There are a number of powerful and creative women working in comic books, and I thought it appropriate to focus on them here by separating them from the larger category of "Mature Themed Comics" (where these titles all belong). The books below are just a sampling of women comic book artists, and I will be adding to this page periodically. To see which of these titles we have in the Palomar College Library, CLICK HERE.
Jessica Abel, La Perdida
The first graphic-novel length work from Abel, this book follows the (mis)adventures of Carla, an American expatriate wandering through Mexico. Abel dares to create characters that are not altogether altruistic and likeable, and her brilliant paintbrush artwork captures the moral ambiguity of the characters and the situations that they find themselves in.
Marguerite Abouet and Clement Oubrerie, Aya
Set in the 1970s, Aya follows the romantic entanglements of a group of teens in Yopougon, a city in the Ivory Coast. The story is set in a time before that country was overrun by revolution and strife, and, like Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, provides readers with new insight into a particular nation.
Katherine Arnoldi, The Amazing "True" Story of a Teenage Single Mom
A very simply drawn and moving account of one young woman's experience of domestic violence, single motherhood, dead end jobs, insensitive relatives, and community college.
Lynda Barry, The Freddie Stories, The! Greatest! of! Marlys!, and One Hundred Demons
To me, Barry is the supreme chronicler of childhood; very few writers have captured the language, moods, humor, and difficulties as truthfully as she has. In The Freddie Stories, Barry captures the strange and often brutal world of adolescence as she focuses on Freddie and one particularly troubling year of his young life. The! Greatest! of! Marlys! collects the best strips from Barry's sizeable body of work, much of which is now out of print. All in all, a great collection. One Hundred Demons is Barry's best work. Several years ago, her work appeared on Salon.com where she did a series of online strips, each one featuring a single "demon" from her past. This book collects the best of those (about twenty or so), and together they form a brilliantly funny and moving autobiography of one of the most interesting cartoonists working today. There's even a helpful primer at the end of the book in which Barry instructs readers in using a Chinese inkstone, the medium that she used to create these stories.
Alison Bechdel, The Indelible Alison Bechdel and Fun Home
Bechdel, author and artist of "Dykes to Watch Out For" here provides not only a compilation of her best work, but she augments it with personal, autobiographical essays that tell her story and how it comes out through her work. An added bonus are early drawings that really show the emergence of her artistic talent. Fun Home, her most recent book, is a departure from her usual strips and instead a longer, sustained autobiographical narrative. This is a brilliant, moving account of her relationship with her father, a closeted homosexual, as well as the story of her own coming-out. What's most effective and moving about Bechdel's story is that she doesn't attempt to provide answers to the complex relationships she presents; her story is much more about the search and the ambiguity that the search reveals.
Joyce Brabner, Brought to Light, Real War Stories, and Our Cancer Year
Brabner, a political activist who also happens to write comic books, has been involved in several interesting projects. She wrote "Flashpoint: The La Penca Bombing," which was one of two stories in the book Brought to Light. In addition, she was the editor of and a contributor to the short-lived Real War Stories, which featured some of the best anti-war comics since Frontline Combat and Two-Fisted Tales. Brabner is also the spouse of autobiographical comics pioneer Harvey Pekar, and with him she co-wrote Our Cancer Year, which chronicles both Pekar's first bout with cancer and Brabner's outreach work with young adults from war-torn countries.
Catherine Doherty, Can of Worms
This remarkable and elegant graphic novel is the near-wordless story of Catherine Margaret Flaherty (a thinly disguised version of the author), who, as an adult, searches for her birth mother. Imaginatively told in a deceptively simple visual style, Can of Worms heralds the arrival of a strong new voice in adult comics.
Julie Doucet, My New York Diary
French Canadian comic book artist Julie Doucet here collects three long autobiographical stories ("My First Time," "Julie in Junior College," and "My New York Diary") that provide a funny and moving glimpse into her life and the people she knows.
Debbie Drechsler, Daddy's Girl and Summer of Love
Daddy's Girl is an incredibly disturbing yet powerful series of stories focused on troubled adolescent girls. The bulk of the book is given over to Lily, a confused adolescent, as she comes of age and experiences various traumas--the most serious of which is molestation by her father. Hers is a story that is, quite often, very difficult--but necessary--to read. Summer of Love is Drechsler's follow-up to Daddy's Girl, and in it we follow Lily and her family as they move to a new neighborhood and experience adolescent turmoil as they try to fit in. If you buy Summer of Love, make sure to get the paperback version; the colors used in the hardcover were pretty awful.
Mary Fleener, Life of the Party
Fleener's very distinctive artistic style ("cubismo" is her word for it) and ability to tell a good story come together in this volume of her short autobiographical pieces. The best stories in the collection tap into the particular (and peculiar?) culture of Southern California.
Ellen Forney, Monkey Food: The Complete "I Was Seven in '75" Collection
Forney's "I Was Seven in '75" has run for several years in many independent newspapers, and the entire run is collected in Monkey Food. These hilarious stories focus on many touchstones of the Seventies, and anyone with any memories of that time will enjoy this. Incidentally, Forney often goes on book signing tours for this book, and if you have a chance to catch her, do so; her multimedia presentation is a fitting complement to this book.
Phoebe Gloeckner, A Child's Life and Other Stories and The Diary of a Teenage Girl
Gloeckner's two major works--the first a collection of short stories and the second a "hybrid" illustrated novel/diary--are heartbreaking portraits of adolescence from a girl's perspective. Her alter-ego protagonists suffer and struggle, but they also survive.
Roberta Gregory, A Bitch is Born and Bitchy's College Daze
These books represent two of the collected volumes of Gregory's comic Naughty Bits, featuring her main character, Bitchy Bitch. The first covers Bitchy's childhood and adolescence (and an unwanted pregnancy) while the second follows Bitchy to college, where she has a sexual and political awakening. Gregory's work is in your face and very funny.
Miriam Katin, We Are on Our Own
In this moving memoir, Katin recounts her childhood in Hungary during World War II, when she and her mother had to escape Nazi soldiers. Katin also addresses her adulthood (rendered in color as opposed to the majority of the book, which is black and white) and how it remains haunted by the past. Her charcoal illustrations perfectly capture the somber mood of this story.
Carol Lay, Joy Ride, Strip Joint, and Goodnight, Irene
The first two books here collect stories by this very talented comic book creator, whose work has appeared in Weirdo and the two Twisted Sisters anthologies. One of the best features of these books are her "Story Minutes," in which she tells an entire story on a single page. Lay has also done several pieces of journalism in comics form that are outstanding. Goodnight, Irene collects the stories of Lay's most indelible character: Irene Van de Kamp, an heiress who was raised by an Ubangi tribe, had her face "shaped" with lip plates and whatnot, and has returned to American society with predictable (and unpredictable) complications. Over the course of Irene's trials and tribulations, Lay sharply satirizes old romance comics.
Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis 1 and Persepolis 2
Satrapi is a new and powerful voice in women's comics--and women's literature in general. Her two books recount her childhood in Iran and her adolescence in Europe, and in both books she proves herself to be an accomplished artist and a sharp observer of her surrounding culture. All in all, superb books that should not be missed.
Dori Seda, Dori Stories (edited by Don Donahue and Kate Kane)
Seda, a seminal underground woman comic book artist, died of emphysema when she was in her 30's. Though her career was short, she left behind a substantial body of work which has not, until this volume, been collected. Supplementing her work--much of which seeks to shock people's (sexual) sensibilities and is not for those who offend easily--are plenty of supporting materials, such as photographs and essays.