On sale date: March 3, 2026
Legendary underground cartoonist Kim Deitch’s magnum opus, a sprawling odyssey of reincarnation, now in a new paperback edition.
Sitting on a bench one day, four-year-old Kim Deitch is accosted by an elderly man. Flask in hand, the man exclaims, “Is it possible? Sid! SID PINCUS! Good God, man! You’ve changed!” A lightbulb goes off in the man’s head. “You died, Sidney! And now you live again!” Whisked away by his mother, young Deitch is left to wonder: Was it all just the mad ravings of a drunk or a tantalizing glimpse into reincarnation?
Thus begins Deitch’s quest to piece together the cosmic jigsaw puzzle of creation and reveal his past lives. This sprawling odyssey weaves through time and space, encompassing a dizzying array of oddball characters, including aspiring screenwriter Sidney Pincus, a tribe of moon-dwelling Native Americans, a feline YouTube star, a has-been silver screen cowboy, Frank Sinatra, and the awesome Monkey God! Featuring Deitch’s surreal scenarios and eye-popping psychedelia, Reincarnation Stories is a gripping yarn and a cartooning tour de force.
Praise
"Kim Deitch, a mainstay of the underground comix movement, gives a full display of his ebullient creativity." — The New Yorker
"Reincarnation Stories goes flamboyantly off the rails, making a hash of narrative throughlines and pulverizing the divide between truth and fiction. Underneath the appearance of lawlessness, there's a huge amount of craft and care." — NPR Books
"Deitch has created one of the most complex, sprawling, strange and great ongoing works of American art — in any medium — of the last century. The latest volume in his universe is Reincarnation Stories, and it's one of his very best. At 75 years old, [Deitch] is creating more vibrant and exciting work than other graphic novelists half his age." — The Guardian
"Deitch's latest — and most ambitious — graphic novel explodes with the full range of his visual styles." — The Paris Review
"Gloriously mad and bordering on nonsensical, this ribald Rubik's Cube of a book feels both like paean to 1960s alternative comix, which Deitch helped define, and gleefully ignorant of any tether whatsoever." — Publishers Weekly
Specs
- Pages
- 260
- Format
- Paperback / Softback
- Color
- Black-and-white.
- Dimensions
- 8.4" × 11"
- ISBN-13
- 9798875001734