Cartoonist Keith Knight's 'Chronicles' Give Readers Something to '(Th)ink' About

MEDIA

Funny is in the eye of the tall skinny guy in the little brown crocheted cap, the one who just hiked up to his favorite coffee house called Javaholics on a foggy San Francisco so-called-summer day and, once inside, sits facing the window because he doesn't have a lock for his bike.

"That shows you how lucrative my line of work is," says Keith Knight, cartoonist of the weekly strips "The K Chronicles" and "(Th)ink." He's also an award-winning rapper, a "creative" social activist and, on this day, a bike guarder extraordinaire.

Now, none of that coffeehouse scene may seem particularly funny to the casual observer, but any of it might easily be carved into humor by this satirical genius. It could be someone who just walks in and trips or makes a silly comment. It could be something Knight spots in the newspaper, or the very air circulating, for that matter.

Regardless, he's ready with his everpresent sketch book. So if he looks your way and starts doodling with that little sly smile on his face, ask for royalties.

Knight was clearly destined for glory, by virtue of his birthplace, in Maiden, Mass., a suburb of Boston, where Converse All Stars were invented. It was also home to the late Jack Albertson of Chico and the Man and Willy Wonka fame, Knight proudly reveals.

"Now that's a pedigree," he says.

As a child, Knight, 38, was "weaned on a steady diet of Star Wars, hip-hop, racism and Warner Bros, cartoons," he writes on his Web site www.kchronicles.com. Knight paid little attention in school. Instead, he scribbled doodles in his notebook all day long.

"I had no idea how I would become a cartoonist," says Knight. "There were no classes for it where I lived or where I went to school. I just knew that I wanted to do it.. .and if you're determined enough, you can do just about anything."

After graduating from Salem State College in 1990 with a degree in graphic design, Knight moved to San Francisco and developed his "trademark, poorly rendered, barely thoughtout, last-minute cartooning style," he jokes.

"It was then that I discovered underground comics, people talking about politics, race, sex, drugs - a lot of contemporary issues," says Knight. "I knew then that to make it in this business, I didn't have to draw a cat that loves lasagna."

Knight began sending his cartoons out to local newspapers and magazines, then to publications across the country. The San Francisco Weekly was the first major publication to run Knight's strip when it agreed to publish his cartoons in 1993.

Now more than a decade later, his work appears on Web sites such as Salon.com and Africana.com, as well as in 24 print publications around the country including, the San Jose Metro, Michigan Citizen, Salt Lake City Weekly and the Rocky Mountain Bullhorn. He also does a bi-weekly sports-only strip for ESPN the Magazine called "Sports Knight." In addition, Knight has published three anthologies of his multi-frame "K Chronicles" strip and is working on a fourth. He's currently pushing Red, White, Black & Blue: A (Th)ink Anthology, the first book of his singleframe cartoon "(Th)ink," published earlier this year.

Knight's topics often involve politics, race and social issues affecting people of color. For example, one comic strip features a Denny's restaurant sign that reads "Denny's: Serving Blacks Since 1997." In another, he took a swipe at President Bush, suggesting a "shadow(y) government," with Darth Vader as Bush's shadow.

The popularity of reality TV has not escaped the wrath of Knight's pen. In a comic strip called "Black Eye for the White Guy," five Black men set out to provide a lifestyle makeover. Somehow, it ends with the cops being called when a neighbor phones in, "Hello, 911? A gang of Black men have taken over the apartment next door... "

Every now and then, Knight receives letters from people who say that a certain strip caused them to rethink their beliefs about an issue. But he insists he's not trying to change the world with his blunt, often bitingly political comics. "I'd really prefer to take over the world," he says with a devious smile.

Ideally, though, his first goal with his comic strips is to make people laugh. The second is to make them think. "If I can make them do both, I've hit a home run," he says.

A keen cultural observer, Knight is admired for the provocative voice of his strips. "It's informed, yet doesn't beat you over the head with the issues," says Ken Gibbs, entertainment and program manager of Africana.com where Knight's strips have been running for about five years. "He's got a sharp sense of humor, and his art is appealing too-kind of old-school cartooning."

Most publications that run Knight's strips are progressive, but even a few of those have pulled the occasional cartoon for fear of offending someone.

In fact, he's had more 'toons pulled in the mostly liberal San Francisco Bay area than anywhere else, Knight says, because editors are often "too PC and being too careful."

"Newspapers are there to inform and challenge people, even on the comics page," says Knight. "I think they forget that a lot."

Knight likes to mix up the strip topics to surprise people, and to keep from getting bored himself. His strips are visually various. Sometimes crammed with bold lettering. Sometimes just simple drawings.

Indeed, Knight's life is one big variety show. His five-member rap band, The Marginal Prophets, just won a 2004 California Music Award in the outstanding rap album category for its Bohemian Rap CD. In case people are wondering which one he is, he always tells them he's "the Black one." Ever the free spirit, Knight says he performed in one of the band's shows naked. "Hey, it was for charity," he says.

Speaking of the visual arts, Knight's work has been featured in galleries and museums around the country, such as the Winfisky Gallery in Salem, Mass., and the Tangent Gallery in Detroit.

Knight also sits on boards for several organizations, including the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco, where he's an artist-in-residence, the 826 Valencia, a writing workshop for kids, and Just Think, a media and literacy group for young people. In addition, he visits schools and kids in prisons to encourage them to not give up on their dreams.

Oh, and there's that "creative" social activism thing.

Knight says he generally considers himself a writer, "and some of it works as a cartoon, some works as a song, some works as a video, or a performance piece, or some sort of activism."

In one such "work" in the early '90s, Knight and his roommate would crash dot-corn launch parties for the free food and would be the only Black people there. Guests would come up and shake their hands and thank them for coming.

"We got to thinking, 'Wow, that's a great gig,'" Knight says. "So I put together these posters that said 'Black People for Rent. Willing to stand around to add diversity to parties for a fee. Conversation extra.' And I put my phone number and hung 'em up all over town."

He says he got hundreds of calls, some from as far away as New York and Miami. Many got the joke and thought it was hilarious. Some actually believed the posters were serious and were really upset. Then there were the calls from the racists who used it as an excuse to phone requesting "basketball-playing, watermelon-eating Blacks with big lips." And, of course, the media made inquiries as well.

"The strangest calls I got were from Black people asking for the job," he says. "Now that was an idea that wouldn't have worked as a comic. You couldn't have written that out. It had to be 'done.'"

Knight's often compared to Aaron McGruder, creator of the popular strip "The Boondocks," and considered one of the few highly successful Black cartoonists in the industry. Knight questions this assumption.

"You can just as easily say that, in general, there are so few highly successful cartoonists at all. There's only a small amount out there. I mean, you can die and they don't take your strip out of the funny pages, like 'Peanuts' and 'Blondie,' so naturally there's even a smaller amount who are Black."

"It's a hard profession to get into and you don't make squat at it, so you have to love it," he says, sipping tea.

But Knight says he never tires of the comparison to McGruder. Instead, he made a strip out of it.

"At one comics convention, one guy came up and shook my hand and said, 'Mr. McGruder, so nice to meet you!' So I did this strip about being mistaken for him. In the strip I say, 'No, I'm the OTHER Black cartoonist,' and I offer anyone $10 to walk up to Aaron McGruder and shake his hand and say, 'Hey, Mr. Knight!'"

Next on the Knight horizon? A new book, The Passion of the Keef, will be published next spring. He also has a couple of graphic novel ideas - one which somehow involves Michael Jackson and horror stories, but Knight declines to elaborate. He's "borderline" thinking of doing a daily strip, but fears the dreaded burn-out. Basically, he just wants fame and fortune.

"I want to be able to purchase a house by just handing them my priceless discarded old sketches," he says. If nothing else, maybe he can get a bike lock.

Angela Hill is a freelance writer based in Oakland, Calif.

Copyright Crisis Publishing Company, Incorporated Nov/Dec 2004
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