A Fly-by-Knight Operation

Cartoonist Keith Knight was a San Francisco institution — before he fucking bailed. The author of syndicated comic strips The K Chronicles and (th)ink up and left us bereft of the goofy yet sharply political voice we'd come to know. This evening, Knight returns, and how: His new book is a collection of recent work called I Left My Arse in San Francisco. We could make a lot of jokes about what-all we've been doing with Keith Knight's hind end over the past year or so, but instead, let's focus on the book, or rather the cover: It shows a giant butt smothering a tiny man, bookended by the Golden Gate Bridge and the Transamerica building. Is that any way to portray the heart-wrenching process of "leaving the city he loves," as the artist's Web site claims? Inside, readers can expect to find more of the puns, political satire, and recontextualized quotations from public figures Knight used to be known for before he moved somewhere else.
Sat., March 29, 6 p.m., 2008