*NEW YORK CITY/PHILLY WRAP-UP..
Had a marvelous time hitting the east coast for the AAN Convention and MoCCA Festival. Always a pleasure hooking up with folks like Mike LaRiccia, Pete Friedrich, Hilary Price and my infamous gang of radicals, the Cartoonists with Attitude.

One of the coolest things I did and one of my cheap-ass moves of the week was to take the Chinatown bus from NYC to Philly. Have you ever taken one of these things?It takes you from one Chinatown to the other. $20 round trip. 2 hours. Clean. Efficient. Excellent. I recommend it over Greyhound, Amtrak, and all the others alternatives. They also do Boston, D.C. and a lot more. http://www.apexbus.com

I made some nice connections at AAN, which is the yearly Alternative Newsweekly Convention. I think I'll be picking up at least a coupla papers in the near future, including one in Vermont and Washington D.C.

One more cheap-ass move: If you're gonna take money from an ATM, and your bank 's ATMs are nowhere to be found, use the Chinese or Korean bank ATMs. The Bank of America surcharge for using their ATMs is $2.00. The Chinese bank that I used: .50c!!

*SPEAKING OF WASHINGTON D.C...
I cannot overstate how important it is for me to have my daily strip, "the Knight Life", secure a permanent place in the Washington Post. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE go by their website and say something nice about the strip:

http://comicsurvey.washpost.com/survey.cfm

Another important paper testing the strip is in Raleigh, NC.:
http://share.triangle.com/node/3528?page=63

Also, the Orange County Register is taking a survey about what they should add to their paper:

http://ocregister.upickem.net/engine/ApprovedSubmissions.aspx?contestid=1864

*MY CARTOON ART MUSEUM ART SHOW OPENS THIS WEEK..
..though I won't be there. I'm gonna try to come up for a late opening event in August. I gots ta wait for the little one to arrive, and the big book, too.

For more info: http://www.cartoonart.org

*CARTOONING WORKSHOP AT THE HAMMER MUSEUM..
I'll be conducting a cartooning workshop at one of L.A.'s swankiest museums, courtesy of 826LA, in July. It's open to kids, aged 8 to 12. For more info, go to

http://www.826la.org/workshops/


*HOW SWEET IT IS..
..to be a Boston sports fan. Sure, the Pats blew it, but they've tasted victory in the past few years already. Congrats to the Boston Celtics for hoisting for the first time in decades.

A coupla things:
*The Celts were always known as the white guy team. Not anymore. Wonder how the Townies feel about that
*I went to high school with the black dude sitting behind the Boston bench (Mr. Ellen Pompeo).

Labels: 826la, boston celtics, cheap-ass, Knight Life daily, MoCCA, New York, Philadelphia

 
*A CALL TO ACTION..
Folks..

Just got this message from a reader in Baton Rouge:

Greetings,

In today's issue of the Advocate here in Baton Rouge, there was no Knight Life! It turns out that the strip that the yours replaced in the Advocate (Doonesbury, or something) is just taking an extended vacation. In the mean time, the paper is going to be running several

different strips, and let readers vote on which one will become a permanent fixture of the

Advocate's comics page. We need to send people to http://www.2theadvocate.com/help/comments to tell the Advocate that we want the Knight Life to become that said fixture.



Sincerely,

J.

Charge!!

*JUNE 08 NEWSLETTER..

IN THIS ISSUE:
*KEEF AT MOCCA IN NEW YORK CITY
*KEEF RETROSPECTIVE AT CARTOON ART MUSEUM IN SF
*K CHRONICLES WINS 2008 GLYPH AWARD FOR BEST COMIC STRIP
*KNIGHT LIFE DAILY BEING TESTED IN WASHINGTON POST


Dearest K Chronicles, (th)ink and Knight Life reader,

Whoa...Things are getting a bit crazy up in here with the launch of the new daily. So
many great things have been happening, and I thank everybody for their endless support!!

*KEEF AT MOCCA IN NYC THS WEEKEND!!
I will be in the wondrous city of New York for the 2008 MoCCA Festival. This is one of
the best Indie Comix shows in the country. And it seems to be attracting a lot of daily
newspaper cartoonists as well. I will have a small number of my older books, but will
mainly be pushing the not-available-in-bookstores "I Left My Arse in San Francisco", the
latest K Chronicles collection.

I will also have ONE COPY of the new 500-page K Chronicles Collection from Dark Horse.
Ya gotta see this thing. It's HUGE!! Pre-order it here:

http://www.kchronicles.com/store/

The show is this Sat./Sun, June 7th/8th at the Puck Building in NYC. SEE YOU THERE!!

*KEEF RETROSPECTIVE AT CARTOON ART MUSEUM!!
Nice!! Starting June 17th, the Cartoon Art Museum wiill be hanging a big ol' exhibit
chronicling ME ME ME!! It's pretty all encompassing, covering stuff from my high school
days up until the present, with artwork featuring the K Chronicles, my MAD
work,(th)ink,my ESPN work, Marginal Prophets artwork and more, more more!!

The show runs through Nov.2nd.
For more info, go to http://www.cartoonart.org

*K CHRONICLES WINS 2008 GLYPH AWARD FOR BEST COMIC STRIP!!
Three years in a row!! Man!! I gotta tell ya I'm humbled. Special thanks to Rich
Watson for always lookin' out!!

*THE KNIGHT LIFE NEEDS YOUR HELP!!
I know I continue to ask this, but the first year of a daily strip is the toughest. And
the only way a new strip like mine can make it is if folks write in and say good stuff.

Right now, the biggest most important paper that runs comics is testing my new strip,
the Knight Life. If you planned on doing it but haven't gotten around to it, THIS IS THE
ONE PAPER TO DO IT WITH. It is the Washington Post and you can fill out a survey here:

The Wash, Post:
http://comicsurvey.washpost.com/survey.cfm
and/or email: comics@washpost.com
and/or call: (202)334-4775


But you should check out the strip first, so you can comment on it, so go here:

http://www.comics.com/comics/knightlife/index.html

Thanks!! See you in New York!!

Labels: cartoon art museum, Glyph, new papers, New York

 
*WHERE THE HELL AM I RIGHT NOW?
I'm in an internet cafe somewhere in New York City where there' a lot of Japanese restaurants. Cool!! I'm in town for some very special neatness that will be revealed to you all soon enough. But in the meantime, let us hope and pray that the Yankees go down in flames (but not without a fight...Gotta tire out Cleveland for the series with the Red Sox)

*AIN'T IT A PLEASURE TO BE BOSTON SPORTS FAN RIGHT NOW?
Sox. Patriots. Heck..the Celtics?!! I got friends back east complaining because their kids are growing up spoiled with all these good teams now. Whaddaya expect? Boston fans gotta complain about something.

*YES, YES, Y'ALL AND YA DON'T STOP (SPX THIS UPCOMING WEEKEND..)
I expect to see many faces at the wondrous SPX 2007 at the North Bethesda Marriott Hotel this weekend. I always enjoy SPX because there ain't a lotta distractions to take away from the event. It's just creators and comix fans. I always have a good time at it. Look for me right next to my Cartoonist with Attitude Brethren and Sistren near one of the doors and against the wall..

And come see our CWA slideshow at the Barnes and Noble in Bethesda this thursday at 7pm.

*WILL I BE HOSTING THE IGNATZ THIS YEAR?
Some of you may recall that I was a last minute replacement as host of the Ignatz awards that take place at SPX. After making fun of most of the audience and special honored guest Harvey Pekar, I made the winners and presenters drink shots of tequila and left the stage in a drunken stupor. Why haven't they asked me to host again?

*WEST HOLLYWOOD BOOKFAIR WRAP-UP...
Thanks to all who came by to say hello at the WHBF. It was a swell time and a good opportunity to meet my L.A. readers. I also got to hang out with some really cool local cartoonists, Christian and Llyn. Of course, I am spacing on their last names now so I can't link to them at the moment.

*HAVE YOU READ MY COMICS JOURNAL INTERVIEW YET?
Pretty snazzy!! Thank you Andrew Farago for the inquiries. This ish of the Journal is one of the neatest I've seen in a while. I just wish they used a bit more of my recent K Chronicles. A lot of the strips were taken from my first book, Dances with Sheep.

Ciao!!

Labels: ignatz awards, New York, red sox/yankees, spx 2007, West Hollywood Book Fair signing

 
*MOCCA CHOCOLATTA YA-YA WRAP-UP..
Ahhh, MOCCA. Does it ever really matter that I don't sell as much stuff here as I do at SPX, APE, Wondercon or San Diego? It's New York fer chrissakes!! It's about the connections, the experiences, the people!!

I had a great time stayin' in Queens at Marginal Prophets producer Jamie Lemoine and wonderful wife Dearbhla's lovely Jackson Heights estate. A great neighborhood for Indian food and the walk to the Roosevelt Ave. subway totally reminds me of London.

Thanks to AOL/Black Voices and my former Africana editor Ken Gibbs fer gettin' me into a Smirnoff sponsored afterwork party last thursday. It was smokin' with free food, open bar and great deejays including Pete Rock. Things got even better after my sunglasses fell into the toilet.

Hung with K Chronicles coolection ( I met to spell it like that!) graphic designer Pete Friedrich at the amazing Top Shelf ten year anniversary party. Although I just missed the shrimp, open bar was to be had and all the dolmas I could eat. It was in this super-smooth bar called G-Staad, Once open-bar was done , I heard some drinks clocked in at $15. I was outta there long before that happened.

But before I left, I got to meet big-time indie rapper/producer MF Grimm, who was at the Vertigo booth at MoCCa promoting an upcoming graphic novel based on his life. And quite a life it has been.

My slideshow on saturday went super groovy. People laffed when they were supposed to. And the MoCCA staff did a great job running it..Kudos to them. And a shout out to Calvin Reid from Publishers Weekly for attending the event.

The coolest thing that went down in New York was I got "peoped"!! What is getting "peoped"?, you ask. It's this way cool portrait/interview done by great New York artist/cartoonist Fly. It comes out like this.

Fly encapsulates everything that I think is great about New York City. I hope to be part of her next collection of Peops. If any publishers are interested, give her a shout out.

Actually, MoCCA this year was all about the females. Along with Fly were recent Rueben award winner Hilary Price, Every award under the sun winner Alison Bechdel, the hilarious tooners Rina Piccolo & Julia Wertz, fellow CWA-er Mikhaela Reid and the world's youngest professional cartoonist, 7 year old Alexa Kitchen .

In conclusion, New York rocked, despite low sales. Shout outs to L.A. homies Rob and Georgene, fellow eMPee Chernobyl Def Gee, Now Jersey rez Kaffy P, fellow CWA-ers Masheka Wood and
Brian McFadden, and everyone else who came by the table to say hello...

*HEY..THAT "THIS IS DEDICATED TO THAT ONE BLACK KID" K CHRONICLES STRIP HAS REALLY TOUCHED A LOTTA FOLK..

Wow. You gotta check out all the letters to Salon about it. Here.

Some letters of the week..

Keith,

I liked the K Chronicles comic from the other day, the one "dedicated to the
black kid." You are the ballsiest cartoonist I've ever read.

-N.
-------------------------------------------------------
This one white kid...

...thinks that was one of your best ever - GREAT
cartoon, man!

C.

--------------------------------------------------------

Good afternoon, Mr. Knight.

I am an recreational reader of Salon and have come across your very imaginative and amusing work for a bit. But for some reason, today I delved deeper and checked out your website - bio, etc.

Fascinating.

I am a Black female, more Creole-ish than African-ish, a writer, pr person and great appreciator of most things articstic.

It is in this spirit that I was moved to take a few moments from my workday to type these words to you.

May you know success and no bill collectors ringing your phone, but may you not suffer the slings and arrows of Aaron McGruder and Dave Chappelle. No one should really have to suffer for his art.

You've done well for a department store Jacko.

Pax vobiscum.

K.
Chicago

*OH, A COUPLA MORE THINGS..
I did a K Chronicles comic about being cheap and one of the things I put in there was to pour cheap vodka through a Britta filter to make it better vodka. Some folks didn't believe it, but the results are right here.

Yikes! I just got word from the C-Ville Weekly that they're down-sizing and (th)ink is on the chopping block. Next week will be the last one. If you are in the area, send letters and emails to the editor, but wait til it ain't there anymore.

Labels: Cartoonists with Attitude, female cartoonists, Marginal Prophets, MoCCA, New York