The Academic Hour

by Keren Katz

"It’s safe to say that children in grade school can’t illustrate images this impressive, but still, these Keren Katz renderings have a certain unrefined quality to them that’s evocative of kids’ drawings. This is, of course, a conscious design choice as Katz’s style stands out immensely amidst a sea of computer-generated artistry. Her penchant for leaving things not perfectly colored, her exaggerated human proportions and the overall whimsy of the scenes she depicts are things that make her work endlessly interesting to examine." - Trendhunter

The Academic Hour charts the romance between Poethel, a disgraced architecture professor, and his student, Liana. Told in a series of surreal, vibrant vignettes, and set in a fantastic, logic-defying college of shifting rooms and secret performance spaces, The Academic Hour affirms how an intense, fledgling relationship can ignite the impulse for storytelling with unbridled, ferocious creative energy.

Keren Katz is an Israeli-born cartoonist, writer, and illustrator. A graduate of the School of Visual Arts’s MFA Illustration Program, she is also “the illustrating half of The Katz Sisters duo. She is also the half that is not fictitious.” Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail, Einayim Magazine for Children, Achbar Ha-Ir, Ha-Af, Ha-Pinkas, Carrier Pigeon, Linen Ovens Comics Poetry Anthology, Maayan Poetry Magazine, and by Locust Moon Comics and Seven Stories Press.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels

176 pages, Paperback

First published May 16, 2017

About the author

Keren Katz is an Israeli cartoonist, writer, illustrator and performer, known for her visually experimental and poetic comics. She is the non-fictitious half of 'The Katz Sisters Duo'.
Katz is a graduate of the New York School of Visual Arts’s MFA Illustration Program and of the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem. She is the author of the graphic novels The Academic Hour (2017) and The Backstage of a Dishwashing Webshow (2019). Her work has been published in anthologies by Fantagraphics, Smoke Signal, Locust Moon, Rough House, Ink Brick, Retrofit Comics, The Brooklyn Rail, Kuš!, Carrier Pigeon and Seven Stories Press. Katz is also part of Gnat Micro Press, a non-profit community for publishing experimental poetry and comics and the Tel-Aviv-based Humdrum Comics Collective.

Reviews

[Maggie Umber · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Academic Hour is a multidisciplinary, debut graphic novel. It comes from the mind's eye of forever-student-of-life, Keren Katz. The once failed air traffic controller, highly trained ballerina and lover of the meandering path of endless education has found her true calling in comics.

Anyone who wishes that the comics medium can be more than panels, formal narrative, and speech bubbles will do well to pick up this book. I wandered with happy dizziness among Katz's choreographed colored pencil drawings, poetic descriptions of paper-cut-out maps, and an obscurely documented romance. I adored seeing her lightly drawn process lines peeking through her final art. I was a joyful witness to the elongation of her characters and her endlessly stretched and shrunken architecture.

I can't forget images like the horse being ridden by a rib cage, as it itself trod upon train wheels. Or plush toast! If you have ever been pleased at the sight of an arm wrapped around a large portfolio or a thumb tucked between the pages of a book, you'll crave this book's aesthetics. Even if loose socks and overgrown pencils are not your cup of tea, this theatrical production will bring you swiftly to your feet. You will applaud at every intermission and sigh in agreement with every spoken verse.

I am grateful to be a reader lead along a path of unexpected conclusions. It is fun to try and spot the autobiographical references, no matter how fantastical. This illuminated treasure is to be read, and read again.

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

A strong, deep dive into Katz's unique, beautiful, and choreographed singular world, where rooms unfurl like flowers, horses refuse to leave lecture halls, love notes full of longing are passed back and forth, and students avoid or encourage accidents. Truly original and poetic. Each surreal situation simultaneously expands your sense of reality and presents spectacular visuals, but nothing is superficial - everything feels tied to some strong, unnamed and sincere emotion and experience expressed through Katz's unusual vocabulary.

[Nico Harriman · Rating 1 out of 5]

Art is really nice. Story is pretentious drivel. If you are into indie comics with cryptic writing, then you may like this comic. I personally can't stand it.

[Dean Simons · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like a dream - the story folds and folds and twists and shifts. It's a nice little escape from rigid prose.

[Tutankhamun18 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wonderfully weird art style.

[Gabriel H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful, entrancing, also sad and sometimes funny. Not quite sure I understand it entirely (the experience of reading it reminds me of trying to teach my father to read poetry).

[Marcus Skog · Rating 4 out of 5]

nuts.

[André Habet · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a strange wild book. Love Katz's take on anatomy and interior spaces here. It often feels like you're seeing an entire room from every angle simultaneously. That and the absurdist yet thoughtful narration throughout really distinguished this comic from most other I've read so far this year.

[Wren]

I do not get this. Idk, I just like could not parse it at all.