Cheap Novelties by Ben Katchor
Ben Katchor’s exceptional foresight as a brilliant cartoonist and a perceptive urban observer is early on display in Cheap Novelties. Julius Knipl, a rumpled, middle-aged photographer, captures images of a disappearing city, capturing its urban landscape of low-rent apartment buildings, abandoned industries, memorials to long-forgotten individuals and events, and innumerable sources of cheap food. Cheap Novelties is a portrayal of what we have lost to gentrification, globalization, and the malling of America in Katchor’s distinctive pen and ink wash style, and it is just as affecting today as it was 25 years ago.
Cheap Novelties by Ben Katchor
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Ben Katchor has superb attention to even the smallest things. This book exhibits a genuinely New York sensibility that sets it apart from the works of the other authors. It is piercingly intelligent and perceptive, yet it does not have a mandarin sensibility. You won’t find another perspective on New York like the one you will get if you read this book or any of his other works. There were and are many genuine representations of New York. Even if the only thing that is truly New York-like about these works is the author’s sensibility, they all provide you with an honest representation of the city. The early 1990s saw the publication of this book. You can see how New York appeared in the past.
He captured something that is no longer there. Some of the things he depicted in these paintings had already vanished, while others were still in existence. His mentality resembles a collage, which is unquestionably more current than anything else.
One of Katchor’s best collections of stories is still this one. It combines an unusual fusion of remorse, nostalgia, and redemption. The graphics are realistic but off-centre enough to give the stories a strange, almost nightmarish aspect. An absolute masterpiece of comic book art is Cheap Novelties. Although the stories often have a serious tone, there is also some sardonic humour in them. All serious fans of graphic novels should own this compilation.
