Congratulations are in order for two Fantagraphics cartoonists, Gene Deitch and Ellen Forney! At San Diego Comic Con they were each awarded the Inkpot Award which are given to "individuals for their contributions to the worlds of comics, science fiction/fantasy, film, television, animation, and fandom services."
At San Diego in July, we released two books for by Gene Deitch. Nudnik Revealed! includes of Deitch's animation artwork for the mid-1960s shorts starring bumbling everyman Nudnik (cross between Candide and Godot), one of his most creatively personal and commercially successful creations in a long career of innovative and successful work are showcased in this process book.
We also reprinted Cat on a Hot Thin Groove by Deitch. On the long road to becoming an Oscar-winning animation director (and Inkpot Winner!), Gene Deitch became an intense jazz fan. At the age of 21, he discovered The Record Changer magazine, a jazz collector's magazine filled with fanatical, scholarly, and purist essays about jazz as well as listings of hard-to-find jazz albums. Every jazz swinger in the '40s was called a cat (as in "cool cat"), so Gene Deitch created a cartoon feature for Record Changer titled "The Cat," which quickly became a fixture of the magazine. He also started drawing the covers, which graced almost every issue from 1945 to 1951 along with "The Cat." Deitch's stylistically virtuoso images exquisitely embodied the essence of jazz and became a visual paean to the joy of collecting and appreciating jazz.