The Complete Wimmen S Comix

In the late ’60s, underground comix changed the way comics readers saw the medium ― but there was an important pronoun missing from the revolution. In 1972, ten women cartoonists got together in San Francisco to rectify the situation and produce the first and longest-lasting all-woman comics anthology,Wimmen’s Comix. Within two years the Wimmen’s Comix Collective had introduced cartoonists like Roberta Gregory and Melinda Gebbie to the comics-reading public, and would go on to publish some of the most talented women cartoonists in America ― Carol Tyler, Mary Fleener, Dori Seda, Phoebe Gloeckner, and many others. In its twenty year run, the women of Wimmen’s tackled subjects the guys wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole: abortion, menstruation, masturbation, castration, lesbians, witches, murderesses, and feminists. Most issues of Wimmen’s Comix have been long out of print, so it’s about time these pioneering cartoonists’ work received their due.

Joyce Farmer's memoir chronicles the decline of the author's parents' health, their relationship with one another and with their daughter, and how they cope with the day-to-day emotional fragility of the most taxing time of their lives. Joyce Farmer, best known for co-creating the Tits 'n Clits comics anthology in the 1970s, a feminist response to the rampant misogyny in underground comix, spent 11 years crafting Special Exits, a graphic memoir in the vein of Alison Bechdel's Fun Home or Harvey Pekar, Joyce Brabner, and Frank Stack's Our Cancer Year, about caring for her dying father and stepmother.

Glitz-2-Go finally collects nearly 40 years of comics stories by Diane Noomin, best-known for her work as cartoonist and editor of the women comics anthology Twisted Sisters. Noomin’s career in underground comix began in 1972 and included appearances in Wimmen’s Comix, Young Lust, Short Order, Arcade, Real Girl, Lemme Outta Here, El Perfecto, True Glitz, Aftershock, Mind Riot, Titters, and Weirdo. Glitz-2-Go stars Noomin’s signature character, DiDi Glitz, the frustrated middle-aged glamour-puss and anxiety-ridden suburban Sisyphus. All of her stories, beginning with her debut “Restless Reverie” in 1974’s Family Fun Comics, are finally back in print for the first time in over 30 years.

Born on the cusp of WWII in 1938, at a time when other little girls dreamed of being nurses and secretaries, Trina Robbins’s ambition was to be a bohemian; and indeed she did. She chronicles a life of sex, drugs, rock ’n’ roll — and comics — in Last Girl Standing. Robbins describes her upbringing in Queens, New York, reading comics through her childhood in the 1940s; visiting the EC offices and becoming part of SF fandom (dating Harlan Ellison at age 16); and posing nude for men’s magazines in the 1950s; living in the Village, over her own boutique where she made clothes for and interacted with rock royalty like David Crosby, Donovan, Cass Elliot; her close relationship with Paul Williams; entering the orbit of underground cartoonists like Art Spiegelman, R. Crumb, Vaughn Bodé, and Bill Griffith, when she started contributing comics to The East Village Other; and, in the ’70s, moving to San Francisco, contending with the phallocentric underground scene, marrying Kim Deitch, co-founding Wimmen’s Comix, and being invited into Felch Comics (she declined); her work for the National Lampoon, Marvel Comics, and Eclipse in the 1980s; and her crisis as a cartoonist and transformation into an historian and lecturer in the ’90s and 2000s. From science fiction to the Sunset Strip, from New York’s underground newspapers to San Francisco’s underground comix: Trina Robbins broke the rules and broke the law. From dressing Mama Cass to being pelted with jelly babies as she helped photograph the Rolling Stones’s first US tour, from drunken New York nights spent with Jim Morrison to producing the very first all-woman comic book, this former Lady of the Canyon takes no prisoners in this heavily illustrated memoir.

Further interviews, references, images, bibliographical information and teaching guides can be found online.

No Straight Lines showcases major names such as Alison Bechdel, Howard Cruse, and Ralf Koenig (one of Europe’s most popular cartoonists), as well as high-profile, crossover creators who have dabbled in LGBT cartooning, like legendary NYC artist David Wojnarowicz and media darling and advice columnist Dan Savage. No Straight Lines also spotlights many talented creators who never made it out of the queer comics ghetto, but produced amazing work that deserves wider attention. Queer cartooning encompasses some of the best and most interesting comics of the last four decades, with creators tackling complex issues of identity and a changing society with intelligence, humor, and imagination. This book celebrates this vibrant artistic underground by gathering together a collection of excellent stories that can be enjoyed by all. Until recently, queer cartooning existed in a parallel universe to the rest of comics, appearing only in gay newspapers and gay bookstores and not in comic book stores, mainstream bookstores or newspapers. The insular nature of the world of queer cartooning, however, created a fascinating artistic scene. LGBT comics have been an uncensored, internal conversation within the queer community, and thus provide a unique window into the hopes, fears, and fantasies of queer people for the last four decades. These comics have forged their aesthetics from the influences of underground comix, gay erotic art, punk zines, and the biting commentaries of drag queens, bull dykes, and other marginalized queers. They have analyzed their own communities, and their relationship with the broader society. They are smart, funny, and profound. No Straight Lines has been heralded by people interested in comics history, and people invested in LGBT culture will embrace it as a unique and invaluable collection.

Teenage runaway plumpie Pudge hitchhikes to San Francisco in the early 1970s with a dread secret: she is still a virgin. Desperate to solve her dilemma, she launches into the vibrant circus of urban life - street protests, self-help clinics, burglary, job hunting and midnight pizzas. Assisted by her guardian Martians and backed by her commune, she may have found her potential beau, a clueless police detective. Or maybe the delivery boy? There's that chakra-spouting political activist with rampant pimples? But what about her fellow consciousness-raising group member Jane, she with such warm knowledgeable hands...' A feminist journey fraught with angst and anchovies.

Critically acclaimed cartoonist Carol Tyler recreates the exhilaration and excitement of Beatlemania at its height in 1965, her personal obsession with the Beatles, and her odyssey that leads her to the famous Beatles Chicago concert later that year. Told in the voice of its 13-year-old author, Fab 4 Mania is a facsimile of the diary that she kept throughout 1965, and is brimming with rich period details, humor, and insight. It’s a look into the life of a teenager from a working-class family whose love of music awakens her senses and opens her up to the world beyond that of small-town Fox Lake, Illinois. It is also about the Beatles, as seen through the eyes of a young, giddy teenager and a reflective, adult artist, and the joy the band gives.