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Denis Kitchen




Title Creator Publisher Series Price
Someday Funnies Jack Kirby, Will Eisner, C.C. Beck, Wallace Wood and more ... Abrams ComicArts $45.00
($55.00 list)
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Read more and comment... 		edited by Michel Choquette  Well, here's something you don't see everyday:  a comics anthology that has been completed but unable to find a publisher for nearly forty years, finally being published!  As readers of The Comics Journal #299 – the cover feature of which was an in-depth article on the history of this volume – already know, this volume had reached a legendary/mythical status.  Robert Greenfield's introduction squarely situates the work contained in this volume as a document of "The Sixties," While comics critic/historian Jeet Heer's foreword provides ample context and background for the comics work the book contains as well as a chronology of its epic 40-year journey from inception to publication.  We've barely dipped out toes in this majorly oversize – 11" x 17" – 216 page, full color hardcover volume containing 120 comic strips by 169 creators, so we're not going to say much about the contents at this time, but we will provide you with some of the contributors, and let you do the math:  Jack Kirby, Will Eisner, C.C. Beck, Wallace Wood, Harvey Kurtzman, Arnold Roth, Don Martin, Gahan Wilson, Bobby London, Trina Robbins, Vaughn Bodé, Steve Englehart, Archie Goodwin, Denny O'Neil, Ralph Reese, Alan Weiss, Herb Trimpe, Frank Zappa, Harlan Ellison, William S. Burroughs, Roy Thomas, Barry Smith (before he added Windsor) Guido Crepax, Ralph Steadman, Leo & Diane Dillon, Walter & Louise Simonson, Justin Green, Bill Griffith, Red Grooms, Russ Heath, Jay Kinney, Denis Kitchen, (a very young) Art Spiegelman, (also very young) Stan Mack, Ever Meulen,  Joost Swarte, Tom Wolfe,  Federico Fellini, and many, many more!  Also included is a "92-drawing take on Choquette's travels by Michael Fog" that parallels and brackets the comics the volumes contains.  Surprisingly (at least to us), the intent to create an interweaving bracketing tale was a component of the original volume's conception, and blank spaces were deliberately left in many of the pages at Choquette's instruction. 
The Art of Harvey Kurtzman: The Mad Genius of Comics Harvey Kurtzman, Denis Kitchen, Paul Buhle Abrams ComicArts $22.22
($40.00 list)
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Read more and comment... 		This massive hardcover volume is now the definitve account of the life and work of the one and only Harvey Kurtzman, the man who brought the world Mad and so much more.  Written by Kurtzman's friend and one-time publisher, Denis Kitchen, who also currently represents the Kurtzman estate.  Kitchen is an accomplished cartoonist in his own right, one who was influenced by Kurtzman, and who was active during the glory days of Underground comix, and so is more fully capable of appreciating Kurtzman's achievement than your average biographer.  This book has it all:  miraculously preserved childhood drawings, early comics and illustration work, Kurtzman's glory days in comics, the creation of Mad, Humbug, Trump, and Help! followed by Little Annie Fannie and much, much more, including plenty of rarities that will astound and delight Kurtzman fans.  And now available for an amazing price!  What's not to like?
Underground Classics: The Transformation of Comics to Comix Denis Kitchen, James Danky Abrams ComicArts $26.95
($29.95 list)
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Read more and comment... 		This oversize hardcover book is published, by Abrams ComicArts, in conjunction with the exhibit of the same name that originated with the Chazen Museum of Art in Madison, Wisconsin in the spring of this year.  Hail, hail, the gang's all here!  Underground comix veterans Jay Lynch, Trina Robbins, and Denis Kitchen (with the able assistance of James Danky), all provide essays, as does official comix chronicler, Patrick Rosenkranz, as does leftist extraordinaire, Paul Buhle (who also co-authored the afterword to Spain's Che, listed above; hmmm... we're sensing a serious swing to the Left here).  And then there's the documentation of the exhibit itself:  nearly ninety full-page, full color reproductions (of works that were, please keep in mind, executed for the most part in pen & ink, in black & white) of original underground comic book (or, comix) pages.  Pretty much everyone you would expect is included, as well as a few surprises you might not be familiar with.  A great retrospective that is sure to be appreciated by artists, scholars, historians, and fans.
Comic Art #7 Dylan Williams, Denis Kitchen, Ken Parille $8.10
($9.00 list)
OUT OF STOCK!

Read more and comment... 		It's been a bit longer wait this time around, but the latest issue of the connoisseur's comic magazine is here.  The best production values in the business present an insider's look at Harvey Kurtzman's post-Humbug career by Denis Kitchen; Tante Leny and the Dutch Underground Press by Patrick Rosenkranz; an amazing look at some rare classic Sunday Funnies in "The Comics That Time Forgot" by Peter Maresca; a taut yet meandering personal reminiscence by the one and only David Collier; a look at Fred Guardineer's 1935-36 Journal by Dylan Williams (how did he get a hold of this!?!?!); and a close reading of Dan Clowes's David Boring by Ken Parille that is written in accordance with the standards and practices of contemporary academia and will have you screwing your thinking cap on tight.