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I'm no comics historian, but I believe Knight Life, the new daily strip by fellow Cartoonist With Attitude Keith Knight may be the first appearance of an autobiographical comic strip syndicated on a daily basis. Sure, other strips and panels derive from the personal lives of their creators - For Better or For Worse, Dennis the Menace, and Family Circus being prime examples - but I think Knight's may be the first to actually inject the creator directly into the strip, featuring stories and gags based on the creator's experiences, personality, whims and whatnot. If anyone was to break that barrier, it would be - and should be - Keith.

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Like the K Chronicles, Keith's popular weekly strip, his daily strip is irreverent, self-parodying, silly, yet quite smart and always very funny. When I first heard Keith was creating a daily strip, I had wondered if he would carry over my favorite of the K Chronicles' running gags, jokes about sheep buggery. So far, nothing yet; and I have doubts about their ever making the dailies. That's okay, because so far, Knight Life succeeds in bringing in the other elements that have made the K Chronicles a classic among weekly alternative comics - especially the sensibility informing the occasional "Life's Little Victories" theme. And as a bonus, it diversifies the white middle class suburbia of the funny papers by depicting the urban lives of a bi-racial couple (Keith and his wife Kerstin) seeking happiness through creativity and risk.

Another bonus - Keith's work in color:


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From Tom Spurgeon's photo gallery of cartoonists at Stumptown 2008.

Tom Toles:


Pearls Before Swine:



Is this a new meme?

UPDATE: Point of order, my wife points out that in the first cartoon Popeye does not, in fact, choke on the spinach. He just eats it and dies. STILL, I say, it's funny that two different cartoonists used Popeye dying from spinach as a joke.

Found via Dirk Deppey, this pamphlet handed out by a comic book shop owner (and scanned by graphic novel blogger Franklin Harris) must be seen to be believed.

Believe!