Keith Knight

Keith Knight would like to make one thing abundantly clear: he is not Aaron McGruder.  For one thing, unlike the creator of The Boondocks (whom Knight has good-naturedly complained about being mistaken for), he's still a working cartoonist. For another, although there's a healthy undercurrent of rage against complacency, duplicity, waste and mendacity in his work, Keith Knight doesn't conform to anyone's stereotype of the Angry Black Political Cartoonist. ABPCs don't regularly feature drawings of bare butts -- sadly, almost always the ectomorphic cartoonist's own -- in their work, for one thing. Also, Knight's signature recurring feature "Life's Little Victories," shout-outs to the small treats of everyday existence, bespeaks a generally optimistic, life-affirming personality. Since 1993, Knight has produced the weekly autobiographical comic The K Chronicles, a freewheeling, diary-like strip that over the years has followed "Keef" on his journey from dead-broke struggling young artist to an older, somewhat wiser (but not exactly "mature") husband and father. The Knight Life, a daily syndicated strip begun in 2008, is a more fanciful, PG-rated strip focusing on married life in one of L.A.'s hipster enclaves. The weekly editorial cartoon (Th)ink is Knight's most conventionally topical and political work.