Born: September 18, 1968 in Chicago, IL

John Porcellino is a popular creator and self-publisher of minicomics. His photocopied, mostly autobiographical series King-Cat Comics began in 1989 and is the best-known and longest-running in production today. He is known for his very simplistic line drawings which, without any attempts at realism or shading, create a "feeling" or "impression" for the reader. This style has inspired a generation of alternative comix creators. In 2005, he won an Ignatz Award for Diary of a Mosquito Abatement Man, which chronicles his experiences working in pest control. His work has been translated into French, German, Swedish, Italian, Spanish and Korean.

Biography

John Porcellino has been creating comics since he was in elementary school, assembling his drawings into little booklets and distributing them to his friends.  "Even back then," he says, "I knew that [comics] was going to be the way that I documented my life." His most popular work is King-Cat Comics, where he tells the true stories that occur in his every day "real life." 

Outside of the comics industry, in the mid-90s, he was in a short-lived but locally popular Denver band called the Felt Pilotes. He moved on to owning his own music and comics distribution company, Grinding Wheels Enterprises, which later became Spit and a Half, but he ended up abandoning the project and returning to self-publishing. Besides creating comics, Porcellino also writes and publishes poetry.

Porcellino currently resides in South Beloit, IL.

Career

John Porcellino began self-publishing his comics at the age of 20, when he got the idea for King-Cat Comics. Due to their autobiographical nature, the content of the zine has changed as the creator has matured. The early pages document the life of a dark, sarcastic punk rocker. When Porcellino was in his mid-twenties, he experienced some health trouble and was forced to slow down. During that time, he discovered Zen meditation, and ever since, his work has had a slower, more mindful quality to it.

Porcellino began to assemble his work on King-Cat into books; so far, there are three: The King-Cat Collection, King-Cat Nummber Eins, and King-Cat Classics. In 2005, he published Diary of a Mosquito Abatement Man, which won an Ignatz Award in the same year. In 2007, he was contacted by a representative of the Center for Cartoon Studies to adapt Henry David Thoreau's Walden into comic form. Porcellino had always considered Thoreau to be a personal inspiration, so he jumped at the opportunity.

John Porcellino continues to work on both King-Cat and longer novel-length comic books simultaneously. He continues to self-publish, but this more of a personal preference.

Work 

All of Porcellino's work, including Thoreau at Walden, is intensely personal, if not strictly autobiographical. Especially in King-Cat, there is a very Zen-like quality to the simplicity of both the form and the content. He is known for his simple line drawings -- no shading, and no attempts anatomical realism. The content may seem mundane, but it is a chronicle of the everyday -- of "real life." The comics are meant to be a reflection of Porcellino's mindfulness and inner reality. Porcellino's work is also done all by hand, without the use of a computer. He hand draws, photocopies and mails every issue of King-Cat to hundreds of subscribers himself. 

Making Thoreau at Walden was a special project. He admits that although Walden was a personal source of inspiration since he had first read it at 16, it was still dense and hard for him to get through. Being able to draw the comic gave him a chance to reread it with new eyes. Porcellino conceived of this project as sort of a "collaboration" with Thoreau himself, so it was very important to Porcellino that the words were Thoreau's. So as the artist reread the original text of Walden, he found quotes that he thought were significant, put them on index cards and arranged them into themes. When it came time to write the comic, he mixed and matched the quotes and arranged them into a story. In the end, Porcellino only added a bit of punctuation to Thoreau's words to help continuity between panels. Thoreau at Walden is meant to be more of an adaptation of the "experience" of Thoreau's time living in the woods than an adaptation of the text itself. It shows the flow of time through nature -- the changing of the seasons reflecting Thoreau's change in thought.

Bibliography

• King-Cat Comics and Stories (1989 -Present)
• The King-Cat Collection (1998, B.u.L.B. Comix)
• King-Cat Nummer Eins (1998, Reprodukt)
• Perfect Example, (2000, Highwater Books; 2005 Drawn and Quarterly)
• Diary of a Mosquito Abatement Man (2005, La Mano)
• Moon Lake Trails (2006, Ego Comme X)
• King-Cat Classix (2007, Drawn and Quarterly)
• Thoreau at Walden (2008, Hyperion/CSS)
• Map of My Heart (2009, Drawn and Quarterly)

References 

1. http://www.king-cat.net/history.html
2. http://www.utne.com/2007-10-29/Media/Doing-King-Cat.aspx
3. http://www.avclub.com/articles/john-porcellino,14096/
4. http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6567597.html
5. http://american-studies-uea.blogspot.com/2008/05/news-john-porcellino-writes.html
6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Porcellino 

Further Reading

• http://www.king-cat.net/misc.html
• http://johnporcellino.blogspot.com/