Kim Deitch

Kim Deitch (born May 21, 1944 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. His 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. 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.

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 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:

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. Through most of the 1970s, Deitch was in an 11-year relationship with animator Sally Cruikshank.

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)