When I spoke with Kim Deitch a couple of weeks ago, I off-handedly asked the artist if he might be interested in contributing a guest strip for the Cross Hatch, not expecting much in return.

Mind you, my lowered expectations had little to do with my interactions with Deitch—the artist had been incredibly kind, letting me into his home, and discussing with me the finer points of everything from his theoretical love of hip-hop music to William Mackpeace Thackery’s pioneering of the graphic novel to Louis Armstrong’s bizarre and unmentionable hobbies, for hours on end. Instead, it was based on the assumption that surely someone in Kim Deitch’s position would have little need to pass along art to some no name blog like ours.

A week and a half later, several page’s from Deitch’s unfinished collaboration with his brothers showed up in the mail. It was a short story the artist had shown me during my visit, and, like everything else he’s done, it was a stunner. We’re honored beyond belief to present to the first in a series of pages from the short story, The Cop on the Beat, The Man in the Moon, and Me.

–Brian Heater