Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer: The Beauty Supply District

Ben Katchor’s Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer: The Beauty Supply District is a single-issue graphic narrative from Pantheon, first published in 2003 and still in print. Katchor, the series’ sole artist and writer, follows his melancholic photographer protagonist through a vanished or vanishing New York of oddball storefronts and forgotten urban rituals. The book distills Katchor’s signature blend of deadpan observation and surreal nostalgia, capturing the fragile poetry of a city’s overlooked commercial districts. It matters as a quiet, masterful example of how comics can map the emotional geography of a place.