OnMilwaukee.com has a lengthy interview with cartoonist, editor, publisher and Milwaukee native Denis Kitchen, who’s returning to the city this week as curator of the documentary Will Eisner: The Spirit of an Artistic Pioneer, which will be shown tomorrow at the Milwaukee Art Museum.

The lengthy Q&A focuses mainly on Kitchen’s early career in Milwaukee, the founding of Kitchen Sink Press in 1969, and working with creators like Robert Crumb, Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman and Milton Caniff.

But Kitchen also addresses the growth of the industry and the current state of comics:

“It’s simply amazing to see how far the medium has come in my lifetime. In grade school I was punished if caught with a comic book and these days teachers are glad to see kids reading comics. Graphic novels are now the fastest-growing literary genre in America and are far bigger in Europe and Japan. Movies are being made left and right based on comics, and not just the superheroes. The ultimate recognition is the “Masters of American Comics” exhibition that is passing through our fair city. I can tell you that it would have been literally unimaginable to discuss such an event with a straight face when I started out here. And now, for better or worse, comics are now downright respectable! It’s taking some getting used to, not that I’m complaining!”

Kitchen plugs some of his current and upcoming work, too, including a coffee-table book about Harvey Kurtzman, and a postcard book called Reading Comics, which sounds great: “… vintage photos of regular people and celebrities reading comics over many decades.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 12th, 2006 at 8:29 am and is filed under Creators, Events, Independent. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.