KATCHOR, BEN 343
In an eff ort to stretch beyond the limitations of the short stories he was doing at
DC, Kane decided to create a longer-form comic story aimed at a more adult audi-
ence. Th e result, His Name Is... Savage , is a violent action story that combines prose
and sequential art in a unique way. Kane self-published the comic as a magazine, but
it failed to reach an audience due to distribution problems. Soon after, Kane published
the long-form sword-and-sorcery book, Blackmark , in a mass-market paperback format
with Bantam press. Each of these works anticipated the graphic novel. With writer Ron
Goulart, he also innovated a two-tier daily comic strip with Star Hawks , which ran from
1977 to 1981.
During his tenure at Marvel during the 1970s, Kane drew some key Spider-Man
stories, including the death of Gwen Stacy and a drug addiction story that did not receive
approval from the Comics Code Authority, despite the fact that the U.S. Department
of Health initiated the idea to use Spider-Man comics as a vehicle for spreading anti-
drug messages. Later in his career, Kane, along with writer Roy Th omas, developed an
adaptation of Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung for DC. He was working on a Superman
Elseworlds story with Steven Grant at the time of his death.
Kane was known as a master of anatomy and dynamic action. His signature image
involves a hero in the background punching a villain toward the audience, the villain’s
mouth open and face contorted in pain. He also challenged traditional page design by
drawing action that broke through panel borders.
Andrew J. Kunka
KATCHOR, BEN (1951–). Th e American writer, penciller, inker, letterer and cover
artist Ben Katchor is the author of complicated and intertextual comic strips that in-
volve the urban, and especially Jewish, experience in American life. His strips revolve
around the lives of his characters, many of whom search for unique experience in a
world that may otherwise seem mundane. Katchor was born in Brooklyn, New York
in 1951 to Yiddish-speaking members of the American Communist Party, so it comes
as no surprise that Katchor often explores the world of New York City intelligentsia as
well as working class fi gures. After attending Brooklyn College and the School of Vi-
sual Art in Manhattan, Katchor fi rst explored the comics medium by publishing in Art
Spiegelman’s RAW in 1980. Two of his best-known works are Julius Knipl Real Estate
Photographer and Th e Jew Of New York.
In 1988, Katchor was off ered the opportunity to publish a weekly comic strip in the
former publication of the Yiddish Socialist party, Th e Jewish Daily Forward. Th at strip,
Julius Knipl , tells the story of a New York City defi ned by the mundane, bizarre and
adroit. In Knipl’s New York, people make their livings taking pictures of real estate;
businesses will close when they would usually be busy; and the cultural event of the
moment is a personal concert by a man who plays radiators. Knipl’s events have been
published in the collections Cheap Novelties: Th e Pleasures of Urban Decay, with Julius
Knipl, Real Estate Photographer (Penguin, 1991), Stories (Little, Brown, 1996), and Th e
Beauty Supply District (Pantheon, 2000). Th e Pleasures of Urban Decay is also the title of
