KNEW STRIP: KNIGHT LIFE

United Feature’s The Knight Life is produced by Boston-born Keith Knight, who found his comedic voice in San Francisco with his signature creation, The K Chronicles. “It was then that I discovered underground comics, people talking about politics, race, sex drugs — a lot of contemporary issues,” he told Angela Hill at The Crisis in November 2004. “I started to add a lot of risque stuff. I knew then that to make it in this business, I didn’t have to draw a cat that loves lasagna.” The K Chronicles is unabashedly autobiographical; and so is The Knight Life. Although usually focused on his own life, the strip’s topics included politics, race, and social issues affecting people of color like Knight.  “It covers everything,” he said recently, “ — cops, homeless, kids, Vegas, supermodels, talk radio. All the weird stuff that happens to me, my friends and family.” Despite his often blunt social criticisms, he insists that he isn’t trying to change the world: “I’d really prefer to take over the world,” he confided to Hill. As he homes in on a topic, he deploys what he calls his “trademark, poorly rendered, barely thought-out, last-minute cartooning style” to convert topics to comedy in the strip.

Because Knight’s strip comedy derives from his own life and his observations about the society around him — and because his view of the universe is eccentric — the jokes in The Knight Life are never predictable. Sometimes the humor springs entirely from the cartoonist’s quirky contemplation of the world; at other times the joie de vivre is what brings a smile to our lips.

Fittingly, Knight’s drawing style — a sort of cartooning short-hand, as much sketchy suggestion as actual depiction — is as eccentric as his sense of the human comedy. His drawings are clear and uncluttered. Simple, yes, but bubbling with comedic energy: whenever his characters talk, they are all mouth, usually unhinged, and eyeballs, a perfect evocation of the human visage for comedic purposes. The Knight Life is undeniably the best new laugh- and thought-provoker on the comics page. Not since Calvin and Hobbes has there been so novel an entertainment in the funnies.