KEITH KNIGHT ON ARE WE FEELING SAFER YET?

[MattBrady]

by Daniel Robert Epstein

Keith Knight is best known for his autobiographical comic strip The K-Chronicles but besides letting you into his life he also wants to make you think, or more appropriately, make you (th)ink. (th)ink is Knight’s single panel comic strip that he personally syndicates to over a dozen websites and magazines. It is a highly politicized script but it never skimps on the funny. Knight tackles such subjects as Hurricane Katrina and anything Spike Lee is talking about. Knight has just put together a collection of (th)ink in a book called Are We Feeling Safer Yet?

Newsarama: What are you up to today?

Keith Knight: I’m actually working on a comic for ESPN: The Magazine and then I’m doing this thing called First Friday in Las Vegas. It’s a consortium of all these different galleries and they have all their openings at the same time with all these different artists. Thousands of people show up so I’m going to be setting up the table with my books.

NRAMA: Tell me a little about the ESPN thing. Do you do a strip for every issue?

KK: Not every issue unfortunately. I pitch them a comic just about every issue, but I don’t get in every time. The strip is called Sports Knight and I’ve been doing it for around two years. It is one of the things that’s in their front section. I got the job after I tore my Achilles tendon playing tennis. I was sitting around in my studio doing nothing for weeks and a friend of mine, Dave Eggers the writer, said “Hey, did ESPN call you?” I was like “no, why?” He just said “I recommended that they call you to do a cartoon for them.” So I just wrote to them and said “Dave gave your contact and I’m from Boston.” That was my credentials for being a sports fan. I grew up in Boston on the Red Sox, Celtics and Patriots and when I was young, my dad used to get all these free tickets to everything from his job so I was weaned on sports. Also now I listen to a lot of talk radio when I’m drawing and when it’s not politics, it’s sports. So I hear a lot of wacky opinions and all this different stuff.

NRAMA: I’m not a sports fan so are wacky opinions what you base your strips on?

KK: Not really, the magazine sits on the newsstand for like two weeks so I can’t really comment on any scores or anything so they generally are the wackier stories, strange odd observations or something that’s going to sit there for two weeks and not become old.

NRAMA: How do sports fans respond to the strips?

KK: I don’t generally put my emails next to strips, like I do with The K-Chronicles or (th)ink. I’ve never tried it with ESPN in the magazine.

NRAMA: You don’t want to screw that gig up.

KK: Yeah, but I’ve gotten commentary from people who’ve followed me for years who discover the strip in the magazine. They always go “Wow, yeah, you’re in ESPN, cool.” It is a nice added thing.

NRAMA: Have the strips that are in Are We Feeling Safer Yet? been printed before in papers?

KK: Yeah and now it is my first self-published collection so I’m pretty excited about it.

NRAMA: But you’ve had many books before.

KK: Yeah, it is my seventh book but it’s my first self-published book. I’ve always had publishers but then I had a publisher who said, “If you sell a lot of books on your own, you should just self-publish. You’d make more money.”

NRAMA: That’s what a lot of cartoonists say but they don’t like the books stacked up in their house.

KK: Yeah, that’s the tough part. But what’s nice is that I have this one place that stores a decent amount for me. Diamond goes directly to them to pick the stuff up for distribution so that’s nice.

NRAMA: Are all the strips that you do done in the one panel format?

KK: No. I’m mostly known for The K-Chronicles, which is my autobiographical strip. I’ve been doing that for about 13 years. That’s generally seven, eight, nine, panels a strip. In 2000 Africana.com asked me to do a strip for them. They wanted something like The K-Chronicles but I was like “uh, I already do the K-Chronicles” so I decided to do a single panel strip for them. Then instead of it being autobiographical, I wanted to take something from the news and stuff like that, so I came up with (th)ink. Suddenly I found myself doing two weekly comics and then just slowly growing from there. Then the sports comic strip came. Then I started doing stuff for MAD Magazine within the past year and a half.

NRAMA: MAD sent me an issue not too long ago. The magazine has gotten quite a bit better.

KK: Yeah, a lot of people are surprised to see a lot of really decent alternative cartoonists in there. Pete Bagge and Peter Kuper are in there. Also Ted Rall, Jim Mahfood and Don Asmussen do stuff for Mad.

NRAMA: I don’t even know who buys MAD anymore but do you have to tone down certain things for it to be in MAD?

KK: It’s always seven to 11 year olds, even though they say their target audience goes up to 16. I don’t know anyone over 11 who checks it out. It’s that zone, MAD is your first dirty book. The bad kid comes in and says “hey, take a look at this.” It’s just really exciting to be in there next to Sergio Aragonés and Al Jaffee. It’s the one magazine that when I tell people I’m in, everybody knows. But as for toning stuff down, it goes through like 20 different editors or something, maybe not that many, but a lot of eyes see it and they really work with you. I’m not used to it but in another way it’s pretty cool. This one time, they totally broke this joke down and made it way better than it had started out being. So I’m not sure if it’s really toned down but you do work on a joke a lot more and improve gags and stuff. I can’t make references to lots of drugs and stuff like that but I don’t really feel like I’m toning it down. It’s just a different experience working with editors.

NRAMA: In terms of (th)ink, are issues concerning African Americans your number one watchword?

KK: I look at it as whatever is affecting the black community and for the most part, a lot of the strips are about the community as a whole, either the American community or the world community. It just happened to be that I’m working with all these black characters and from their perspective. But I guess a decent amount of it has to do with the black community but it usually is in the context of what’s going on in the world or in the United States. But I do make a conscious effort to put black characters in there as often as possible. So if there’re soldiers, a lot of times they’re going to be black soldiers. If they’re parents, a lot of the times they’re going to be black parents. Usually when someone draws a family, 99% of the time they’re going to be white. 99% of the time that I’m going to draw a family in the (th)ink strip, it’s going to be a black family.

NRAMA: Do you laugh at the issues that you write about or do they make you angry and that’s where the strips come from?

KK: One thing I try not to do is draw out of anger. I may be angry about something but I won’t start working on something out of anger because my worst work comes out that way.

I remember doing a strip about the Amadou Diallo killing. Basically I had a little girl character going “Mr. White Police Officer, how many shots does it take to protect four white officers against one unarmed black man?” and the guy goes, “A black man? Well let me see.” Then it goes blam, blam, blam, blam, blam...for 41 blams and then he goes “41.” She says “Don’t you think that’s a little excessive?” But I didn’t know how to end it. I was so angry because this was when the verdict came down and the guys walked. Then I waited until the next day and I came up with the line and the cop saying “Listen, you folks could avoid getting into these situations if you would just lighten up.” There was no way I would have came up with that line if I just did it when I was really pissed off. So if I wait a little bit I get a little bit of perspective. But certainly some of the stuff that I write about makes me laugh but not the serious issues or anything. If I do one that makes me laugh, then generally I know it’s going to go over really well as a funny comic.

NRAMA: Is the humor more important than the message?

KK: With (th)ink, it’s tough to say because (th)ink really does come off sometimes as an editorial cartoon. A lot of times, the point of an editorial cartoon isn’t to make people laugh. It’s more to make people think about something and put it in a perspective. But I try to mix it up. I try not to do all political ones and I won’t try to do all super issue oriented ones. I’ll make sure I throw in a couple of funny ones so people don’t know where I’m coming from. I do that with all my strips because I can’t do two or three political ones in a row. I’ll do a lifestyle one; I’ll do one about being a cartoonist, one about living in San Francisco, different ones like that. I always like to mix it up but with The K-Chronicles I want to make people laugh first. With (th)ink, it’d be great to make people laugh first, but if it’s just making them think and tackle an issue in a good way, then I’ll do that.

NRAMA: Do you work with a syndicate?

KK: I self-syndicate. I do it all myself so it’s non-stop. Four times a year I send out packages to newspapers. Wherever I travel I pick up the alternative weeklies and call them up and find out where the send the samples to. A week later, I call them and see if they’re into it. Out of 49 rejections, you get one positive response and you just grow it from there. The more papers you get into, the more it snowballs. The last few papers I got into, people came to me because they saw my stuff somewhere else, so that’s cool. But if you continue to work at the pace that you’re working at, it all just starts to take off on its own.

NRAMA: There has been less and less comic strips in alternative weeklies in past few years, has that affected you at all?

KK: No, things are going well. It’s funny because whenever a paper goes out of business, another paper contacts me. I’ve stayed at a steady rate for a while but it’s actually grown a little bit. A couple more websites have picked it up and a couple more newspapers. It’s nice to be around long enough that people know your work and remember your work. I’m in this college syndicate service where college newspapers can run my stuff and I’ve been doing that for so long that some of these people go on to get jobs at bigger newspapers and they bring me with them. The guy at Mad Magazine who brought me in, Jonathan Bresman, was originally an intern. Then he became an editor and brought me on. A lot of it has to do with perseverance and sticking around long enough.

NRAMA: I read that Top Shelf is putting out Are We Feeling Safer Yet? early next year.

KK: I self-published it but they’re distributing it to the book trade through Diamond for me.

NRAMA: Will Top Shelf have indicia and their logo on it?

KK: No, their logo is not on it. I don’t know if they understand that. I hope they realize that but no - it says Keith Knight Press with little sheep in the toilet so I hope they’re not bent out of shape about that.

NRAMA: How come it isn’t an official Top Shelf book?

KK: They put out one of my books and [publisher of Top Shelf Productions] Chris [Staros] was just really cool. He’s the one who told me that I would make more money if I put it out myself.

NRAMA: What’s the next thing you’ve got going?

KK: I’m just going to push this book for a while. Usually when I put out a book, I just promote it straight for a year. But this year is a year of transition. I’m going to be moving to an undisclosed location after spending about 16 years in San Francisco so that’s a big change. I’m working on a few different projects but I can’t say anything about them now. As things start to happen, then I can start blabbing about them. But I’m just talking about Are We Feeling Safer Yet? right now because I’ve got 3000 of them I need to get rid of.

Are We Feeling Safer Yet? is a 128 page softcover and is priced at $16
http://www.kchronicles.com/store/#books

[cynic79]

I've been a fan of Keith Knight's work for quite a while now, so it's nice to see him get some coverage on Newsarama. I'll keep an eye out for his new book.

[cynic79]

Really, am I the only person on Newsarama who's a fan of Keith Knight?

[MatthewSmith]

Originally Posted by cynic79

Really, am I the only person on Newsarama who's a fan of Keith Knight?

First I ever heard of him, but those cartoons above are pretty dang funny.

[Ayo]

He's a good guy, and one of the funny cartoonists (as opposed to the great many who only make the reader crumple up the paper/book is disgust).