It’s Thursday night and March break is almost over. At the end of every school break I end up really upset with myself for accomplishing not even half of my goals that I had written in my planner on the first day of break. On school breaks I spend all my time doing pointless internet research and eating sleeves of cookies (it’s not that different than when school is in session after all). Today my self-assigned internet research project was to learn about women who made/make comics. I decided to do this because I realized that most of the comic books I read are made by men (Daniel Clowes, Matthew Thurber, etc.) and although I don’t know many old comic book artists, the ones I do know are all male.
While researching (a nicer way of saying googling “women comics”) I found a lot of articles on various comic devoted websites about Wimmen’s Comix, an underground comic anthology that ran from 1972 to 1992. Wimmen’s Comix was created a few years after It Ain’t Me Babe, the first American comic produced entirely by women. I was browsing through the Wimmen’s Comix covers and this one is particularly amusing, “The 21st Century Woman.”
It Ain’t Me Babe was put together by Trina Robbins, and after a few clicks I ended up buying her book From Girls to Grrlz: A History of Women’s Comics from Teens To Zines. I think I’m particularly interested in teen girls interactions with comics since being teenaged already makes you particularly self conscious of your interests, never mind if you are interested in comics which is currently a male dominated interest. In the preview for the book I read that back in the 1940s and ’50s comics were mostly for girls… I didn’t get to finish the whole chapter about this, though because the preview was only a few pages!
I also browsed around to look for some rad current day women comic book artists. I really like EA Bethea’s work, although I’ve never bought any of her comics yet but last time I ordered from Domino Books it came with a free newspaper and her work was featured in the newspaper. I think I’m going to order Bethea’s Illustrated soon because I really enjoyed what I saw in the paper. I also found Inés Estrada’s work via Domino Books and browsed around her website and her work seems very cool too. Becca Kacanda is another comic book artist that is really amazing artist- I love how surreal and bright her drawings are, and she has a mega cool Etsy shop, Ultra Terrestrial.
I HAVE TO RETURN TO THE DARK PIT THAT IS HIGH SCHOOL ON MONDAY, AT LEAST I WILL HAVE MY COMICS.
RACHEL DAVIES 