From 1996 to 2002, Kirchner held the post of senior art director at Jordan, McGrath, Case & Taylor (later Arnold New York). Kirchner and his creative partner, writer Andrew Cahill, created a campaign for Zest body wash featuring football's Craig "Ironhead" Heyward. [5] Roughly a third of the stories star Dope Rider, the pot-smoking skeleton whose psychedelic adventures take him through colorful vistas equally reminiscent of Sergio Leone’s spaghetti western films and of the surrealistic paintings of René Magritte and Salvador Dalí. These stories were originally drawn for the marijuana-themed magazine High Times but were also for Kirchner an excuse to create his very own brand of visual poetry. For Heavy Metal he did an equally surrealistic monthly strip, the bus (1979–85). These strips were collected in a book, The Bus, published by Ballantine in 1987. A new edition has been released in 2012 by French publisher Tanibis. [2] Paul Kirchner also wrote and illustrated occasional short features for Heavy Metal and Epic Illustrated. Most of them were collected in the book Realms (Catalan Communications, 1987). Kirchner wrote three pop-culture books for Rhino Entertainment. The first, Forgotten Fads and Fabulous Flops, inspired an episode of The History Channel's Modern Marvels, "Failed Inventions", in which Kirchner is featured.

Éditions Tanibis - Dope Rider: A Fistful of Delirium, by Paul

The brainchild of New York comic artist Paul Kirchner, the first incarnation of Dope Rider was done on spec, so the artist would have a sample to show prospective freelance employers. It first appeared in 1974 in Scary Tales magazine, then made its way to Harpoon and Apple Pie . In 1975, the comic found a home at High Times , the perfect fit for the strip where it reached its largest audience and also used color for the first time.Toyland: The High-Stakes Game of the Toy Industry by Sydney Ladensohn Stern and Ted Schoenhaus (Contemporary Books, 1991) Kirchner was born in New Haven, Connecticut. He attended Cooper Union School of Art but left in his third year, when, with the help of Larry Hama and Neal Adams, he began to get work in the comic book industry. [1] Career [ edit ] Comics [ edit ] Paul Kirchner's Shaman, from Heavy Metal a b c d Kirchner, Paul (2015). "Strange Trip: A '70s memoir in comic book form" The Boston Globe (June 26, 2015). The Big Book of Losers: Pathetic but True Tales of the World's Most Titanic Failures (DC Comics, 1997) In the 1970s and early 1980s, Kirchner did several dozen covers for the pornographic magazine Screw. He regularly did illustrations for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and other publications.

DOPE RIDER A FISTFUL OF DELIRIUM: A Fistful of Delirium

Kirchner would later find more regular work at Heavy Metal, where he turned out a brilliant, surrealistic comic series called “The Bus” for several years. (That series is available in book form.) Kirchner lives in Connecticut with his wife, Sandy Rabinowitz, an illustrator specializing in equine art. They have three adult children. [5] Bibliography [ edit ] Comics [ edit ]This third collaboration between French publishing house Tanibis and comic book artist Paul Kirchner is a collection of the artist’s works, most of them initially published in counter-culture magazines in the 1970s and the 1980s and some dating from his return to comics in the 2010s. Kirchner eschews any narrative or character development that isn’t in service to a bit or a gag and the bits and gigs are in service to visual inventiveness and his exploration of surrealism, perspective, and his breaking the confines of the medium. Rendered in Kirchner’s confident hand, the strip reads as natural and understated, no matter how out there it gets. In working in such a limited space, Kirchner’s work in Dope Rider feels all the more outsize. (…)» In 1981, through his brother Thomas Kirchner, a Zen Buddhist monk, Paul Kirchner met the Zen practitioner and author Janwillem van de Wetering. Together they produced a graphic detective novel, Murder by Remote Control (Ballantine, 1986). [3] In the mid-1970s, Kirchner wrote and illustrated the surrealistic comic strip Dope Rider for High Times.