Catching up with Keith Knight before SPX

by Mike Rhode

Michael Cavna, Keith Knight and Lalo Alcaraz

Keith Knight is one of my favorite cartoonists and one of the hardest working men in comics. His 7-day strip Knight Life appears in the Washington Post (only on Sundays, boo!). He does another panel each week called (Th)ink). And his first 1-page multi-panel, The K Chronicles, is still running. You can see them all at http://www.kchronicles.com/

Keith was in town last weekend for the National Book Festival (link to my pictures) and we started chatting until he had to go on stage. He's had a lot of changes in his life in the past year or so. First read my 2011 interview with Keith.

MR: Why did you move to North Carolina from California? How's that working out? 

KK: One of my first comic strip slideshows was in the Research Triangle of North Carolina (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill)..I had such a great time and really enjoyed the area..so it was always in the back of my mind...Then my mom moved down to South Carolina from Boston, so there's that...  Affordability was also a huge factor.  The boys have a yard to run in...

MR: What's the story behind your NAACP award?

K: I was recognized, along with a number of other activists, for my cartoon slideshow about police brutality.  It's not really an award, just recognition.

MR: You're taking on the serious topic of police violence against black people in more ways than just drawing a cartoon. Can you tell us about that, and why you feel the need to do so?

 
KK: I felt like a slideshow of 20 years of my police brutality cartoons would be a good way to engage audiences to ask why these incidents continue unabated.  I was really frustrated drawing yet another cartoon after Ferguson. I used to say to myself, "I hope this is the last time I have to draw one of these." Clearly, it never is.

And this Shaun King quote really resonated with me: "LISTEN: If you ever wondered what you would do if you were alive in the Civil Rights Movement, NOW IS THE TIME to find out." 

MR: Your children are bi-racial, you live in a progressive part of NC, and you've chosen to home-school them. Why?

KK:  A number of reasons, but the biggest being that we felt it was a doable. The amount of resources the Research Triangle offers to secular folks who decide to home-school is incredible.  Classes for home-schoolers are held at libraries, the Y,  the university..There's even a homeschooling store near our place.

Keith's sign language interpreter kept cracking up.

MR: You've told me that your business model has been changing from sales of books to sales of prints, and that you're doing better at art shows than you do at comic cons. Can you expand on that?

KK: Comic book conventions give folks a chance to get their fantasy on, so I can understand how they don't want to be confronted with the ugly reality of some of the stuff I do.  To balance things, I've been doing comics celebrating some of the people I've looked up to who have recently passed.  Folks like Julian Bond, Maya Angelou, and Nelson Mandela. I do their portraits, along with some of their quotes.  They go over really well in non-comic book settings.  Sometimes it's better being the one cartoonist at an art show, than one of 500  at a comic book convention.

MR: Keith returns to DC next weekend for the Small Press Expo. I can't recommend his work highly enough.