Cartoons: Ben Katchor: "Hotel & Farm"

[HWright]

A question to all fans of cartoonist Ben Katchor:

Is Ben still drawing his strip "Hotel & Farm" (aka "Cardboard Valise," "Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer," etc)? I used to read the strip in the Washington DC City Paper but a few years back they stopped running it. Recently I found Ben's website (http://www.katchor.com/) and the site seems to claim that "Hotel & Farm" is still being produced, but the two strips on the site seem strangely familiar. Unfortunately I have no way of verifying if they are repeats because Ben hasn't put out a book lately and so none of his "Hotel & Farm" series has been reprinted anywhere as far as I know.

My current theory is that Ben is currently busy with musical theater (he has worked on two shows: "The Slug Bearers of Kayrol Island, or The Friends of Dr. Rushower" and "The Rosenbach Company") and has been running repeats in his strip. Anyone have any idea about this?

Whether his strip is on hiatus or not, I sure wish another book of his strips would be published.

[BFrank]

I don't have any insight, but good to see his name on a thread.

I always forget to read his stuff on his web site. I'll have to catch up ...

[ghost of miles]

Katchor's name actually came up recently in a thread about Horace Silver's autobiography (as a result of a joke having to do with the Forward, if I recall correctly). JULIUS KNIPL blew me away when it came out as a book... liked the BEAUTY SUPPLY DISTRICT followup quite a bit, too.

There's actually a Katchor illustration on an old R.E.M. album--in the booklet for OUT OF TIME.

[Kalo]

Katchor is one of the best in the business. He hasn't published anything in book form for a while, it's true.

I'll look into this.

[BFrank]

The short-lived Julius Knipl radio show that they did on NPR with Jerry Stiller was very well done. There are 14 of them on Katchor's site (maybe that's all there were).

[HWright]

I decided to write Ben myself and he (or one of his team) wrote me back the following reply:

"Hotel & Farm" ended last year. Some papers have still not finished running the series. I have also been posting the entire series on my website.

My new weekly strip, "Shoehorn Technique," is running in the English-language Forward and the Chicago Reader.

I will eventually collect "Hotel & Farm" in book form, but the next book collection will be "The Cardboard Valise" series.

[BFrank]

Somehow I suspect that Ben doesn't have a "team".

[BruceH]

Katchor is one of the best in the business. He hasn't published anything in book form for a while, it's true.

I'll look into this.

Please do. I'm a big fan of his stuff.

[ejp626]

Katchor is one of the best in the business. He hasn't published anything in book form for a while, it's true.

I'll look into this.

Please do. I'm a big fan of his stuff.

It's been almost 10 years since he last book, but apparently Katchor's The Dairy Restaurant is about to come out. I have no idea which strip it will collect. I kind of wish he would gather up all of Cardboard Valise and Shoehorn Technique, since there doesn't seem to be any easy way to look through them at once (or some of the uncollected Knipl for that matter). Those two also seem thematically similar, whereas Hotel & Farm is in a different setting.

[BruceH]

Katchor is one of the best in the business. He hasn't published anything in book form for a while, it's true.

I'll look into this.

Please do. I'm a big fan of his stuff.

It's been almost 10 years since he last book, but apparently Katchor's The Dairy Restaurant is about to come out. I have no idea which strip it will collect. I kind of wish he would gather up all of Cardboard Valise and Shoehorn Technique, since there doesn't seem to be any easy way to look through them at once (or some of the uncollected Knipl for that matter). Those two also seem thematically similar, whereas Hotel & Farm is in a different setting.

Good news. Any new collection by Katchor is good news.