Aackt 7: 12 Artists

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Dear listener, if I may be so bold, ac For
the last six episodes on this podcast, we've been taking
a look at how Kathy Comics and Kathy Guyswit's work
at large comments on the issues of its day in
a far more insightful and occasionally infuriating way than most
have ever given it credit for. On my end, I've

(00:23):
been waging war with my Cathy sleep paralysis demon Hi
who at this point it basically embraced as a part
of my life. I'm Hailey, Joel, She's dead, Bruce, We're
freaking Tony Colette out. But other than that, things are fine.
Every day I'm growing stronger. I would die for you,

(00:44):
I would kill for you, and I would die for you.
But that is not what the penultimate episode of this
show is about. What it is about is the legacy
made by risk takers in comics, people who made autobiographical comics. Specifically,
many of these artists, as we've discussed in past episodes,
got a lot of pushback for speaking on their own

(01:05):
experiences in their day. But what we haven't gotten as
much of a chance to do is track how work
like Kathy Guisewites and other pioneers who we've talked about,
your Aaron mcgruder's of the Boondocks, your Jackie ORMs is
your Alice and Bechdel's and on and on. We haven't
yet taken a look at how those legacies have influenced
artists who are working in autobiographical comics now. So today

(01:30):
we're going to talk to twelve artists. That's also the
name of the episode, Very clever, and all twelve of
these artists are right now making some of the funniest,
sometimes saddest, sometimes most bizarre, sometimes most engaging and interactive

(01:51):
work out there. Some of them are fans of Kathy comics,
some of them aren't. Some of them have never read
a single strip of the comic. Some of the twelve
artists work in zines, some work in web comics. Some
address their identity and their bodies and their lives, while
some talk about movies and politics that they like. A
few things carry through here. All of their work is distinct,

(02:13):
All of their work is personal, their careers to some extent.
Oh to the pioneers and comics that we've been looking
at throughout this series, and I really like them, and
I'd like for you to know more about them, I
could draw a comic. Oh yeah, let me see it.
Oh my god, Wow, this is violent. Kathy? Is that

(02:34):
dog Bert? I can't say what it is, but I
legally have to say that whatever is happening to him,
it's in minecraft. Yeah, that'll hold up in court. A
start a Patreon, baby, let's get this thing go wang
and without further ado, please enjoy twelve artists. It's she's

(03:00):
at what, She's out on dates and she don't like
politics from Mama and Urban two with feminist friends, and
she's fighting all the stands with chocolate and hand Kathy,
she's fighting back. She's stressed with success. Let's cut her.
Oh Kathy, Makathyn Cathy, she's gotta like go in all,

(03:41):
be honest with yourself. When was the last time you
picked up the Sunday Funnies? Exactly today, we're gonna be
exploring the journey that influential comic strips took from the
heyday of the funny pages in the eighties and nineties,
two mediums like the zine were artists Number one of
our twelve artists began working in But before we get

(04:03):
to them, what am a zine? Zines tend to be,
although there are no hard and fast rules, and that's
part of what makes it fun. But they tend to
be self published or from independent small publishers. They tend
to be relatively short, small circulation, sometimes hyperlocal, and affordable,
if not completely free. They can be about anything. They

(04:26):
can be researched, or they could just be a collection
of scribbles. They can be by one person, they can
be by a collection of people. They could be political,
they could be about a very specific pop culture property.
And in fact, a lot of pre Internet fan culture
was built around zines. Whether your passion was like Star
Trek or Wu Tang Clan or Jonathan Taylor Thomas, those

(04:47):
are the first three things I thought of. The people
are fans of zines can be very easy to find
and unfind. It's a very of the moment kind of media,
and they also lent themselves to building real life communities
of artists around them. Personally, I was lucky enough to
make some of my first friends in Los Angeles with

(05:09):
this amazing zene press called Devastator Press shout out Amanda
and Jeffrey r Ip Devastator and met some of the
first empathetic and cool people that I've ever met in
the city through making zines. And if you haven't had
the pleasure of reading a zine made by someone you
know or someone you don't know, I cannot recommend it enough.
Zene culture transcends generation because there's something so human about them.

(05:34):
They're tactile, they're brief, they're passed from person to person,
and they tend to get really personal and it's in
that area of the medium where we're going to be
hanging out today. In the US and the UK, zines
were most popular among gen xers, after Boomers, before millennials
born in the late sixties and seventies. Winona Ryder is

(05:55):
like a big deal for them, and for some reason
they take like easily the worst selfies of any generation.
This is my favorite joke of all time from my
favorite comedian of all time, Chris Fleming to my gen
xers with love, Why the up angle with the selfies?

(06:17):
Even boomers got like that hold the camera above your
head my space angle going, which is it's not great,
but it's at least sort of flattering. But when gen
x takes a selfie, it's like that the camera is
in a bucket that's between that's on the on the ground.
Why did they do this? Like, no one wants to
be at your funeral in the future looking at a
picture of you that's angled up your nose like it

(06:39):
was taken by a stray cat that was walking past you,
and I will conceide that millennials take very embarrassing selfies
as well, too much going on two posed, two staged.
The philosophy is like I need to fit my entire
shitty personality into the space of one square. We should
just go extinct anyways. Zines Zines were most popular when

(07:01):
jen Xers were coming of age, but their existence dates
back to the nineteen thirties. Sci fi fans led the charge. Originally,
the Science Correspondence Club in Chicago started a zine called
The Comet in the nineteen thirties, followed by other titles
like Fantasy Commentator. These made way for a wave of

(07:21):
star magazines in the sixties, most notably a title called
Spokenalia Incredible Name. These fanzines gained the attention and support
of the stars of the show, and a fan letter
writing campaign organized via zines literally saved Star Truck from cancelation.
In the late sixties, zene culture expanded even more in

(07:42):
the seventies and eighties, primarily because the technology that was
needed to make them, that is, decent and affordable copy machines,
became more widely available. In an earlier episode of this series,
we talked about the underground comic scenes, where artists like
Trina Robbins, Alison Bechdale, Alien Kaminsky, Crumb, and many others

(08:04):
copied and distributed their own comics about sex, their bodies,
their politics. Many of these comics were self distributed, and
while their work survives and continues to be influential now,
most scenes are more of a flash in the pan,
not meant to last forever, and rarely going past a
couple of printings. In the eighties, the punk scene embraced zanes.

(08:27):
The music of once obscure bands like Blue Oyster, Cult,
Joy Division, and The Ramoons were recommended, discussed, and disseminated
through zines. Popular titles included Punk Slash and my personal favorite,
Sniff and Glue. So punk came and went, and that
wave of zines shut down, only to be revitalized again

(08:48):
with the riot girl movement of the ninet nineties. We've
discussed riot girl music in past episodes as it was
a really important musical element of the third wave of
American feminie is um, though it remained pretty firmly white.
And what was interesting about Riot Girls ZNES is that
they weren't just made by fans. They were made by
the actual bands as well, and not just to promote

(09:11):
their music, but to promote their political platform. Here's a
section from an early Riot Girls ZNE by Kathleen Hannah,
the front woman of Bikini Kill. Complain, Complain, Complaine, at
least you don't have it as bad as a women
used to be, people of color, see women in other countries.

(09:31):
And it's out of this scene that a lot of writers, artists,
and publications that are still influential today originally came out
of Miranda July came out of zines. Bitch magazine came
out of zines, Bust magazine came out of znes, and
many of the artists I spoke with for this episode
came out of the zene culture of the nineteen nineties

(09:52):
and early two thousands, using the medium to explore their
own identities and build communities through cartooning. So this first
group of artists began their careers by making tactile Zanes
and then went on to migrate their work to either
full blown books or the Internet. Artist number one, this

(10:13):
first person is an icon of the semi autobiographical genre
and an author and illustrator of one of my childhood favorites,
Marissa Moss. Marissa is an artist of the boomer generation
who first broke through to the mainstream with the Amelia's
Notebook series that ran from the nineties all the way

(10:34):
through the two thousand tens. I loved these books growing up.
They were advertised in the American Girl Catalog, and so
girls who couldn't afford an American Girls All because they're
too expensive would get an Amelia ragdoll with an Amelia book.
Marissa Massa's work was almost certainly the first graphic novel

(10:54):
I had ever read. Her books follow Amelia, who, at
the beginning of the series is a fine year old
moving to a new town with her family and journaling
about it in a composition notebook. Amelia's Notebook is that notebook.
It is a literal composition notebook with the blue lines
and handwriting, and kids have to turn the book to
the side to see Amelia's doodles. In side comments. There's drawings,

(11:18):
there's crossouts, there's things paper clip to the pages. It
was this really cool tactile experience that threw you into
the world of this character. If you know a nine
year old, I recommend it. It holds up. But for
our purposes, it's a zine made by a fictional character
that introduced that format two kids. Marissa Moss's career is

(11:39):
most popularly defined by the Amelia books, but she's continued
to challenge and expand on the format as her career continues.
Her more recent work is even more personal and has
had a huge impact on people about the process of
caretaking and grief. She published the graphic memoir Last Things

(11:59):
in about her husband's a l S diagnosis, the stress
of suddenly becoming a full time caretaker, the adjustment her
family went through, and the loss of her partner less
than seven months from his diagnosis. It also covers the
aftermath and is an absolutely heart wrenching and important story

(12:20):
that is so beautifully told by Moss's signature art style.
We spoke about it a little bit in our interview here.
It is, but it's pure graphic novel, so there's not
a big chance of text. Familia Um it's called back Days.
And um, that book connected me. It's a book about

(12:41):
my husband's diagnoses, books, als, and death. So it's the
dial with someone also gus to these a horrific So
I wrote this really was the polic I also understand
if I wrote this graphic novels to understand what happened
to us as a family and how do we survive this?

(13:03):
And um, and it connected me with the whole community
that I didn't even know existed, called graphic medicine. It's amazing,
it's graphic novelist and you have this kind of the
whole community is supporting each other using graphic novels to
tell top stories. Because well, I actually try to write
this story about my husband for years. I went straightforward nowhile,

(13:27):
but it was too heavy into the nest thing. Publisher said,
you know, give it a happy ending, while you know
spoiler if he dies, I can't give it a happy ending.
That made it more accessible, and I added humor where
it could, because that's how I deal with difficulties in life. Um,
you have to have I think that when I were
a kid, I had to use humor to see the absurdity,

(13:48):
because why you have to U was driving party back
from a doctor's appointment. He was on a ventilator at
that point, and the vender way the battery dies. I'm
gonna realize, oh my god, I have to pict from
somewhere because she's not going to often. I'm driving into
a gas station. Took them up to the side of
the gas station. You know, you're poking up a partial
gas station and the intendant is looking at me. Luck,

(14:10):
what are you doing? Did you talk's a cure about it?
Your hair? Yeah? Absolutely, what Chris? Because doctors treat body parts,
and graphic novels show them. The governmentication novels show them
for people behind these symptoms and these problems, and you
need to realize you're you're doing with whole families. If

(14:33):
you haven't read Last Things and know someone who might
benefit from it, I'll be linking it below these days.
Marissa has also been working on a series about women
who have gone unsung or misunderstood by history. I think
famous rower Ida Lewis, Think Confederates By Sarah Emma Edmunds,
Think pioneering pilot Harriet Quimby. She is amazing, and I

(14:57):
think a really cool example of an artist of the
boomer persuasion who introduced confessional zine style art to kids
and found huge mainstream publishing success in the process. Artist
number two, our next artist, began in the tactile world
of zines during the two thousands, only to cross over

(15:19):
into autobiographical work in other formats. I'm talking about Malika Gharib,
who isn't just a graphic novelist. She's also an accomplished
journalist currently with NPR as a health and development correspondent.
She's literally who I wanted to be when I was
growing up, and it was her who both drew inspiration
from and recommended that I reach out to. Marissa mas

(15:42):
Her debut graphic novel, I Was Their American Dream, was
released in twenty nine and follows Malika's journey growing up
as a first generation Filipina Egyptian American. The book is
written in her handwriting in a very confessional, funny style,
with all of the margin notes, doodles, and even pull
out activities that touch on growing up between cultures, including

(16:05):
the American friends and schooling system she grew up with.
It explores her falling in love and figuring herself out
as a young person, and she looks back on her
time in the zine community very very fondly. Here's some
of our interview. My name is Malica Gharib, and I
am a cartoonist, journalist and a writer. I'm based in Nashville, Tennessee.

(16:27):
Your work is so autobiographical. Uh, tell me a little
bit about your background and how you first got into, um,
into drawing. So I actually come from the zine community. UM.
I've been making zines and mini magazines since i was fourteen.
So in high school I had when all about music, um,

(16:47):
and then you know, and when I got to the
real world and I did a zine about food, UM,
and then just started branched off doing zines about my
own personal life. This is a genre in zines called perzy.
I think in in my twenties I started to really
think about what, um, why I was so drawn to zines,

(17:08):
And I think it's the economy of what you're trying
to express. So, you know, in a zine, it's like
in very few pages. In comics is very few panels,
and you have to use visuals and texts to sort
of express the maximum emotion in a very very small space. UM.

(17:28):
It's kind of like writing a high coup. There's something
really challenging about about that format. All those constraints, like
comics were almost like like a cousin or sister too,
making the zine, having somebody enter your world through these pages.
So I really really like to push the boundaries on
on scale and economy of line and just make things

(17:52):
like that are like, like my my illustration style is
very light in area, like to use the least amount
of lines. I think once I cracked that nut, I
was like, yeah, I think I could draw, and it
like started drawing about my life or you know, adapt
essays that I've written into comic form because it just
so much more um dynamic and more expressive when when

(18:15):
I do it that way. I started doing like very
personal comics, like it's actually pretty new in s after
after I started hearing all this like anti immigrant rhetoric
and then in the news, I actually were was drawing
comics like spot comics like almost every day as a
reaction to what I was hearing, and I wanted to

(18:36):
correct false narratives that I thought were based on stereotypes.
While Maliko was working for NPR in a journalistic capacity,
she realized that her passion for personal illustration and current
events actually had some pretty significant overlap, and that her
art could be used to help others tell their story
in an engaging, inaccessible way. I definitely hadn't done comics

(19:03):
for NPR until very recently, like in the past two
years since my book was published. UM. I think that,
you know, there's a lot of there's rigorous standards, like
you have to apply the rigorous standards of journalism to comics, um,
when you're doing comics journalism. So for example, I interviewed
somebody who was in a refugee who was working in

(19:24):
a refugee camp in Bangladesh with Rohinga refugees, and I
had him send me like forty pictures of like where
do you work, where does what does? What does your
house look like? What does your wife look like? What
does your kid look like? And I use all of
these to make the story of him. Malca Gharib is
currently working on her second graphic novel about her own life,

(19:45):
this time honing in on the summers that she would
spend in Egypt with her dad. It's called It Won't
Always Be This Way and it comes out in two
You know, I think personal comics are kind of like
adjacent to keeping a diary, and it's just sort of
an illustrated form because I feel like when I draw,

(20:07):
it's like I'm writing in a diary and trying to
tease out how I'm I'm actually feeling at any given moment.
Artist number three, someone I'm a huge fan of who
makes me laugh all the time. That's really this entire
episode Jamie being a fan. But the artist in question
is Joey Allison Says, whose story of migrating from the

(20:30):
zine scene in Oakland to a thriving career in web
comics really illustrates the differences between the mediums and platforms,
as zines gave way to web comics as the prevalent
form of independent comic distribution during the early two mid
two thousand's. Today, she lives in Oakland with her wife
and two kids, but grew her love of comics reading

(20:50):
the newspaper and working on early znes with her dad,
then going on to start making her own during her
teen years. Here's a bit of our interview um Joey
Allison Sayers and I'm a cartoonist living in Oakland, California.
Music was kind of like my big love for for
a lot of that that era, like the my adolescence UM,

(21:12):
and I really thought that's where I was gonna take
my creativity um and become a concert clarinetist. But um,
that was my bigea symphony. Yeah. So but I for
a variety of reasons, that kind of that fell by

(21:32):
the wayside. But um, what always did with me was
drawing and creating visual art. So UM. And then when
I was in my twenties, I got excited to start
really sort of trying to do comics again. I I
basically UM, I like to say I independently invented the
medium of mini comics um because I didn't know what

(21:56):
they were. I didn't really know zines were anything like that.
But I had the idea of like creating a photo
copied bound collection of some drawings that I had done, UM,
and I was like, oh, wow, this is cool. I
invented this new thing. Um. And so I took it
to the local comics store and they're like, that's great,
we have tons of these, and like here's some other

(22:19):
people that make them that work here at the store,
and you should get to know them. And so that
kind of got me on my path to UM doing
comics more seriously. Once in her twenties, Joey dove into
the zine community in Oakland in earnest, developing her own
voice and beginning to write and illustrate more personal material. UM.

(22:42):
I had been living here for UM, I don't know,
probably by that point, about five or six years, and
UM I got hooked up with UM Comic Relief, which
was a really big comic bookstore here in Berkeley. UM,
and it's just like a local hub or was. I mean,
it doesn't exist anymore, But I just met UM all

(23:04):
kinds of great cartoonists UM who kind of that was
our our sort of common thread. And so we started
drawing comics together, and I co created a like a
get together a comics group where we would meet up
UM once a week and draw comics UM at a
local bar. And we were just like you know, shared

(23:26):
ideas and crack jokes, and it was just a really
great creative hot bed. I was very intentionally avoiding any
sort of autobiographical work at that time. UM. I was
avoiding basically any form of introspection at that time in
my life. I was just deeply unhappy UM and and

(23:48):
not fully self actualized, and I didn't want to be
fully self actualized and so um. So in a in
a sort of almost stereotypical way, I I turned humor um,
which had always been my great the great deflector um
of sincerity. And so yeah, I was like, I just

(24:10):
wanted to make people laugh and maybe then I wouldn't
think about me and who I was so and that
I'll boils down to the fact that I'm trans and
at that at that point in my twenties, I wasn't
I wasn't out um, and I hadn't transitioned in any way. So,
but it was it was when I started to transition UM,

(24:32):
I realized that I didn't have to be afraid of
myself any longer UM, and I didn't have to be
afraid of people seeing who I was. Looking more deeply
at myself, I realized that I wanted to talk about
it and I wanted to share the things that I
had gone through, mostly because you know, at the time
when when I transitioned, which was in the you know,

(24:53):
mid oughts, UM, there there wasn't as much there wasn't
as much information out there, there wasn't as much dialogue
going out about the trans experience. I mean, we're really
lucky now. I mean, I know there's still a long
way to go, but I want I kind of wanted
to talk about the good things, um And at least
for me, my life just improved immeasurably. Joey's work online

(25:18):
is extremely versatile. Sometimes it's personal, sometimes it's informational, sometimes
it's political, and a lot of the time it's just
funny as fuck. I'll be linking to her work in
the description. But part of what I find so interesting
about artists that made the leap from tactile to digital
medium is how the way that they received feedback changed.

(25:39):
For the most part, in her early career, Joey would
never learn what a reader of her sins thought unless
she knew them personally. But the Internet is the Internet.
It was it was almost almost exclusively positive UM. And
I heard from a lot of people earlier in their
transition who um, who did see it for what I

(26:03):
hoped it would be, which was just kind of like
a positive beacon, um for those people who were intending
to go on that journey UM or who were heading
out on that journey, and just to see that it
wasn't all darkness and um and horrible nous. And I
also UM talked to a lot of sis gender people
who for who it taught them a lot about what
it was like to be trans and what the experience

(26:25):
was like and UM and and and just to understand
that side of things. UM. And I mean I think
a key thing was at that time, UM, most of
it was an online I mean I put little bits
here and there, but but online was just a different place.
So almost everybody who who encountered that comic UM either

(26:48):
ordered it directly from me or bought it from me
at a UM like a comic show. I would like
to see the shift, the shifts that are currently happening.
I'd like to see them continue. In particularly I'd like
to see UM, you know, more and more diverse voices
out there. UM. And I'd like to see the I

(27:09):
feel like there's been a greater shift towards empathy UM.
You know, I want to say society wide. And I
know that's maybe a little bit of a product of
me living UM where I do. UM, but you know,
I do think like the like specifically in humor and
humor comics. I feel like we've moved away. UM. A

(27:31):
lot of a lot of people flewed away from that
sort of punching down um, which you know used to
be really popular. UM. And yeah, I just I want
to see I'd like to see humor uh continue to
evolve and be a place that actually is filled more
with love. UM. Not to sound cheesy, but Joey Allison

(27:55):
Sayer's career continues to thrive in the web comic space,
with ongoing series for the NIB and for the Universal
Press indicates website where many web comic artists have found
their home. And speaking of web comics, we need to
take a quick look at that medium's history as well,
because for many of the twelve artists that I spoke with,

(28:18):
it's where they first became inspired by the independent comics
scene and where they distributed their early work. The beginning

(28:41):
of web comics is pretty intuitive. It's the beginning of
the Internet. During the mid nineties into the early nineties,
there were a couple of web comics. There was a
Wizard of Oz parody called Witches and Stitches, and one
of the first regularly updated comics was called Where the
Buffalo Room In by Hans br Doll. But during this era,

(29:03):
web comics were way outnumbered by zines. For reference, about
forty thousand znes were in circulation during the early nineties,
but as the nineties went on, a lot of college
newspapers and music websites started to bring their comics online.
The Boondocks by Aaron McGruder would later make the leap
to the syndicated funny pages and even to TV, but

(29:25):
it started on a music website called hit list dot com.
Web comics began to surge in the late nineties as
the Internet surged into American homes. According to a Pew
research paper from the largest uptick in American home computer
ownership was between ninety four and ninety five, with many
lower income American families not getting them until the late

(29:48):
nineties into the two thousands, when more affordable models became
available Gateway Gang Baby. Some of the strips popular during
this time were net Boy by Stafford h lu and
Argone z Arc by Charlie Parker. These artists began to
experiment with the form of webcomics, using shapes and dimensions
that were unique to the Internet and couldn't be printed

(30:11):
in the parameters of the ordinary funny page, and as
much as I hate to hand it to Dilbert, it
was in fact this future right wing Donald Trump addicted
antagonist Scott Adams to be the first funny page artist
to find that their strip did better in print when
it was also made available online. By the end of
the nineties, there were hundreds of independent web comics available,

(30:33):
with the only barrier, and not an insignificant one, being
reliable access to the Internet, and once the medium was
firmly established, web comics migrated from social media platform to
social media platform pretty easily. There was a web comic
culture on live journal, on Tumbler, on blogger, via email newsletters,

(30:53):
on YouTube, on their own websites, and more often than
not now on Instagram. Many of these strips aim the
stuff of legend and addressed intimately personal subjects. One that
always stands out to me was Ali Brush's Hyperbole and
a Half, whose commentary on depression and mental health remains
a classic to this day. Nowadays, there are artists who

(31:15):
started in web comics who then worked backwards to start
making tactile znes I did this myself as well, after
starting to publish work online, and I think it's a
pretty interesting switch that is unique to Internet natives. For me,
it came down to a few things. First, publishing and
sailing zines was one of the only ways to monetize
your work. And then there's the fact that the tactile

(31:37):
nature of it was really novel and exciting. And the
self publishing process, which for me was staying late at
my job at Playboy and using their printer and also
their mailing supplies and also their stamps and also their mailbox,
felt cool. And then there was the appeal of the
different feedback model. The idea that the work that I
made wouldn't invite instant commentary like I was to do

(32:00):
on the Internet was something I was really eager to experience.
I mean, someone having to sit with your work instead
of spewing whatever collection of words came to their head.
Our next artist took this same route, beginning with artist
number four, Sophia's Arterers, whose work ranges from the hyper political.
They've done some really cool work for the Long Beach

(32:22):
d s a solidarity baby, to pop culture commentary with
zines about problematic pop stars and spotlighting women and trans filmmakers,
to hyper personal web comics with their work like Our
Lady of Cacaphoney and Jesus Freak, which both examine and
comment on her time in Catholic school. They're a versatile
and curious artist, and I was so excited to talk

(32:45):
with them about growing up on the isolated internet then
finding community through zines. What were you drawn to in
terms of subject matter and how did that kind of evolve? Um?
What first, I did a lot of Um they're almost
like diary comics, and I would just kind of make them,

(33:10):
ah whenever I was just going through a hard time,
I guess, um, and looking back at them, they're kind
of like cringe E. I guess um. I think now
I'm a lot more uh, like I keep my cards
close when it comes to those things. Um and so yeah,

(33:32):
like I would directly drop my experiences and whereas now
I think, Um, I think I'm better at writing and
better at storytelling where I can create characters that like
experienced similar things. But um, I'm more interested in like
telling those stories. When I first started making those really
personal ones, it um it coincided with like like right

(33:58):
before I started going to therapy, be I mean I
kind of started on Tumbler, the first couple of zine
fest that I did. I feel like they were pretty
white or they were like this sounds so preposterous, but
like big names in the zine community UM or the

(34:21):
in the comics world. And I think in the last
couple of years people have been more aware of the
different people that are tabling. It's funny like right after
I graduated high school, like the summer between high school
and college, I UM started writing the script for a

(34:44):
comic UH that ended up becoming Jesus Freak UM, which
is like on hiatus right now, but UM that was
really influenced by my high school experience. Even though it's
about like kids who UH use a weedie board and
a ghost haunts them for the rest of the comic UM,

(35:09):
but it's like it channeled a lot of my UM
frustration with Catholic school and frustration with just like being
a teenager. Definitely with comic arts l A, I'd say
that it's there's more smaller creators that are UM given

(35:33):
the opportunity to show their stuff. Sophia's work absolutely rocks.
I've learned so much from it. I have laughed a
ton from it. By up there scenes now because they're
going to be worth a lot Someday. Web comics have
also provided a platform for established artists who work in
animation to get their individuals, stories, and styles out. That's

(35:54):
the case for artists number five, the wildly talented Katie Rice.
Katie's artistic influence and sense of humor can be felt
all over influential millennial cartoons, specifically underappreciated jewels about women
and girls. Shout out to her past work on shows
like The Mighty b shout out to DC superhero Girls,

(36:16):
shout out to my life as a teenage robots While
working on larger productions like that, Katie also built a
huge fan base with her personal work, which lived online
and ranged from commentary on childhood like camp we Don't
Want You too deeply personal stuff that she made while

(36:38):
processing her own experiences. Here are some of our interview.
I actually did start a very short lived autobio comic
a few years ago that was specifically like autobio comics,
and I didn't do very many of them because I
got very vulnerable and I'm not especially comfortable being publicly vulnerable. Um.

(36:59):
But like the first comic I committed to was back
in two thousand and eight, and it was not not
a biographical at all. Um. But then as it was
going on, people would sometimes comment and be like, oh,
is this about you? And I'd be like, no, what
are you talking about? This character is nothing like me.
And then they'd be like, oh, well it's this, this,
this and this, and I'm like, oh okay. Like, um,

(37:23):
So I think I think I have a weird habit.
And it's so my husband always sees it before before
I do too, But like, I do have a tendency
to personal things in my work without realizing it, and
then later on because it's like, you know, my first
comic is a comic called Skatie, and the main character
is is loud and demanding and she's gross and she's
strong and nobody can defeat her. She's not anything like me, um,

(37:47):
but she's in this like she's in this like war
with her like god. Like she has a god that
she's trying to do quests for and he's a ship
head and he sucks, but she just wants his approval.
And I had I had that sacked sort of relationship
with my mentor growing up. I had this shitty, horrible
mentor that I would have liked done anything for, and

(38:08):
I was always treated like complete ship and people started
making that connection like way before I did. At one
point in her career, Katie felt very burned out in
animation and went to the woods to make something with
her husband, fellow artist Adam Wallander. That something became Camp
We Don't Watch, a truly classic web comic that oscillates

(38:30):
between full on cartoon humor and quiet, empathetic storylines about childhood.
She describes finding a lot of peace and creativity working
with someone who she loves and trust. Here's some of
our talk about that. He was very good at helping
me from skewing too dark, bringing it back to the light,
or putting a happy, happy spin on something that I

(38:52):
was going you know a little, I don't know. Yeah, No,
it's you need that person, especially when it's like someone
that you don't know nately trust, and that's that's that's
such a cool um yeah yeah, Actually, I don't know
if this is going off topic too much, but like, um,
uh so I'm one of those people like many who

(39:14):
uh always dealt with um kind of like sad or
upsetting stuff with humor my whole life. Um, and I've
kind of I had quite of just grown up in
the same environment. I worked in the same environment, and
so I always got the right reaction that I was
looking for when I would tell funny stories about my
own like kind of you know, some unpleasant stuff that

(39:34):
had happened in my work history or whatever you want
to call it. And then when I met my husband Adam,
and I told him all my funny stories, uh, he
was like, those aren't funny. Those are horrible, Like why
are you telling that, Like it's a joke. And then
I was like, man, like, oh my god, I know
you're right, and so, uh, I have my husband to

(39:56):
think for me, kind of like taking the first step
into like Okay, let's deal with some of this stuff.
And that's like, let's be an adult now and deal
with some of these things. Katie has also been a
huge advocate for marginalized voices and animation, a field which
to this day is a very very white male field.
She spoke on how isolating that could be and these

(40:17):
stereotypes attributed to women in that space, and it really
reminded me of how Kathy Guy's White spoke about her
earlier years in the male dominated newspaper comic space. I
just don't know where they were, like I don't know
where all the women were, uh starting out. And there's
also just the stereotypes like I kind of mentioned, which
were you know, women were better suited in assistant roles,

(40:41):
uh roles that were you know color um, you know,
which is a super important job. But like I think
if people see it as like, oh, it's it's adding
something beautiful to our cartoon, it's um, you know. And
like personally, I think I think color can be very
story um and it should get that credit. But I

(41:02):
don't know that everybody always sees it that way. It's
more like yeah and yeah, the stories, the stories, the
story people were always were always guys, and I don't
I don't know what changed it. Something something along the
way changed it and I got to be part of it,
which I feel grateful for. Katie Rice's work across mediums
is so wonderful. She is a huge role model of mine,

(41:25):
and you will love her work too. Artist number six,
One of my favorite genres of web comic artists is
a person who is making whatever the funk they want
because they already have a job in a life, and
so what they're bringing to the Internet is truly just
what they want to say. That is where artists number
six pm Jarra mo Bub comes in, and she's a

(41:48):
very raw kind of funny that just comes through so
clearly in her web comic work, which is influenced by
her love of the early confessional web comics of the
two thousands, stuff like a Softer World by Joey Como
and artist Emily Horn, like Perry Bible Fellowship by Nicholas Cure,
which Perfect Stars by Jordan Piantadosi. Like many artists we've

(42:09):
talked with, Pomarra is also very versatile, most recently serving
as the co creator of Netflix show Why Are You
Like This? With Naomi Higgins and Mark Samuel Banano. But
she developed her comedic voice originally through her autobiographical comics
while working as a full time law student and now lawyer.
Some of her strips read like poems, and then there's

(42:31):
others that are gross or introspective or kind or whatever
she's feeling, which is what makes it so good. Here's
a conversation we had about her life in comics at UNI.
I think, which it's weird that I had that much
confidence because I was in well, it's always I'm I've been,
you know, confident outside of my ability my whole life,

(42:51):
which I actually think is my greatest strength. I don't
give ship. There' all kinds of idiots doing all kinds
of stuff. I could be one of them. Um yeah,
but I I was at Union, I was studying law,
and I just I don't know why I did. I
just started putting them on my Facebook, and most of
them at that time were very um, I don't know,

(43:12):
like teen oblique, you know what I mean. And I
remember lots of like men in my classes. I guess
they were boys. They were eighteen to twenty two or whatever. Um,
all the boys in my classes would be like what
what does that even mean? Do just so like you
like into arts? Are you still working as a lawyer

(43:36):
from in the day to day sense? I am, yes,
um weirdly, yeah, it's a bit of a weird situation.
Like I keep having to run home from what I
like was late to an interview yesterday because I couldn't
get out of work on time. I remember actually having
a whole thing being like, okayple if I'm serious lawyer person,
I can't be you know, fiddling around with these drawings,

(43:56):
these like silly doodles um because I woul always getting
troubling class for doodling before we switched to laptops um,
and so I remember thinking to myself, I had to
stop doing it. So I actually stopped for like a
year or a bit. So I did, and then I
was just one day I just went fuck itt um.
So I started again, and then I started posting online.

(44:18):
Home has also worked outside of web comics, illustrating for
the Australian Broadcasting Company and The Toast, but her most
popular work is posted to her personal page. Again, I
cannot recommend Holmes Comics enough and check out Why Are
You Like This? On Netflix right now. Artist number eight
is Sena Grace, who was just as well known for

(44:40):
his autobiographical work in graphic novels like Self Obsessed and
Nothing Lasts Forever as he is for his work in
big name comic franchises like Iceman Go Go, Power Rangers,
gem In the Holograms, jug Head. I could keep going.
Sena's sense of humor and authorial mark is very consistent
no matter what genre he's working in, and he's become

(45:01):
a real pioneer in introducing l G B t Q
I A plus characters into mainstream comics, even when the
powers that be Marvel uh didn't always adequately support him
to make it happen. He's just wonderful and has this
really comprehensive knowledge of the comics medium, from the funnies
to the superheroes to the heart wrenching personal graphic novels.

(45:25):
And it was so much fun picking his brain. Here's
our conversation. You always want to do the thing you admire,
So of course when I started, I really wanted to
do like high concept superhero books, and I was reading
a lot of these comics that were just about like
big breasted women who get powers that like make it
that their clothes get torn off and so. But it

(45:46):
wasn't until I think I was in college and I
read this book Blankets by Craig Thompson, and that was
the It's dope And I had read like graphic memoir before,
but I think that and this book Pagro and Me
by Jed Winnick, who was Judd from Real World San Francisco,
and he hung out with Pedro's Zamora and he did
a book about his friendship with Pedro and HIV and

(46:09):
it was just a really beautiful tribute to this guy's life.
And then I started working at a comic book company.
I was editing comics for the guy who created and
that job also drove me crazy. So this book about
another job that drove me crazy was like my like
way to like to take care of myself is like
I would work till like eight or nine pm and

(46:31):
then go to intelligency on sunset and work till like
ten thirty or eleven PM on this comic book. Finding
that he was unhappy just editing comics, Cina began to
channel his creative energy into telling more personal stories, eventually
getting several of his collections published. I've done a few
autobiographical books like not My Bag, and then you've read

(46:54):
Self Obsessed Um, which was more of a that one
was more of like to throw anything against the wall
and sea Sticks book, and and then like once again
helped me out of a dark phase. But the book
that I'm most proud of and it was such an
interesting challenge, was this book called Nothing Lasts Forever Um,
which was the last auto biobook I've I've done because

(47:17):
it sort of was it. It's like when I started it,
it was just journal entries I had gotten sick with this, Um,
I don't even know what I mean, It's just a
disorder in my esophagus. And I was like yacking up
food left and right and losing a ton of weight.
And I was like super depressed. And then on top

(47:38):
of that, just dealing with like the every three year
cycle of being a creative being, like I don't have
a story to tell, I don't know what to do,
like nothing sticking like yeah yeah, and then you know,
also like making the same mistakes with guys over over again,
and um. And it was just sort of this but

(47:58):
like the tap Street started coming together and and and
everyone was telling me it was the book. Like everyone
was like, this is your book, Like these journal entries
are your book. Like all this other crap you're trying
to do is not the book. This is the book.
So and then this book I actually like reveled in
its messiness, Like I reveled in like I intentionally made
it non sequarders happen. I made it dirty, like it's

(48:23):
all drawn in pencil with like a very limited color palette. Um,
you know, like I at one point I did have
to erase um a person's name because he didn't really
want his name to be in it, and so I
like but even that you could see like I intentionally
left the smudges so the reader knows that that's not

(48:43):
his actual name. Um, there's like a fragility that I
I love about it and and it's such a delicate
book about a delicate time. Um, and I love it.
I love it a lot for that it seem. Agree
is such a fascinating figure in comics because the themes
in tone of his personal work so easily find their

(49:06):
way into his work for big name franchises in a
way that feels really effortless. Here he is talking about
his time working for the Iceman franchise at Marvel for
non superhero worshippers like myself. Iceman was originally a Stanley
character from three who's basically like a B side X
Man X Men fans, Please do not contact me if

(49:27):
I'm wrong about that. But seen as interpretation of the
character is empathetic and nuanced and funny. The thing that
like a lot of the legacy X Men fans were
upset about, was like, how could ice Man be gay?
Like he's gone all these years like dating chicks and I,

(49:49):
you know, I didn't make him gay. I didn't have
him come out like that happened before me, but they
hired me to like you know, finesse it and I
have dated a number of guys is where they just
haven't come out until there's twenty late twenties, thirties, And
this isn't like I'm talking like two thousand eighteen whenever

(50:10):
that like right, like literally, you know, within six months
of writing that book, like I dated a guy who
had come out of like thirty one, and I just
respectfully and like I amalgamated all these narratives, but I
took these guys truths and I gave it to the
character because it was just like, that's the only way

(50:31):
I'm going to get through this is if is if
this hyper science fiction character's journey is rooted in actual
things that I can point to haters and be like,
you don't have to vibe with it, but like this,
like this is four people I know. I highly recommend
you check out seeing his work, whether you're a fan

(50:53):
of big name comic franchises or like me, if you
like deeply personal work. I absolutely love nothing last Forever.
Zina often refers to himself as being self obsessed in
his personal work to the point where that's the name
of a whole collection he published. Artist number eight talks
about herself in much the same way, and I love

(51:15):
her for it. And who is artist number eight? It's
Gina winn Brant. Gina and I became friends when I
was a huge fan of her work from Afar and
wouldn't stop tweeting at her about it, and she eventually
broke down and became my friend. Her first comic collection
is called Someone Please Have Sex with Me. It came
out in and is currently being developed for TV. Like

(51:36):
many others we've spoken with, Gina started by posting her
comics online when she didn't see her particular brand of
horny nous represented, then slowly began to build out a
full narrative for her book with some of my all
time favorite commentary on bodies, on wanting to fuck, and
on peak Justin Bieber. Here's some of our talk. My

(51:57):
name's Cheetah win Brant and I lived in Cargo and
I make comics. What were the earliest comics you were
making about? Yeah, it was definitely always interested in like
celebrities are wanting to do my I don't know, yeah,
find a way to like feel like a celebrity doing
self published comics. I feel like putting in pop culture

(52:21):
and celebrity stuff is you know, not that's something that
everyone was doing. Gina developed her work online and got
involved in zene culture in Chicago, distributing her work at
independent bookstores like Quimby's and self publishing throughout her early career.
It didn't take her very long to figure out what

(52:41):
it was she wanted to talk about sex, pop culture,
and herself. I've always enjoyed talking about sex, you know,
in my own personal life, so it just seems natural
that it would spill over into my comics. Like when
I my virginity, I was the first one out of

(53:02):
my friends and I had to tell everyone in brag
and I'm like very proud that I have sex, so
uh and people need to know. So that's why I
can make about But um, even before I did comics,
I was like exposing myself on the Internet and stuff,

(53:22):
and like he had an online journal, you know, live
journals and stuff like that. So I'm used to like
writing just being you know, being self obsessed and like
write and look, this is what happened. To Me, You guys.
Gina's work can be found on two cloud and on

(53:43):
her website linked in the description, And Someone Please Have
Sex With Me is one of the best comic collections
ever published. Deal with It. I've been talking with a

(54:06):
lot of artists who work in multiple formats, but there's
many popular autobiographical comic artists who work exclusively online. Our
next three artists are women whose web comics blew up
in the past several years on Instagram as they explored
their own lives, interests, and anxieties while building an audience

(54:27):
and learning to draw in real time. I think it's
so interesting how much this is carried through from Kathy
guys White learning to draw her stories day to day
in the paper in her early years. Do artists like
artists number nine Kim ak the Red Dot, whose work
has developed a really strong following just in the last

(54:48):
two years. I became familiar with Kim's work online over
the Pandemic Lockdown. Prior to starting the comics, she had
been developing her style privately, but in March began sharing
her work single day on the platform, and as these
online stories sometimes go, one of her comics went viral
after George ta Kay shared it and her semi autobiographical

(55:10):
character Dot and the comic strip overall exploded. The Red
Dot generally explores the world through Dot, who is essentially
Kim's Cathy character, most often using pop culture reference points
from movies and fantasy stories to explore her own life
and ideas. In some of my favorite strips, the Dot

(55:30):
character often talks to pass versions of herself at different ages,
with the perspective of her life now as a thirty
year old, it's really good these days. Less than two
years into becoming a comic artist while continuing to work
her day job, the Red Dot has over four hundred
thousand followers in a loyal base of fans on Patreon.

(55:51):
I talked to him recently about this uniquely online journey.
So take me through your web comics, uh fandom journey
where it was cyanide happiness kind of your entry point
there and then how did how did it kind of
go from there? They're definitely the entry point. Like I
literally had a community computer animation class where me and

(56:12):
my friends would not do our assignment and just browse
through their website and send them to each other. Um, yeah,
so watching them grow and then like Shin and Sarah
Anderson and like the Tumbler generation kind of blew up
into read it, and then you just had influx of

(56:34):
all these great little art styles and relatable perspectives that
just hit even though if it wasn't exactly something you
went through, you're like, oh, I can see that. How
much of dot is pulled from you? Um? And and
how did you build out the character? Has the character
changed since she started drawing her consistently or she's definitely

(56:57):
changed uh in style as I've gotten better and more
used to uh figure drawing every day. Because she was
super lanky, really big bulbous eyes kind of Tim Burton.
I didn't want to go for that. It just happened
to be really skinny, lanky, But um, she started to
get more proportioned and then a lot more expressive with

(57:19):
the eyes. And when it comes to her character, I
would say emotionally pretty dead set on. Like, um, I
came out of the closet as bisexual woman back in
two thousand and eighteen, and I started like kind of
incorporating those kind of lgbt Q positive comics, not because

(57:45):
I'm suddenly a part of this community. It's just I'm
finally okay expressing that part of myself out being inauthentic.
I don't want to represent something that I'm not and
then do a disservice. The Red Dot strip was ways
personal and was initially released within the context of the
existential stress and fear of the COVID nineteen pandemic lockdown.

(58:08):
It was during this time that Kim's husband spent a long,
terrifying stretch in the hospital, something that was referenced and
addressed head on in the comic until his thankfully recovery
and return home. Kim was processing this stress and anxiety
in her work in real time, and as she tells it,
the community that was built around the comic strip played

(58:29):
a large role in getting her through a really difficult time. Uh.
It's definitely a like a form of therapy at times.
Other days where it feels like work where I'm not
I'm not in love with it, but sometimes just having
the the routine of Okay, I need to get this done,
and once I have it out, it will be a

(58:51):
catharsis and we can go on with the next day.
I don't have to answer to people saying like, well,
you can't be by because you're married a guy. It's no.
This was about me being okay with me, so I
want to talk about it here and there. And then
once it felt more comfortable coming out in that expression,

(59:13):
I was I was able to be more vocal about
it there before having actual conversations with certain family members. Um,
so yeah, it definitely it's a nice slow role. For that,
I will be linking to the Red Dot comic and
the description. Reading Kim's work is honestly one of my
favorite parts of the day. Onto artist number ten, my

(59:38):
dear friend Anna Selinas, an illustrator, comedian, and TV writer
who does I think some of the sharpest commentary on
depression and body image in the game with her strip
Bad Comics by Anna on Instagram, which currently stands at
over fifty followers. Like the Red Dot and Kathy, bad
Comics follows an avatar modeled after Anna herself, who talks

(01:00:01):
to her personified depression and anxiety, talks frankly about her body,
and above all is very very funny. I was really
fascinated to learn that bad Comics actually started up when
Anna was working a dead end job feeling uniquely like
ship in a way that only someone who has just
moved to Los Angeles can feel like shit. She was
honestly the first person I thought to speak to when

(01:00:23):
I was getting this episode together, So I'm very excited
to share some of our interview. This is kind of
how it happened. I was really really depressed. I was
more depressed than I had ever been in my life
when I was teaching because my dad had been diagnosed
with cancer. I had always had anxiety, but just never
experienced like full on depression and was not in therapy.

(01:00:48):
Didn't like my parents were not about therapy, Like I
had no tools to understand what I was going through. UM,
And so I would draw it, and I would draw that.
I was like, I'm also really bad to talk about
my feelings. I would draw in this little strip like
I'm sad, i am drunk um and I'm drinking because
I'm sad, and I think the first comic I ever did,

(01:01:12):
I was like, I'm so glad I'm out of that
relationship because it was like I had a cloud that
said sadness, despair, anxiety, and UM. Someone commented or maybe
two people commented and said like, oh cute, and that
gave me the Also my ex boyfriend comment or message

(01:01:35):
being was like, that's really hurtful. I can't believe you
posted that. But mostly the reception was good, and I
kept posting UM, and people kept kind of commenting and
following and and would message me and be like, oh,
I'm going through the same thing. And I felt so

(01:01:57):
comforted by that. I was able to see the cyclical
nature of depression in a much more clear way. UM.
And I have a friend actually whose therapist told her
to make an anxiety UM blanket, which is like she
she knit. She liked to knit, and her therapist was like,

(01:02:20):
when you're feeling really bad, knit the color red. When
it's not so bad, do yellow. Have you heard of
this before? No, this is really cool. And when you're
feeling good, do green. So she had this blanket where
like you could see these stripes of green and yellow
and red like in various various thicknesses like come and go,

(01:02:43):
and it was supposed to remind you that, like, this
bad feeling will pass. And my comic served as that.
I used to draw myself fully clothed with like a skirt,
which is weird because I don't even wear skirts ever.
And I drew myself as a skirt and a top,
and about two years in around there, maybe I would

(01:03:07):
occasionally draw myself an underwear topless, because that is how
I exist in my bedroom, and I spend a lot
of time in my bedroom, especially when I'm not feeling well. Um,
I just hate wearing shirts when I'm alone, and there
is something so deeply unsexy about my body when it's
just me in a room and some people feel themselves,

(01:03:30):
they take selfies and they're like, oh, I just felt
so hot. That is truly never me. Something I especially
appreciated was how she's able to control the way that
she presents her body in the comic. As she describes it,
drawing herself as a cartoon is this de sexualization process
that liberates her from the way that her body is

(01:03:51):
received and in some ways taken from her while performing live.
You know, I was also doing comedy at the time,
and I just feel, especially because I'm a curvy lady,
I feel so sexualized when I'm on stage, like it's
this hurdle I have to get over, like I have
a big butt, and I just feel like that is

(01:04:13):
just like an elephant in the room or something, and
I'm like, never funny enough to get over it. UM,
and I would always like try to play men and
like sketch an improv to kind of de sexualize that.
And with the comic, I can exist outside of all
of that. I can exist truly de sexualized UM, and

(01:04:39):
that is very freeing honestliness forever. Check out Bad Comics
by Anna on Instagram and you can see some of
Anna's recent work in TV, writing on Flatbush misdemeanors on Showtime.
Artist eleven the Wonderful Katie Fishel, who works under the
handle at sex Underscore, is a the score weird on Instagram,

(01:05:02):
which currently has almost seventy followers. Katie started doing the
comic after having conversations with friends about her experiences and
horrible often scarier traumatizing dating situations informative ways of viewing
her own body. She found that a lot of her
friends were connecting with it and started the comic. It's
completely unflinching, sometimes goes full body horror, and it's just visceral.

(01:05:24):
I dare you to look at her work and not
pull out a repressed memory in like a fun way, though,
and she's since used her growing platform to address issues
that she holds close most frequently in her work on
the mistreatment of unhoused people in Los Angeles. Her collaborations
with unhoused activists and host of the incredible We the
Unhoused podcast, Theo Henderson drew attention to how the COVID

(01:05:48):
Nineteam lockdown affected unhoused people far differently than the housed.
Theo's work is also deeply important, and I will be
linking to it in the description subscribe to his Patreon.
I got to speak with Katie Fishel about finding her
own voice through sex as Weird. You know, I think

(01:06:08):
the first thing that I ever did that even somewhat
resembled it because I wasn't I drew my entire life.
I drew you know, as a kid. Just it was
such a pastime and it was a comfort, and it
was just something so fun and it was sort of
I think my first like um uh feeling of like, oh,

(01:06:29):
this could be my currency. And so there was something
that was really satisfying about, um, like putting having to
sit with these experiences in a real way and like
spending like hours, you know, making these like little drawings
and and um, you know, I didn't really intend on

(01:06:52):
putting them online until like I kind of got not
like peer pressured into it, but I I had like
enough you know, like boosters from like friends, and you
know that everybody was just being really supportive, and it
was it felt fucking crazy. I mean, you know, it
literally is like it's like if you left your diary
on the sidewalk and you watched you know, a couple

(01:07:14):
of hundred people sort of like pick it up and
pass it around and have something to say about it.
It really made me feel crazy. That is the like
instantness of feedback kind of shape what you do. Yeah,
that's I mean, that's a good question. I think it
definitely Like, you know, I I feel lucky in the
sense that I well, besides a couple of things I

(01:07:37):
haven't gotten any sort of for the most part, a
ton of negative feedback. There are topics that I think
are really sensitive that people knee jerk reaction to, you know,
some of which I pay mine to, most of which
I do not. You know, I think that's sort of
the power of like speaking from my personal experience and

(01:07:57):
also you know, uh, illustrating personal experiences of other people
who anonymously submit, you know, to my page. It's like, well,
regardless like whatever you think about the situation, it's mine
or it's someone's. And I'm not making this up. But
the fact is is like I'm comfortable talking about really

(01:08:18):
really really complicated stuff in my life because that's what
happened and it it. It doesn't really matter to me
if you disagree with it, because I might disagree with
it too, but it is part of my life, you know.
And I do think that that is something that I, um,
you know, and pretty like adamantly against, which is like

(01:08:40):
I'm not interested in making content that or making art
that like everyone can agree with. That to me is
like a sign of laziness to be honest, or or
a sign that you're not really saying anything. If I'm
going to be perfectly real, Like, I think it is
good to like brings put stuff into the world that

(01:09:01):
like creates a conversation, you know. Again, check out Katie's
work at at Sex Underscore is Underscore Weird, keep an
eye up for her upcoming book, and follow and become
a patron of Theo Henderson and the Wed and Housed podcast.
So while the three women, kim Anna and Katie all

(01:09:22):
make pretty different work, They're all connected to who and
what matters to them. This is firmly rooted in the
tradition of the Zene scene of the nineties, of women's
comics of the seventies, and of the Cathy comics. The
final artist I spoke with, while still very young, has
worked through all of the mediums we discussed today. She

(01:09:43):
began working online, then moved into comics in print magazines,
and is now about to start making graphic novels for
Random House. Artist number twelve, whose work you may not
know now, but I guarantee you will very soon. Liz
Montaguo Montague is a relatively new voice in comics, first
coming to prominence in when she began cartooning for The

(01:10:07):
New Yorker, the first black woman to do so, ninety
four years into the magazine's run. What the Fuck. Liz
had already been making her comic strip called Liz at Large,
for her local newspaper and posting online for some time
before that, and quickly gained a huge audience of fans
for her work that examined and satirized girlhood, specifically black girlhood.

(01:10:28):
So I wanted to know more about her journey to
becoming a cartoonist. Here's some of our talk. Um, it's
just like it's so random. Um. So I went, I
was living in this small town in South Jersey. I
got an athletic scholarship till Liberal Arts School UM in Richmond, Virginia,
where I went, and I made it in studio art.

(01:10:50):
And then I graduated and I was a graphic designer
in d C. And I worked in International Development UM,
which is a really interesting job. I got to travel
a bunch of just school, and I was literally just
like at my desk one day and I emailed The
New Yorker about their diversity. They emailed me back, and like,
I didn't. I only knew the New Yorker though from
their Instagram feed. I had like maybe I'd seen it

(01:11:11):
in a dentist office or something, but like, I was
not familiar with the New Yorker. I was familiar with
like the cartoons or anything like that. So I only
knew what I had seen on Instagram from the cartoon
feed and then just kind of was like, oh, I
guess I could dry this, and here we are a
few years later, Liz originally reached out to Emma Allen,

(01:11:32):
the current cartoons editor for The New Yorker the first
woman and person under thirty to lead this department, and
as in her work, Liz Montague was not afraid to
ask the hard questions in the funniest way possible. It's
not that I'm bad at judging risks. I just feel
like I'm someone who's always willing to just take the risk.
I mean, in my view, if I do it and

(01:11:54):
my life will stay the same. Like if if they
don't respond to me, then it's not really a risk,
you know what I mean. Yeah, that's so. I was
just like, why not? But I just saw the email
button on the on Instagram, was like, well, maybe they
just genuinely don't know that. Like all of their drawings
are white. Maybe they just don't know. Once her status
as a New Yorker cartoonist was secured, Montague's audience grew

(01:12:18):
in the adult sphere, and she used her strips in
the magazine to explore a number of themes, strips on
current events and ones with autobiographical elements. In a magazine
that has generally circulated to a largely white and upwardly
financially mobile New Yorker scene, Liz continues to make cartoons
for the New Yorker, but she's already got her eyes

(01:12:38):
on what's next. Something that brings us all the way
back to our first artist, Marissa Moss. Because Liz Montague
is now working on a series of graphic novels for
children and young adults and aiming for black girls to
be more centered in scene in a still majority white genre.
She's going to be at the Scholastic Book Fair. It's
very exciting, so I wanted to talk to her a

(01:13:00):
little bit about where her career is going next. Well,
I'm working on mainly children's books right now, and I
love kids, lett I love it. I think it's awesome,
it's so fun. We just let ourselves be so much
like create these very like gentle and kind worlds for
kids that we just don't let ourselves create for adults.
I don't get it. It doesn't make sense to me,

(01:13:20):
but um, I feel like what got me into reading
as a kid was like the Juny b. Jones and
the Ramona and like the Babysitters Club. But like when
you look now looking back at it as an adult,
I'm like, wow, Like all of those books were like
entirely white, Like they had female protagonists. Which was really cool.
But it's like those are like entirely white books, and

(01:13:41):
I think that right now I want to like work
on that age group, that genre, and like diversifying the
space a lot more. I've linked to Liz's work in
the description, and her books with Random House start releasing
next year. I cannot wait. And that Dear Listener was
twelve artists, many from different backgrounds, some from different generations,

(01:14:05):
all finding their niche in the medium of comics online
and off to share their stories. And while there's certainly
a lot of work to be done in this space
to continue to fund an uplift marginalized voices, speaking with
these twelve artists made me feel hopeful. The next generation
of comic artists will undoubtedly continue to push this envelope,

(01:14:27):
and if these artists are any indication, we are in
extremely good hands. But listening to the twelve artists speak
about their approach to cartooning, it struck me how similar
it sounded to what Kathy guys White was doing back
in the day. The difference was confessional cartoons were not
as accepted back then. Here's the slice of our interview

(01:14:47):
from this spring. Hey, it wasn't a she wasn't a
horrible whim all the time she was. She wasn't um
the Jamie. I never did anything intentionally. I never I
never thought, oh, now it's time for Kathy to be

(01:15:07):
more tough and let me do those trips, or doesn't
now it's time for Kathy to be more of this
and let's see those strips. I was really kind of just,
you know, writing it out as life happened, not changing
changing dates and or changing names and you know people,
of course, but um, I was just kind of writing

(01:15:30):
it out as we went along. And I think in
some ways, you know, I evolved. I got stronger, I
got more discriminating, I got more on offer on, and
I guess that you know that came out in this strip.

(01:15:50):
I want to end this episode by sharing these artists
connection to the Kathy comics and their experience with them,
and like they are, their takes are all very friend
I hope you enjoyed learning about them, and I really
encourage you to get engaged with their work. It was
such a pleasure putting this episode together, and we'll be
back next week with our final episode of Act Cast,

(01:16:13):
A chat with Kathy, guys White, and a look at
how with forty five years of perspective, we remember the
comic strips legacy talk to you then, I mean, AC
is definitely the first thing. Um, It's funny. I watched
this documentary about comic artists. Um. She talked about how
she had started making those comics from her personal experiences

(01:16:35):
and kind of like the day to day issues that
she was experiencing. And UM, I remember really relating to
that when I saw that movie, Like she wasn't necessarily
an artist beforehand, Like she just started making those and
I think that's really really cool. My first thought is
the swimsuit once and the stress of that. When I

(01:17:01):
was reading it back when I was a kid, I
didn't get it at all. I didn't understand it at all. Um,
but it's I still read it and it still intrigued me,
and I think there are a lot of different things
going on there. I think I was young, so I
didn't really understand the problems of being an adult. But
it's also a closeted trans girl, and I knew that
there was some forbidden knowledge in that comic um that

(01:17:23):
I you know, I wasn't supposed to be reading. You know,
I wasn't it wasn't for me, um, but I read
it anyways, and I feel like, in a weird sort
of way, I feel like it was a piece of
the puzzle of me sort of finding uh my identity.
Years later, I always think of her diet comments it's

(01:17:43):
always got a diet, and I always felled bad for
Kathy because I felt like she needed some self love
or something. I feel, eat, eat whatever you want, like
you're gonna be okay. Actually reading reading it as a
young girl, um, I think it didn't actually like the
Kathy comics for that reason, because I found that that

(01:18:04):
um that I couldn't relate to her at the moment.
I think about being frazzled. I like life like I
think Kathy, you know, like I just think a like
obviously everyone goes back, but I do think, yeah, I
think a lot about like like the reaction to conflict
is frazzled. Um. So that's sort of where I go

(01:18:26):
with Kathy, and like what I think when I see her,
And then I also think a lot of like that.
I think visually a lot about like negative space and
like primary colors. She just knew, she knew her lane
stayed in it, stone steady one that that race, like
it never felt like Kathy tried to keep up with
the Joneses. I've read some interviews with Kathy of Kathy Um,

(01:18:50):
and I think she thinks that she herself, like you know,
failed a lot of stuff, and she wasn't very confident
in her comics at the beginning and all that. She
also was I think on trained um. But I feel
like even if you feel that way, there has to
be something in you that's kind of like I'm going
to document my life, you know what I mean, Like
there's something in you that has to think it's like
special and worth doing just being you know, being self

(01:19:12):
obsessed and like write it, Look, this is what happened
to me, you guys, and like I am cool or
I am sad, or I am this sortam that, But
you should pay attention, you know, whatever it is. I'm
I feel guilty saying this, but I think I never
connected with her. Maybe at the time I was a

(01:19:35):
little young, but also I think I probably was a
victim of like how she was being characterized that comic.
And it is like even when I would read, um,
you know, Saturday Morning or whatever the Sunday Morning cartoons
in the newspaper. It always felt far away, and then

(01:20:00):
now looking back and I'm like, oh my god. She
was expressing like literally what I'm expressing in my comics now,
where I'm like, I'm so anxious,

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Jamie Loftus

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