KIM DEITCH (born May 21, 1944 in Los Angeles, California) is the son of illustrator and animator Gene Deitch, and has sometimes worked with his brothers Simon and Seth Deitch. As sixties comics were popular and under-exploited from an artistic point of view, they were the perfect medium for Kim. In 1972 he published his first underground comic book, "Corn Fed Comics". Soon after, he began contributing to various magazines ("East Village Other", "Bijou Funnies") and put out more comic books. 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, who appears variously as a famous cartoon character of the 1930's, as an actual character in the reality of the strips, as the hallucination of a hopeless alcoholic surnamed Mishkin, as the demonic reincarnation of Judas Iscariot; and who, occasionally is claimed to have overcome Deitch and written the comics himself. Waldo's appearance is reminiscent of such black cat characters as Felix the Cat and Krazy Kat.
"The Boulevard Of Broken Dreams" published by Pantheon,
"conjures up a haunting and haunted American past."
- Art Spiegelman
"Kim Deitch is generally held to be one of the greatest influences in American underground comix. I remember discovering him when I first started buying underground comix at the Free Press Bookstore at Colorado & Fair Oaks in Pasadena in 1970.
His stories always were, and still are, comfortable and inviting, despite the specters of gunplay, heroin use and other unsavory conduct by fat deviants and cute cartoon characters.
I finally met Deitch at a book signing and found him to be as charming and interesting as his massive catalog. He does appear as he draws himself with beard, balding pate and ponytail, but you can tell he'd fit right into a $1200 suit. I wish we'd had more time to reminisce."
- Gary Cifra, Lines On Paper Founder