Q&A: Kim Deitch

The Montreal Mirror talks with cartoonist Kim Deitch about his father's influence, Waldo, and the "graphic novel":

Isn't that a starchy term? I just found out that that was a gift from Will Eisner. He was a great man, but I think he was defensively stuffy about the whole thing. Comics are like a junk literature medium. In a way I think we should just relax and let it be a junk literature medium. Most of the great literature classics turn out to be the best of the junk. If you look at the work of Charles Dickens, they didn't come out in finely bound volumes, they were first published in parts, with splash panel and a jazzy logo and a few pictures inside. They looked a lot like comics. They were for the masses. My old man says most of everything is lousy, and I agree with him. We always look through the lousy to get to the good stuff. But you know what? They used to call me a hippie when I was younger, and I thought, "Well, if a black man is a nigger, then I'm a hippie." They'll call you whatever they want to call you. The name isn't that important.