Speaker 1: Is this where Waldo first shows up?
Speaker 2: More or less he'd been around for he Actually I
Speaker 2: was using him even before I got published a little bit,
Speaker 2: just because.
Speaker 3: You know, I couldn't draw that well, and I figured
Speaker 3: I could.
Speaker 2: Finesse a cartoon cat better than I could, Uh, human
Speaker 2: figures and rubber hoses is fairwell, yeah, I mean that's
Speaker 2: why they use so many black cats at old cartoons,
Speaker 2: so very easy to draw.
Speaker 3: That's where it started. Anyway.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Amusing Jews, where we celebrate Jewish contributors and
Speaker 1: contributions to American popular culture. I'm Jonathan Friedman.
Speaker 4: And I'm Joey Angelfield.
Speaker 1: Producer engineer Mike Tomren is working somewhere behind the scenes.
Speaker 1: Amusing Jews is a project of a Dat Kavareem Congregation
Speaker 1: for Humanistic Judaism, the Jewish Music of the American West,
Speaker 1: and Atheist United Studios. Hey, Joey. People have been telling
Speaker 1: stories through pictures since the caveman days, but few have
Speaker 1: told stories in pictures. Of how they tell stories through pictures,
Speaker 1: That's where today's guest comes in.
Speaker 4: We're honored to talk with Kim Ditsch, a prolific cartoonist
Speaker 4: who's been making comics since the underground movement of the
Speaker 4: nineteen sixties. His latest book is How I Make Comics,
Speaker 4: published by Fantagraphics. Kim, Welcome to Amusing Jews.
Speaker 5: Thank you, thank you very much. I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 4: Your father, Jean, was an animator for UPA and Terrytoons.
Speaker 4: What was his influence on you growing up?
Speaker 5: Oh, it's huge, Just the whole idea that, you know,
Speaker 5: there's something great about leading a creative life. Yeah, that
Speaker 5: was just pressed into me from the very beginning, and
Speaker 5: I was very lucky. I both of my parents were
Speaker 5: really fascinating people, and it couldn't have worked out better
Speaker 5: for me. Sad to say, later on they were divorced,
Speaker 5: but that just seemed to be what was going on
Speaker 5: in those days.
Speaker 1: What was it kind of magical to be raised around
Speaker 1: art supplies?
Speaker 5: It was magical. Yes. In fact, you know, for a
Speaker 5: while my father was doing a comic strip. You know,
Speaker 5: when you're drawing comics, it can get a little well
Speaker 5: and some you're you're happy to have somebody to come
Speaker 5: around and talk to you. And I think my father's
Speaker 5: strip not only did it obviously pushed me in that direction,
Speaker 5: but well it just brought us closer together.
Speaker 1: Oh it's beautiful.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, well yeah, I had a great childhood and
Speaker 5: there's no getting around it. You know, later on they
Speaker 5: broke up, and you know, it wasn't so great for
Speaker 5: my younger brothers, but for me, it really was kind
Speaker 5: of magical.
Speaker 1: You were one of the pioneers of underground comics. How
Speaker 1: did you get involved in that scene.
Speaker 5: Well, my younger brother, Simon, it was a big comic
Speaker 5: book collector, and so I was in this wonderful position
Speaker 5: because he got all these great old Golden Age comics
Speaker 5: to thrill and pour over it, not to mention Marvel
Speaker 5: comics that were coming out, and uh, I thought, well, geez, well,
Speaker 5: Marvel Comics is never going to hire me. But you know,
Speaker 5: I was showing my stuff to some of my colleagues
Speaker 5: at one of my straight jobs, and I was going,
Speaker 5: you know, this comics thing really fascinates me, but I
Speaker 5: don't I'm not sure I can really draw well enough
Speaker 5: to cut the mustard on that. And so this one
Speaker 5: guy said, well, I don't know, it's better than Captain Hi.
Speaker 5: And I said, Captain Hi, what's that? And he explained
Speaker 5: to me that that was a comic strip that was
Speaker 5: coming out in an underground newspaper called the Eastlach Other.
Speaker 5: I went and took a look at them. You know,
Speaker 5: I think I could compete with this, and so about
Speaker 5: five hundred dollars saved up, I went down to the
Speaker 5: Lower East Side see what I could do for myself.
Speaker 5: And you know it was pretty interesting. You know, I
Speaker 5: brought my work in the first time and the guy
Speaker 5: at the East Village Others said, well, you know, this
Speaker 5: is pretty good, but of course we're looking for something
Speaker 5: more psychedelic, a big buzzword of the time. I thought, well, okay,
Speaker 5: you know, I got to find a way to stay
Speaker 5: alive anyway. So it turned out that one of the
Speaker 5: people working at the East Village other who did Captain
Speaker 5: I said that, you know, come over and see me.
Speaker 5: You know, maybe I have some work for you. Well,
Speaker 5: the work he had for me was he was dealing
Speaker 5: dope and he sold me a lit of grass for openers,
Speaker 5: and so well, you know, it was opportunity because yeah,
Speaker 5: you know, five hundred dollars is gonna last so long,
Speaker 5: even though I was only paying thirty eight to fifteen
Speaker 5: a months, right, But boy, I didn't know the hop
Speaker 5: smell of the Lower East Side. I had to learn
Speaker 5: in all the hard way, but so that you know, yeah,
Speaker 5: I started dealing to dope and I started, you know,
Speaker 5: smoking some of that dope. Get more psychedelic. Brought three
Speaker 5: comic strips that I'd done under those circumstances back to
Speaker 5: the East Village other I flipped for them, not like
Speaker 5: they were going to pay me or anything, but they
Speaker 5: were willing to publish them. And it was almost the
Speaker 5: most incredible thing that happened to me in those early days. Actually,
Speaker 5: the more incredible thing was about a year later, after
Speaker 5: I'd had my ups and downs with these each other.
Speaker 5: The original owner, Walter Bowart, married one of the richest
Speaker 5: women in the United States and was gone. And the
Speaker 5: new guy that took over, you know, said, Kim would
Speaker 5: like to have you back. And he said, wait a minute,
Speaker 5: somebody gets Spain, my old friend Spain. Any your Spain?
Speaker 5: And he said, Spain, don't I pay you forty dollars
Speaker 5: a week to do a comic strip and an otherwise
Speaker 5: do stuff on Paced up nine stuff? He said, yeah, man,
Speaker 5: sure do need but to me and said that could
Speaker 5: be you too, And that was like that was my
Speaker 5: big break. You know, not only was I gonna be
Speaker 5: working for the East Village over again, but I was
Speaker 5: going to get paid forty dollars a wait. Plus there
Speaker 5: was looking to fringe benefits. We could charge art supplies
Speaker 5: and stuff. We could go down to the Steve Paul
Speaker 5: scene and see all the big rock and roll stars.
Speaker 5: It was fantast What can I say?
Speaker 1: Did you have any formal art training or was it
Speaker 1: all picked up along the way.
Speaker 5: Well, besides watching my father make comics. At a certain point,
Speaker 5: you know, it was time for me to graduate from
Speaker 5: high school and my mother said, well, Kim, you know
Speaker 5: you're graduating high school. What do you think do you
Speaker 5: want to do? I said, well, you know, ma, I
Speaker 5: kind of like to maybe just bum around and you
Speaker 5: know like that. She said that didn't go over big,
Speaker 5: you know, so I went. I put in two years
Speaker 5: at Pratt Institute. I almost flunked out the first year.
Speaker 5: The second year I kind of had it all together
Speaker 5: and I guess I could have gone on. But then
Speaker 5: one day I was out drinking at a bar and
Speaker 5: I bumped into the sky. It was a Norwegian seamen
Speaker 5: and he told me about how easy it was to
Speaker 5: ship out Merchant Marine. That sounded like that would really
Speaker 5: be something to see a little bit of the world.
Speaker 5: Plus you know all those all those prostitutes and stuff,
Speaker 5: you know, So that's what happened. I ended up shipping
Speaker 5: out got out to Japan, which was like just where
Speaker 5: a twenty year old guy wants to be, you know.
Speaker 5: That was that was pretty great. I kept up my
Speaker 5: union dudes for several years after that, and these village
Speaker 5: other happened. You know. I was actually back at Pratt
Speaker 5: Instant for a lot of thought, well, you know, maybe
Speaker 5: in night school I could get my degree and see
Speaker 5: where that took me. I didn't have to do that,
Speaker 5: you know. Instead, pretty soon I'm making forty dollars a
Speaker 5: week at the East Village door. That was a great
Speaker 5: you know, it doesn't sound like much. That was a
Speaker 5: great opportunity and I made all I could out of it.
Speaker 1: Well that that's like four times your monthly rent, so
Speaker 1: I thought it was a significant amount of money.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Well it didn't stay thirty eight to fifty Finally
Speaker 5: that place. I ended up at a place that was
Speaker 5: like fifty dollars a week. But then I my friend Spain,
Speaker 5: who was working at the East village door. He wanted
Speaker 5: some place to live, so he said, hey, man, one
Speaker 5: should let me move in with you. And boy, that's
Speaker 5: when things were really happened. And it really was happening.
Speaker 5: I mean I I was not incredibly lucky. What can
Speaker 5: I tell you?
Speaker 1: Where do that psychedelic style come from? Because when they
Speaker 1: when they told you you needed to draw in a
Speaker 1: more psychedelic way.
Speaker 5: I was selling weed, so I was smoking a lot
Speaker 5: of it too.
Speaker 1: I know there's sort of a stereotypical, archetypal image of
Speaker 1: psychedelica or whatever you might call it. Did that originate
Speaker 1: with any individual or was that just kind of a
Speaker 1: collective thing.
Speaker 5: I think it was just kind of a collective thing,
Speaker 5: you know. You know the interesting thing that influences are
Speaker 5: a lot though with me, Like you know von Baudet,
Speaker 5: remember him. The thing about that was all the graffiti
Speaker 5: you see these days, not that style. I think I
Speaker 5: got a lot of it from von Baudet. It's very similar.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think even if they don't realize that's where
Speaker 1: it's coming from. It sort of seeped into the culture.
Speaker 5: Every time I see something down the street like that
Speaker 5: Ohn or Bastard. Yeah, he came to this city, and
Speaker 5: the whole thing is you live up Hebrews Troy, I
Speaker 5: think in Troy, upstate, New York. And was a pretty
Speaker 5: straight guy, you know, and he just wasn't ready for
Speaker 5: the the whole hippie thing. Well then he finally got ready.
Speaker 5: I turned into a transvest and God was dead at
Speaker 5: about the age of thirty four. It was really tragic
Speaker 5: because he was a nice guy too. These village others
Speaker 5: decided to have an all comics magazine. At first they
Speaker 5: left him in charge of it, but he just caught
Speaker 5: it came to me, he said, Kim, I can't take it.
Speaker 5: I mean, this is just too much for me. This
Speaker 5: even before he's a transvestite and uh so the boss
Speaker 5: of evil. He just come into our own here. Said listen,
Speaker 5: I got this magazine going, guess what. You're the editor,
Speaker 5: And I said, you gotta another guy's name on there,
Speaker 5: and Peter and Jerry is theater. He said, listen. My
Speaker 5: offer to you is he doesn't even see the magazine
Speaker 5: until it's printed. So I gave it a shot, you know.
Speaker 5: So suddenly from forty dollars a week, if I could
Speaker 5: do all the work, I was making ninety dollars a week,
Speaker 5: except it was a rare week and I actually did
Speaker 5: everything and my boss joined take great play, dogging me
Speaker 5: down to about fifty dollars a week. But let me
Speaker 5: tell you, he was a great guy, and to this
Speaker 5: day I honor his memory as if anybody gave me
Speaker 5: a break in this world in the biz, it was him.
Speaker 1: Enjoining the show.
Speaker 4: Click like and subscribe. Is it fair to say that
Speaker 4: you share an interest in Lost Americana with fellow underground
Speaker 4: legend Robert Crumb?
Speaker 5: Oh? Yeah, I've always been kind of interested in the
Speaker 5: old days and the old times and nostalgia, if you will.
Speaker 5: That's certainly true.
Speaker 1: Was that maybe a product of your exposure a Golden
Speaker 1: Age comics? Or was there stuff in your home? Like
Speaker 1: growing up?
Speaker 5: Everything just worked out kind of magically for me in
Speaker 5: terms of influences, you know, my upbringing in all and
Speaker 5: all the sadder that you know, somehow didn't work out
Speaker 5: so good for my brother Simon, who got me into
Speaker 5: it and it's now dead, and my brother Seth, who
Speaker 5: isn't exactly doing great financially. I've been a lucky bastard,
Speaker 5: what can I tell you? And I'm grateful. I'm very grateful.
Speaker 5: I've I've had advantages. I tried to make the most
Speaker 5: of them. Still at it miraculous.
Speaker 1: You still seem to be pretty prolific.
Speaker 5: I'd like to think, so, you know, I know, if
Speaker 5: I stop, well what I do. Yeah, it's like and
Speaker 5: besides it's it's it's fascinating, you know, I definitely want
Speaker 5: to keep doing it, you know, I could. I'm working
Speaker 5: on something right over there. It's a computer. I'm doing
Speaker 5: a lot of photoshop right now on a story that
Speaker 5: is about how I got my start and art. Actually,
Speaker 5: it'll probably be about I don't know, forty seven pages.
Speaker 5: I'm not exactly sure because I've sort of put it
Speaker 5: on the hold while I'm doing a bunch of color
Speaker 5: stuff for that story, because I got a nice opportunity
Speaker 5: over in France to have a book put out of
Speaker 5: what I'm doing right now. So I'm yeah, things are
Speaker 5: a little a little unusual at the moment, but the
Speaker 5: work is happening. Couldn't be happier about that.
Speaker 1: In a Comics Journal interview you did several years ago,
Speaker 1: you describe your style as an attempt at trying to
Speaker 1: draw as realistically as possible and being basically a primitive artist.
Speaker 1: That's just what comes out. Does that discrete still hold?
Speaker 5: It's a fair thing. I like to think I'm getting
Speaker 5: to be a better drawer, but.
Speaker 1: I wasn't.
Speaker 5: I wasn't trying to be cute when I said that,
Speaker 5: just a fair introspective, trying to give a straight answer
Speaker 5: to what you see from me. Still working on it.
Speaker 5: I think I'm getting better as an artist. I don't know,
Speaker 5: but it was never I was always going to be,
Speaker 5: you know, a writer who draws and not the other
Speaker 5: way around. That's I think that's fair to say.
Speaker 1: Also, how do you describe that sort of positioning a
Speaker 1: writer who draws? Could you elaborate a little on that?
Speaker 5: Well, it just means that I think I probably that's
Speaker 5: my bigger skill. You know, when I was younger and
Speaker 5: I was just getting ready ready to go to Pratt Institute,
Speaker 5: I went over to check with Proble to visit my
Speaker 5: father and he said, you know, Kim, when I was
Speaker 5: your age, I could draw circles around here. Are you
Speaker 5: sure this is really what you want to do? Well?
Speaker 5: I wasn't really sure, but I said, yeah, Dad, I mean,
Speaker 5: you know, I think I got something going on to that.
Speaker 5: Thank God, it sort of seemed to be true because
Speaker 5: put a little doubt in my mind. But I mean,
Speaker 5: at least you lived long enough to see I made
Speaker 5: a go of it, which I'm very proud of, you know,
Speaker 5: because what if you'd live long enough to see I
Speaker 5: didn't make a god, that wouldn't be so hot. So
Speaker 5: you know, he was the great guy too. I miss him.
Speaker 1: I think in alternative comics in particular, it's almost more
Speaker 1: important to have a distinctive style than to be perfect
Speaker 1: in your drawing anyway, So the way that you approach it,
Speaker 1: I mean I can recognize your work whenever I'm flipping
Speaker 1: through something, and so you know the fact that it's
Speaker 1: not photorealistic or you're not copying anybody else's style is
Speaker 1: just coming from your own imagination that certainly comes through.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it is what it is. You know. It's me
Speaker 5: trying to do the best I can as an artist,
Speaker 5: and uh, thank god somebody else likes it to where
Speaker 5: would I be otherwise?
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: So it's been, it's been really fantastic and still is.
Speaker 4: What can you tell us about your new very meta book,
Speaker 4: How I Make Comics?
Speaker 5: The thing about that was, when I mean, when I
Speaker 5: made that title up. I just thought it was a
Speaker 5: fun title. I thought, you know, I was telling people
Speaker 5: for a long time. Well, look, you know, that's that's
Speaker 5: just a catchy title I came up with because it's
Speaker 5: not really a how to book, but you know, it
Speaker 5: is sort of a how to book, because you know
Speaker 5: what the book, what's going on in the book, it's
Speaker 5: me pitching one story after and out of my wife,
Speaker 5: you know, and which is exactly what goes on around
Speaker 5: here usually it happens on Saturday mornings, and so really
Speaker 5: it is how I make comics, much to my own
Speaker 5: personal surprise. So yeah, subconsciously, you must, I must have
Speaker 5: realized this is more spot on than I was really
Speaker 5: giving myself credit for Initially.
Speaker 1: How I make comics gives us a front row seat
Speaker 1: to your creative process in a way I haven't seen before,
Speaker 1: in the sense that you are even going back and
Speaker 1: revising comics based on your wife's feedback and all of
Speaker 1: that as well.
Speaker 5: She's practically a collaborator. I mean, it's really very close
Speaker 5: to being like that. You know, she's smart, very creative herself.
Speaker 5: You know, that's my greatest fortune of all in this
Speaker 5: world that I'm married to this terrific woman.
Speaker 1: Were you at all self conscious about putting so much
Speaker 1: of your brain on the page?
Speaker 5: Not really. I mean, if I see a good angle
Speaker 5: for a story, man, I'm going to go for it,
Speaker 5: because they're not that easy to come up with it that,
Speaker 5: you know. So look, hey, and like I say about
Speaker 5: every Saturday morning, I showed him everything I've been doing. No,
Speaker 5: because she's a good judge, you know, And if it
Speaker 5: isn't working for her, then I know I'm in trouble.
Speaker 5: And you know, maybe I'll do something and maybe I
Speaker 5: can figure out something to do about that. So it's
Speaker 5: very much a collaborative thing. And this happens.
Speaker 1: And did Fantagraphics just give you a blank slate and
Speaker 1: say whatever you do is fine with us pretty much?
Speaker 5: You know. Gary Groth is a great guy to work for,
Speaker 5: and I feel tremendous loyalty towards him because you know,
Speaker 5: he's I've had them all had good, bad and different.
Speaker 5: Gary's really something and I'll be there working for him
Speaker 5: as long as he wants me working for him. I'm
Speaker 5: not gonna you know, I did jump ship. I went
Speaker 5: to Pantheon Books for a couple of books. But even
Speaker 5: then it's sort of funny, like, so I had a
Speaker 5: book coming out with Pantheon, but I was also doing
Speaker 5: a fantagraphics The Fanographics book was better, so that taught
Speaker 5: me something too. No, they're wonderful people at Fantagraphics, and
Speaker 5: Gary is a terrific guy.
Speaker 1: It does seem to be like a one of one
Speaker 1: kind of experience for artists who work at or work
Speaker 1: with Fanographics, in the sense that they're very nurturing. They
Speaker 1: want to support what you're doing. They're not as concerned
Speaker 1: about sales as maybe some other publishers. They just want art.
Speaker 5: Because you know, it's not like I'm a world beater
Speaker 5: of sales selling. But oh no, it seems to be
Speaker 5: getting a little better. So but no, all hail Panagravit
Speaker 5: Gary growth. As long as they're there for me, I'm
Speaker 5: there for them, and you know, yeah, maybe I go
Speaker 5: off and do this or that after somebody else, but
Speaker 5: not in any permanent way. I mean, I'm just so
Speaker 5: amazed and still doing it at all.
Speaker 4: You in the book with an interesting concept proactive humility,
Speaker 4: could you explain.
Speaker 5: Well, it's simply explained. I mean to me, what proactive
Speaker 5: humility means is you want to be humble, but you
Speaker 5: don't want to be so humble that you're putting yourself
Speaker 5: out of business. You know, Oh g you were my
Speaker 5: I have nothing and then you're so you're nothing, you know,
Speaker 5: So yeah, yeah, humble, Okay, great, But you know, humble
Speaker 5: working too, that's all that really means. I coined that phrase.
Speaker 5: I'm very proud of that. But I don't know if
Speaker 5: we'll catch on or not. But it has a meaning.
Speaker 5: You know, it's explainable.
Speaker 1: So you know there's that are are you humbled by
Speaker 1: your own career? I know that you're grateful that you're
Speaker 1: still doing it, but the fact that you are still
Speaker 1: doing it and that you can look back at your
Speaker 1: catalog of all the work you've done over the years,
Speaker 1: is that a humbling thing?
Speaker 5: I think so? I think so. I'm very grateful for
Speaker 5: the way out everything's worked out. And then you know,
Speaker 5: I got behind it, got to get behind you. Look,
Speaker 5: of course, no, I've had a terrific life and I
Speaker 5: got a terrific wife. I mean, what more do you want?
Speaker 5: You could want more, but you know it gets a
Speaker 5: little ridiculous at a certain point.
Speaker 1: Well, thanks so much Kim for joining us.
Speaker 5: My pleasure I enjoyed myself and to our audience.
Speaker 1: Now back to your regularly scheduled lives.
Speaker 4: Amusing Jews is here to amuse you. If you like
Speaker 4: being amused, go ahead and click like and subscribe.
Speaker 5: See you later, baby,