The original hep cat.

The Cat on a Hot Thin Groove: The Complete Collection of 78RPM Artwork from the Old Record Changer Magazine By Gene Deitch Fantagraphics Books, 200 pages, $39.95 It's pure churlishness to make a single complaint about this big, gorgeous book, but it has a minor drawback: The reproductions of the magazine it celebrates are too small. That is to say, the reproductions that don't involve Gene Deitch, the artist being feted in Cat on a Hot Thin Groove.

Sure, cartoonist Deitch, the gifted artist for Record Changer, an obscure jazz magazine that thrived in the 1940s and 1950s, is the subject of the book, and his fantastic talent deserves the royal treatment it gets here. But while his art is brilliant, I kept finding myself trying to read the text reproductions of Record Changer, the magazine it appeared in. Sadly, Fantagraphics couldn't secure the rights to reproduce the magazine in a larger size because Record Changer's current copyright owner, Richard Hadlock, is preparing his own book about the magazine.

That said, the book is a success at its primary mission: to highlight the art of Gene Deitch, known today as the Academy Award- winning animator who created Tom Terrific and Mighty Manfred for the Captain Kangaroo Show. Back in 1945, he was a 20-year-old jazz fanatic who was especially nuts for "real jazz" from New Orleans like Kid Ory, King Oliver and Armstrong. One day, he picked up a copy of a new publication called Record Changer in the Jazz Man Record Shop in West Hollywood.

At the time, the purpose of the magazine was simply to exchange information about rare jazz records. As Deitch notes in his introduction, this was the days before tape and even vinyl-78s were shellac-and the only way to hear a rare record or an obscure band was to find a copy. Record Changer was eBay for jazz diggers. Deitch, an aspiring cartoonist, sent a couple drawings to editor Gordon Gullickson, who immediately bought them. Deitch moved up quickly and did a complete redesign of Record Changer in 1946. He left the magazine in 1951, when printing costs went up 75 percent; the magazine stumbled along for a few more years after that.

Deitch achieves what only the greatest cartoonist can-a deep spiritual resonance with minimal representation. The Deitch covers are thrilling for their quiet beauty. In one, a black jazz player stands in the rain at a bus stop, his indigo coat and hat dressing not himself but his bass. Another presents a giant pipe organ that fills the entire page. In a small space at the bottom, seated at the bench and playing, is a portly black man. Sitting next to him is a bucket and mop. It was reprinted countless times-all without pay or attribution, Deitch notes-and wound up on a cover of a Fats Waller album.

Fans of contemporary comics will recognize Deitch's influence on underground artist Peter Bagge. For Bagge and Deitch, the human body was a pliant form with sharp edges. No object is added that is not necessary, and limbs, breasts and noses are all triangles. Readers will also see a similarity with Bagge in that Deitch, too, lampooned the hipsters he's supposedly serving. Deitch's "The Cat" was the precursor to the modern-day rock music elitist, the fan so obnoxiously obsessive about his expertise and the purity of his vision that, ironically, he can't enjoy the very thing he celebrates. In one cartoon the Cat lectures a bewildered clarinet player: "Is it true, Mr. Neezer, that during the decline of your staccato period, that your contrapuntal attack and polyrhythmic patterns embodied certain Doddsian influences?"

It's not hard to see the germ of the modern rock critic here. Deitch hated "modern" jazz-then known as bebop-and its champion, the critic Leonard Feather, who gets grilled as Braynard Leather in one strip. All in all, this is a terrific rediscovery of a forgotten giant of a small world.