I dropped by the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art on lower Broadway in New York last week.

I’d always intended to visit the museum, but since I’m only in Manhattan infrequently, and usually dashing around madly, I’ve never previously gotten around to it. What finally motivated me to make it there was the current retrospective on the career of underground comix cartoonist Kim Deitch.

I attended my first comic-book convention in 1970 at age 15, which is also when I first found underground comix, but I discovered Deitch’s art even earlier than that.

Serendipitously, while walking the streets of Canarsie, where I lived from 1966-1972, I found a copy of the underground newspaper The East Village Other, which someone had abandoned on the street. It contained Deitch’s cartoons, as well as the work of other cartoonists such as Art Speigelman and Spain Rodriguez.

You can find photos from my visit here. If some of them seem a little dark, that’s because flash photography wasn’t allowed, but I think the art pictured there can still be enjoyed.

For those unfamiliar with this creator, here’s an interview with Kim Deitch, which I came across while wandering about online. In yet another example of serendipity, this interview appears to have been conducted by Jeffrey Ford.