Fantagraphics co-publisher Kim Thompson passed away yesterday. He was a major force in the comics that i enjoy, and the work that I try to cover on this show. I had the honour of being joined by Kim on the twice. The first time was with Gary Groth to talk about Fantagrapics. It was an earlier interview for me, so I apologize for my terrible awkward questions.
The second time was for a round-table on European comics between Kim and Bart Beaty. Kim was visiting his family and the phone line wasn’t the greatest. The first phone line I tried him on, had some weird interference, so we could hear another line with people speaking in Spanish. Kim being the poly-linguist that he was, was able to figure out the conversation. I lost track of just how many languages that Kim could speak.
For myself, Kim was very supportive of the studs. He was instrumental in connecting me with Lorenzo Mattotti. Kim even sent me a copy of Crackle of the Frost in French, so I could have it read for the interview. It was Kim’s personal copy that he would be translating, but hadn’t yet. After the interview he helped me on editing the transcription of the interview, since there were a lot of names that I had no idea who they were. Kim turned around the edits that same day.
The last time I saw Kim, was an amazingly awkward experience. Brandon Graham and I had gone down to Seattle for the day and went for lunch with a bunch of Fantagraphics staffers. Kim was in the office working hard on a Krazy Kat reprint. After the lunch, Brandon and I were waiting to get picked up by Moritat, who was taking his sweet time. Kim walked by on his way to the store, I introduced him to Brandon and we talked about doing critter’s roundtable at some point and Kim walked off to the store. On his way back, we were still waiting for the ride, and we all stood around in a weird silence through what seemed like the longest light to change. I will miss having Kim to go to with random questions about European comics.
My heart goes out to Kim’s family and his work family at Fantagraphics. I have attached the roundtable with Kim and Bart below for your listening pleasure.
