-Imo’s, Monday nights at Donna’s, WWOZ, the kids at YAYA, Mat’s dog, Crawfish boils, “Palmetto Bugs,” Blackened Catfish Nuggets, and that unique combination of vomit, urine, cheap liquor and squalor that is the odor of Bourbon Street.

This interview originally appeared in ANTIGRAVITY Vol.3 #8 (June ‘06). Artwork Copyright Keith Knight.