28 July 2021

Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer by Ben Katchor (No. 56)

Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer (1988-1996)
by Ben Katchor

REVIEW BY BART BEATY:
(from The 100 Best Comics of the Century! in The Comics Journal #210, 1999)
I don't know if every one of Ben Katchor's Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer strips is comprised of eight panels, four on the top and four on the bottom, but I suppose they must be. That same drudge-like layout week after week seems all too fitting a reflection of the general mundane surroundings in which the events routinely unfold. Moreover, the plain layout reminds us to look deeply at the content of the strip itself, to recognise that the significance resides not on the surface  but in the constant evolution of minor details that come to light when you care to examine the seemingly quotidian long enough to find real beauty.

Katchor's strip is a celebration of the mundane and the ordinary. Every week he takes his readers into ordinary lives in a quest for the sublime. The breakfast special, the vacant lot, the souvenir program, these are the basis for some of the most spectacular ruminations on like ever to grace the comics page. For make no mistake about it, these are spectacular strips. Katchor's inventive use of the framing, his sketchy, sometimes hesitant lifework and his confident washes conspire to create one of the most visually arresting strips in decades. When his art is combined with his sly, subtle pacing, the result is never overpowering but it can often take your breath away just the same.

Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer is, without a doubt in my mind, the most literate, intelligent and consistently important weekly comic strip to have emerged since Feiffer. That so few papers and readers have recognised that fact at this point is only an indicator of how oblivious people become when they fail to search for the significance of what's right in front of their noses.


FURTHER READING:



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