Thinking in ink

Keith Knight on the connection between books and comics

By Maria Phelan

Cartoonist Keith Knight, creator of "The K Chronicles" and "(Th)ink" comic strips, was born and raised in Boston, but relocated to San Francisco 15 years ago. His work is heavily influenced by his experiences growing up and his observations on politics, race and current events, but Knight said he's pleased to be involved with the Vegas Valley Book Festival because books have had a significant influence on his work.

"Literature absolutely affects my work," Knight says. "It was a high school English teacher that encouraged me to work on a syndicated comic strip--I created a satirical comic strip for a book report on Animal Farm, and the teacher really liked it. Before that, I'd never thought of cartoons as a possible career. I still think literature is very important, and I use a lot of literary references in my work."

Knight also sees comics and cartoons as an important part of the overall literary community. "I think graphic novels and cartooning are such a perfect synergy between words and pictures. ... It can be so much more detailed and have so much intensity. I think they could use [cartoons] in high school textbooks. Schools should use this stuff to teach historical subjects. If I had a teacher who told me to read 20 pages of a comic book for homework instead of a regular textbook, I'd be really excited," he says.

While Knight's work has always had a political edge, he said it became significantly more political after 9/11.

"The reason I became more political after 9/11 was the nationalism that started up after 9/11," Knight says. "Right after 9/11, it was great because people were so nice to each other, and that was really cool. Then there was this `God Bless America, let's bomb the hell out of someone' attitude, and it just felt weird and wrong. One thing I did was strips about how when the disaster happened, it was the one time people treated each other the way they should--people are just people, and everyone's working together. And then with all the nationalism, I went into the mode of, `Let's think this through and not be blind about it, let's see if we can take a more thoughtful approach,' and I did cartoons about that."