DALLAS, TX.- To Denis Kitchen, the 275 works of original comic art he’s offering in
Heritage’s April 4-7 Comics & Comic Art Signature® Auction are more than just landmark works by some of the medium’s most influential creators — though, of course, there’s that, too.
Says Kitchen — artist, historian, founder of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and namesake of the long-running Kitchen Sink Press — they are “reminders of friendships and relationships, reminders of projects and the people I admired. They’re the works of artists I appreciate aesthetically. I was just lucky to be in the position to know a fair number of them.”
These works are vast and estimable, spanning decades, genres, mainstream titles and underground sensations — a veritable A-to-Z history of comicdom ranging from Li’l Abner originals by its creator Al Capp to Spirit-ual offerings from Will Eisner. In between is a staggering who’s-who of significant creators, among them Maus author Art Spiegelman, Zippy the Pinhead father Bill Griffith, Nancy creator Ernie Bushmiller, MAD founders Harvey Kurtzman and Jack Davis, revered Weirdo Robert Crumb, satirist and original MAD artist Will Elder and Kitchen’s own “oddly compelling” artwork.
The list is seemingly endless as it bounds from founding fathers (Winsor McCay, Basil Wolverton, Milton Caniff, George Herriman, Chester Gould, Wally Wood) to modern-era hellraisers and revolutionaries (Chris Ware, Jaime Hernandez, Spain Rodriguez, Trina Robbins, Howard Cruse, Ivan Brunetti). That is but a tiny sampling of the artists whose treasures make their public debuts in a historic comics and comic art event that also includes one of the world’s finest (and most valuable!) copies of Action Comics No. 1 and the original artwork for the Tales of Suspense No. 39 page showing Tony Stark becoming Iron Man for the very first time.
This is an auction with everything, including the Kitchen Sink, thanks to the man about whom Neil Gaiman once wrote, “The world of comics would have been infinitely poorer without Denis Kitchen.”
“As a collector, Denis Kitchen was always in a uniquely envious position, as he’s been long respected and successful as a cartoonist, publisher, editor, writer, historian, exhibition curator, and agent to some of the all-time greats — and that list still leaves out some of his comic industry hats,” says Heritage Executive Vice President Todd Hignite. “The resulting range and depth of his collection is simply without peer. The artwork we all dream about bringing to auction is immediately recognizable as the very best by a given artist and hasn’t ever been available on the market. Denis’ collection contains scores that check both boxes, spanning the most important artists to ever work in the medium to obscure underground cartoonists begging for reevaluation.”
Every piece in this auction has a story befitting Kitchen’s long history as a comics creator, publisher and champion. Some pieces he bought because he loved them, because they influenced him and because, way back when they were inexpensive enough for a young hippie to afford when he could afford to skip a few meals. Some were gifted to him by mentors, including Eisner and Kurtzman, who pushed him into publishing. Others he traded for. And on and on it went until he built this trove, some of which he displayed but much of which remained hidden from the public for far too long.
“I was in the right place at the right time,” Kitchen says. “But as Neil Gaiman says, we’re just temporary custodians. I love collecting. I feel deeply connected to a lot of this material. But my family doesn’t collect — at least, not the same way I do,” he says with a laugh. “It’s best to bring it to auction while I am in good health and good spirits.”
Kitchen came of age in the late 1960s, first as art editor of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee humor magazine Snide, then as creator and publisher of Mom’s Homemade Comics, from which several of Kitchen’s originals are available in this auction. By 1970, he had turned on the Kitchen Sink Press, which dug deep into the underground and continues to burrow.
By 1972, Kitchen Sink counted among its titles legendary offerings such as the “adults only!” Snarf, Bizarre Sexand Death Rattle. The contributors included Peter Poplaski, Jay Lynch, Cruse and Eisner himself, whose cover of Snarf No. 3 ranks high among this auction’s highlights. After all, it features Eisner’s masked crimebuster The Spirit reborn in the modern age, a 1940s creation busting into a comix office filled with hippies discussing Robert Crumb, their encroaching “establishment tendencies,” and how to spell defecate. This wasn’t your grandfather’s Sunday paper. But Kitchen was so enamored of the old school that he wasn’t shy about bringing those golden yesterdays into a somewhat hazier tomorrow.
“I thought twice about including that cover in this auction — actually, I thought three times about it,” Kitchen says. “It comes down to: I’ve had it since 1972, and it hung on my wall for a long time. I think it’s time for somebody else to look at it every day. I was lucky to look at it for five minutes!
“And, look, in the moment, one never thinks about history. But that was an important one because it brought Will back into the fold. He was retired from comics, so being able to help pull him back was something wonderful. Same for Harvey. Getting him to do guest covers for Snarf and Bijou Funnies and getting to publish his work was a dream job when I look back at it all.”
Every work in this auction was important to Kitchen — something by an influence, a friend, a colleague, a mentor. Look no further than the splash-page panels from 1962’s HELP! featuring Elder and Kurtzman’s Goodman Beaver, “the consummate innocent at large in a wicked world,” as this auction’s catalog notes. This sequence comes from the story “Goodman Meets S*perm*n,” about a particular DC superhero who’s lost faith in the people he once tried to protect. It was a parody but also a work that was decades ahead of its time — a comic about a comic and readers’ relationships with their beloved heroes.
“For a long time, that was one of my favorites,” Kitchen says. “We interviewed Will when we did the Goodman Beaver collection in 1984, and Will called that ‘Goodman Meets S*perm*n’ story the funniest thing he ever did. And of all the great things he did, from Playboy to MAD, and I was able to get that splash page.”
Kitchen easily, quickly rattles off favorites in this auction, among them R. Crumb’s dueling self-portraits titled Who’s Afraid of Robert Crumb? or his cover for adored crank Harvey Pekar’s Best of American Splendor. It was partly because Kitchen was the second person to publish Pekar and partly because Crumb captured the writer and wannabe cartoonist’s “irascible nature” so perfectly. He adores, too, the humor magazines featured here — not just the MAD men, but the Trump and Humbug works, too, which were short-lived only in spirit.
With rare exceptions, there are no superheroes here, no flawless do-gooders in Technicolor spandex. For the most part, these pieces abound with regular schmoes and frustrated schmucks cracking wise, scoring dope, looking to get laid and just trying to scratch out a meager existence in a world they don’t understand. What was underground decades ago has become mainstream in the untethered 21st century; the more personal a work, after all, the more universal its appeal, especially on these pages drafted by men and women for whom there was no up, up and away.
“These works are all self-motivated,” Kitchen says. “They weren’t done as a work-for-hire. And there is extra pride when you’re doing it that way.”
Perhaps most remarkable about this collection is its breadth, respect for the medium and celebration of creators whose gospel Kitchen proselytized through a publishing house that tunneled into countless homes and impacted generations of readers who became writers themselves. Any handful of these works would be centerpieces in most comic-art auctions. To see all 300-plus in a single place is a testament to a man who celebrated history as he made it.
“I find it hard to be objective about myself and what I’ve done,” Kitchen says. “I do derive a great deal of satisfaction in what we’ve done. At the time, it was day after day after day in pursuit of something — a dream, I guess. I love comics so much that I wasn’t shy about reaching out to the old-timers and the underground guys on the West Coast when I was in the Midwest. With every project that was finished and went to press, I felt a good deal of satisfaction. As the body of work grew and the reputation of some of the people I published early on grew, it was ultimately very satisfying to know you left a mark, which isn’t easy.
“But what is a mark? I said the same thing to Will Eisner when he was an older man, and he said, ‘We just leave footprints in the sand,’ and I love that expression. You see the footprint at that moment but know it will be washed away. We’re all here temporarily. You have to have perspective.”
