This is probably not a shock to anyone in particular. For evidence, though, please see the comments of this post where Kim responds to my scurrilous attacks by proving that he is, in fact, the nicest person on earth. It’s a good thing that critics have neither emotions nor souls; otherwise I might feel a bit caddish.

Anyway, in addition to just being way more pleasant than I had any right to expect, Kim also emailed me personally to ask if I’d come to his opening. Unfortunately, I’m in Chicago, not New York, but I figured the least I could do was belatedly promote it here.

Exhibition dates: September 9 – December 5, 2008
Opening Reception: Friday September 12, 6 – 9 pm

The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA) is pleased to announce a major retrospective of work by underground cartoonist and graphic novelist Kim Deitch (b. 1944), opening September 12th and running through December 5th, 2008.

Kim Deitch: A Retrospective will display original comics pages and other work covering the artist’s entire career to date, beginning with full-page comic strips drawn for the East Village Other in 1967 up to recent graphic novels including The Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Alias the Cat, Shadowland, and Deitch’s Pictorama. The exhibit will also feature rarely seen work including elaborate preparatory drawings, hand-colored originals, animation cel set-ups and lithographs.

Go, then, and expiate my guilt, ye New York blog readers. (I know there’s at least one of you — but you were probably going anyway, I bet.)