Jack Katz

Jack Katz was an American comic book artist and writer, painter, and art teacher known for his graphic novel The First Kingdom, a 24-issue epic he began during the era of underground comix. He began working for comic-book publishers in the 1940s. Though continuing to work in comics through the 1950s, his slow pace and highly detailed, idiosyncratic art style prompted him to leave that field for 14 years. He did assisting work as a detail man for King Features Syndicate, Inc, from 1946 to 1951. His work primarily consisted of touching-up artwork for various comic strips within the King Features line-up of comics. Circa 1969, he returned to mainstream color comics as well as to black-and-white horror-comics magazines. He embarked upon The First Kingdom, a serialized work that later became considered a precursor to, or an early form of, the graphic novel. He completed it in 1986, and went on to write and draw further works in that vein. After his comic book career, Katz taught art and then sculpture at University of California at Berkeley.