# 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 c. 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:
   This Waldo business. Is he a part of me or some sort of alter ego? God, I hope not. I may not be an angel, but I’d hate to think I was as crummy an individual as that creep. I think he shows some characteristics of my brother Simon, who influenced me to go into comics and whom I often collaborated with in earlier times. Simon is a brasher personality than me and shares other attributes with that little blue piece of cheese, Waldo.
Later in the interview, however, Deitch offered this admission:
   A key way that art has shaped my life is, it’s been the saving of me. Looking myself over, over time, I managed to get rid of many bad habits and, thank God, to replace them with better ones. I would rate myself as kind of a reformed character. You know, that makes me reconsider one of your earlier questions. Maybe there was more of Waldo in me once upon a time.

## 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)