From page to stage: The Philadelphia Inquirer (registration required) chats with cartoonist Ben Katchor, whose "rock opera-in-progress," The Rosenbach Company: A Tragicomedy, premieres tonight as part of the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Katchor, who counts Steve Ditko, Dick Tracy and Tintin among his influences, says the leap from drawing to theater makes sense:

"The early, early comic strips from the 16th century were an attempt to graphically record what happened in the theater. Theater is pictures of people talking. How do you represent that graphically? You write it, you don't get the picture. You draw it, you don't get the words. So that's how comics started. They were called picture stories."