An Interview With Denis Kitchen On The Kickstarter For The ‘Oddly Compelling’ Documentary And More!
An Interview With Denis Kitchen On The Kickstarter For The ‘Oddly Compelling’ Documentary And More!
For more than half a century, Denis Kitchen has been the embodiment of punk-rock persistence in comics—equal parts artist, publisher, and First Amendment firebrand. Long before “creator-owned” was a buzzword, Kitchen was stapling together Mom’s Homemade Comics, hawking issues out of head shops, and launching Kitchen Sink Press so voices like Will Eisner, Trina Robbins, and Alan Moore could run wild without a Comics Code muzzle. When prosecutors finally came knocking, he didn’t flinch; he built the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund brick by brick, turning courtroom showdowns into victory laps for free expression. Now filmmakers Soren Christiansen and Ted Intorcio are rolling the tape on Oddly Compelling, a documentary that threads Kitchen’s hippie-era pranksterism, his thirty-year publishing crusade, and his ongoing fight against censorship into one heck of an origin story for modern horror comics.
Why does that matter to Horror Tree readers? Because every grotesque panel, banned-book challenge, and late-night anthology pitch we celebrate traces back to the doors Denis kicked open. Oddly Compelling isn’t just a look in the rear-view; it’s a rallying cry at a moment when book bans are spiking and moral crusaders have libraries in their crosshairs. So I sat down with the man himself to talk EC horror, From Hell, giant penises invading Manhattan, and the practical ways tomorrow’s creators can keep the gates of weird wide open.
