Industry Feedback: Alexa Shelby Kitchen


 "Alexa Kitchen, Comics' Child Prodigy This book [Drawing Comics Is Easy!] is mind boggling. There are plenty of cartoonists 3, 4 or 6 times Alexa's age who are not this good and observant. Seriously. Wait until you see the page of how to tell what people are thinking by their expressions. Call it outsider art, call it a phenom, call it a book on making comics [but] check this out."

---Heidi MacDonald in The Beat column, comicon.con 6/9/06

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"Alexa's Drawing Comics Is Easy (Except When It's Hard) debuted at MoCCA, and definitely qualified as one of the biggest buzz books of the show."

--Publishers Weekly 6/13/06

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"When Denis Kitchen first told me that his daughter (then about 5) was drawing comics I made the kind of noises that you make when your friends tell you that their five year old daughters are writing operas, performing brain surgery or designing shopping malls ­ a sort of 'how very sweet and I hope you aren't going to actually show me any of this please god' sort of noise. And then one day Denis showed me her comics. Which were good. Really honestly actually good, rather than something you say is good to keep a proud parent happy. So now Alexa has moved into Scott McCloud territory with a book called Drawing Comics Is Easy! (Except When It's Hard!). I plan to buy a copy for myself, and another copy or two for local schools and godchildren and suchlike."

---Neil Gaiman 6/12/06 blog

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"The third annual MoCCA Festival, held the weekend of June 26-27 [2004] in New York City, focused on small press and self-published comics and graphic novels And the talk of the show was a pair of new titles (the Early Years, Volumes 1 and 2) by a very young cartoonist, six-year-old Alexa Kitchen."

- Publishers Weekly 7/12/04

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"A genius! [Harvey Kurtzman's] 'Hey Look!' Lives!" -Batton Lash (Supernatural Law)

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"She's the Tiger Woods of cartooning!" - Jay Kennedy, Editor-in-Chief, King Features Syndicate

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"[At] this year's MoCCA Festival ---the only thing that I was saying 'omigod did you SEE THAT?!' about was Alexa Kitchen's how-to-draw-comics-the-Alexa-Kitchen way book ---actually a blank book on which she'd drawn detailed instructions on the first eighty pages or so, including sections on e.g. color theory and facial expressions and background patterns. (Alexa is seven years old.) She's the first person I've ever paid to commission a sketch from ---$10 for a 'fancy sketch.' 'Is there anything you want in your sketch?' she asked. 'How about putting a brick in it somewhere,' I said. 'Like the brick in Krazy Kat?' Exactly like the brick in Krazy Kat."

- Doug Wolk in lacunae.com 6/16/05

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"A marvelous talent, with so much yet to come." - Will Eisner

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"Everyone [is] pretty flabbergasted by Alexa's work. Not only does she write and letter all her own work but she has an eye for detail and composition that many grown artists can barely match." -Heidi MacDonald in Comics Buyer's Guide (2004)

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"She's incredible!" - R. Crumb

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"Alexa is young and has a lot of drawing, and a lot of comic stories, ahead of her. Personally, I'm hoping that every so often she decides to do an updated Drawing Comics Is Easy! If she does I, for one, will be learning from every new edition."

- Mark Schultz, from his Introduction

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"Alexa has genuine talent, to put it mildly. I swear her drawings/staging about the teddy bear could pass for [my boss's] boards at Pixar. I'm really struck by her catching a number of attitudes in one character in the 'Cats' and the ones about dance lessons, not just through expression but through strong posing. And the sense of composition is very, very sophisticated, as is the story structuring - really remarkable."

---Animator Joe Suggs

 


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Stacey Kitchen.