0:00

Some of the sharpest wit and comic strips

0:02

these days is women's work. Kathy

0:05

Guy's White Draws for every Woman,

0:07

besieged by the colliding demands

0:09

of bosses, boyfriends, and

0:12

a mother who brandishes a copy of

0:14

Bride's magazine. Lynn

0:17

Johnston voages her strip in the heat

0:19

of domestic chaos, and in three

0:21

short years, the Pattersons

0:23

of For Better or For Worse have

0:25

edged out the Bumpsteads as the first

0:28

family of the funnies for more of

0:30

the best work in cartoon humor. Our

0:32

men are making their own work. This

0:35

was an ad that appeared in newspapers

0:37

across the US in two

0:40

advertising the two most prominent women

0:42

working in comics at that time, Kathy

0:45

of Kathy and Lynn Johnston

0:47

of For Better or For Worse with the Universal

0:50

Press Syndicate one of the most popular comic

0:52

pages of the day, Accompanying

0:54

their pictures and sample comic strips. Kathy

0:57

is shopping for a dress, Johnston's

0:59

exhausted super mom Ellie Patterson

1:01

is talking about birthday parties with her kids.

1:04

And the men making their own mark.

1:06

Yeah, that's a list of Universal Press

1:08

indicets other comic strips seventeen

1:11

of them all written by men representation

1:16

when Kathy was not the

1:18

first woman to grace the pages of the Funnies, far

1:20

from it, but she was certainly held up with others

1:23

as an example of feminism winning.

1:25

As we discussed in the last episode, it

1:28

uh wasn't. But what Cathy's

1:30

success did demonstrate was that women

1:32

writing about their own experiences was

1:34

a winning formula after the Women's liberation

1:37

movement in the US. This opened doors

1:39

for artists like Lynn Johnston and

1:41

many others, a legacy that contributed

1:43

to the semi autobiographical comic

1:46

work that's published in papers, but let's

1:48

be honest, mostly online today. But

1:50

it's not quite that simple.

1:53

Women had been writing about their experiences

1:55

long before Kathy. Their histories are

1:57

present, but their work wasn't regarded with the

1:59

same ever rents that the infinity amounts

2:02

of men in their midst were. And that's

2:04

what we're exploring today. The women who laid

2:06

the foundation for Kathy's work to thrive,

2:08

the radical writers on the fringes working

2:10

at the same time who were changing the game

2:12

independently, and the people she shared

2:15

the Funny Pages with. You mean the men

2:17

I shared the pages with. Oh my god,

2:19

Kathy. Well, yeah, like at

2:21

first, I'm going to talk about the women that came later

2:23

too. Are you going to talk about dale Bert?

2:26

I mean, as little as I possibly

2:28

can, But Kathy, could you give

2:31

me a second? I can't leave until

2:33

one of us says a pivvy one liner. Sorry

2:35

that since they started doing the show, Kathy has just been

2:37

like appearing to me like

2:40

a sleep paralysis demon. I'll be falling asleep

2:42

and then there she is too dimensional

2:44

at the end of my bed and

2:46

the dressing room at the mall. A Come

2:49

on, Kathy, You're more than a dressing room

2:51

gag. You're better than that. You're right,

2:54

I'm working on it. Well, I think you're doing

2:56

great. Sorry, everyone, I just need to

2:58

like shut my eyes for a few seconds. And

3:00

then she tends to disappear. Hi

3:04

hi hi, Hi, Hi Hi,

3:07

Cathy. Please, I need to start the show. Okay,

3:10

I think she's gone. This is ac

3:12

cast. She burst into

3:15

the world in nineteen seventy

3:17

six. She's at work, she's out on

3:19

dates, and she don't like politics

3:21

from Mama and heurban to with Theminis

3:24

friends and she's fighting all the stands.

3:26

It with chocolate and hand Kathy

3:30

she's fighting back to stress

3:32

the success. Let's got her some slack.

3:35

Oh, Cathy, My Cathy and Cathy,

3:39

She's gotta like go in ay.

3:59

There's no out that women were always popular

4:02

in the funny pages, which started around

4:04

the turn of the twentieth century. The thing

4:06

is that these characters were overwhelmingly

4:09

designed, written, and plotted out

4:11

by men. When comics first came into

4:13

newspapers in a big way in the early nineties,

4:16

Characters like We Need the Breadwinner by

4:18

Martin Branner showed a young woman who worked

4:20

to support her parents and adopted brothers.

4:23

Characters like Little Orphan Annie by Harold

4:25

Gray, one of the most successful comic

4:27

strip characters ever, began as

4:29

an anti New Deal and anti

4:32

Labor Union propaganda character. That's

4:34

right, Annie is a Jeff Bezos

4:36

simp. It makes me sick. Blondie

4:39

was launched in ninety by cartoonist

4:41

Chick Young, who had gotten successful doing

4:43

quote unquote pretty girl comics

4:45

like Beautiful Bab and Dumb Dora.

4:48

Blondie is still in the papers today and

4:50

began as a flapper girl who dates

4:52

and Mary's industrial air dag

4:54

Wood. By the nineteen eighties. Here's how Blondie

4:56

sounded in TV specials m

5:00

Hi, Honey day wood Core

5:03

and I have just been to a wonderful seminar

5:05

called how to spend quality time with

5:07

your husband? And you don't say now,

5:10

All I need is a quality husband to

5:12

spend time with. Okay.

5:16

Some other classic comic strip women Lois

5:19

of High and Lois created by a man. Betty

5:22

Boop definitely created by a man,

5:24

although side note the Betty book character

5:26

was originally a black woman, but was

5:28

pretty swiftly whitewashed once she began

5:31

appearing in papers. The character and Nancy

5:33

created by men. Broom Hilda

5:36

created by a man, Betty Veronica

5:38

man. And while some of these women and girls

5:40

were funny and dynamic, Nancy

5:43

was a trickster, wonder woman beat

5:45

the hell out of people. Many of the women who

5:47

appeared in the funnies in this era were defined

5:49

by their roles as wives, mothers,

5:52

and girlfriends, or the fact that they were

5:54

not these things as in early Winny

5:56

winky strips was the whole joke.

5:59

They were all white, well, Broomhilda

6:01

was green, and most were linked

6:03

to men in the nuclear American home in

6:06

some way. And again, comic books

6:08

are out of my purview here, so we're sticking

6:10

to the American newspaper pages.

6:13

So yes, there were many women drawn on the

6:15

pages, but rarely were they drawn by

6:18

women. But that's not to say that

6:20

women were completely absent from comic

6:22

strips. Here are some of the creators who

6:25

paved the way for our Kathy.

6:27

Oh and also who will not be

6:30

speaking for a couple of

6:32

minutes. Okay.

6:34

Like the messy and choppy American

6:36

feminist movements we discussed last week,

6:38

women's presence and the funny pages tended

6:41

to fluctuate throughout the twentieth century,

6:43

and in its early years women were relatively

6:45

successful in the space. Some women

6:48

were introduced into the industry by working

6:50

on a team with their significant

6:52

other. This was a pretty common practice

6:54

in the creative arts in general, but others

6:56

busted onto the scene completely

6:58

on their own. Blondie is the most famous

7:01

example, but flappers had a major presence

7:03

in comics, with creators who were women

7:05

of the time as well. Cartoonist Ethel

7:08

Hayes created Flapper Fannie, in which

7:11

cartoonist Gladys Parker took over

7:13

later in its run, and Parker went

7:15

on to launch her own clothing line in

7:18

a brief career as a Hollywood costumer.

7:20

Off of the strip's success, Ethel Parker

7:22

also made a strip called Gay in Her

7:25

Gang in Night, and Anita

7:27

Lows, who had already made history

7:30

as the first woman to be a contracted

7:32

screenwriter back in nineteen twelve Titanic

7:34

Gear, wrote the successful graphic novel

7:37

Gentleman Prefer Blonde, which was

7:39

later turned into the famous Marilyn Monroe

7:41

vehicle. But the earliest ancestor

7:43

I can find to a Kathy style

7:46

cartoon is an artist named

7:48

Fay King. Fay King wasn't the first

7:50

woman to become an editorial cartoonist

7:52

in the US. That distinction belongs to

7:55

Edwina dum who became a full time cartoonist

7:57

in nineteen fifteen, but King's

8:00

style and references to her

8:02

own life kind of remind me of

8:04

a nineteen twenties era. Kathy King

8:06

was born in eighteen eighty nine in Portland,

8:09

Oregon. She went to college. She

8:11

was one of the first women to own a car

8:13

in her area, and she had a highly

8:15

publicized marriage and divorce with

8:18

a famous Danish lightweight boxer.

8:20

He had five times fast Oh my god, famous

8:23

Danish lightweight boxer,

8:27

and she worked as a feature writer and cartoonist

8:29

for a few different newspapers. Even more

8:31

so than Kathy Guys White and the Kathy

8:34

character whose lives are tangentially

8:36

related at best. Fay King was

8:38

usually the main character in her

8:40

comics, and she frequently made strips

8:43

that featured herself and her husband,

8:45

and later on veiled commentary

8:47

when that marriage ended. You know, the

8:49

marriage to the famous Danish

8:52

lightweight boxer. These

8:54

depictions of her and the people in her

8:56

life were not always flattering. We

8:59

see fay King draw on often as a

9:01

nervous wreck and her husband as

9:03

a bizarre, macho womanizer. She

9:05

was a flapper who, if you remember, was

9:07

working at the height of the suffragette movement

9:10

and with continued success after women's

9:12

suffrage was granted in Here

9:14

are some of the headlines that fay King's

9:17

work would generate in the twenties. Judgment

9:20

by their past wives, fay King advises

9:22

flappers girls who married guys

9:24

twice their age, would do well to consult other

9:27

women they wooed one and then cast

9:29

off. Women now read newspapers,

9:31

fake King observes wow.

9:34

Unlike characters like Blondie, a flapper

9:37

whose experience was manufactured

9:39

by chick young fay Kings. Flappers

9:41

came from a personal place and were often

9:44

just her life. In the twenties, King

9:46

worked among a number of talented women,

9:48

including illustrators like Nell Brinkley,

9:51

Eleanor Shuer, Edith Stevens,

9:54

Ethel Hayes, Dorothy if and

9:56

Virginia Hugett. Here's a quote from

9:58

a comic historian and an artist

10:01

in her own right, so legendary

10:03

that I've got an entire section on her later

10:05

in this episode. Her name is Trina Robbins,

10:07

and she literally wrote a book on this era

10:10

in women's comics called The Flapper

10:12

Women Women Cartoonists of the jazz

10:14

Age, And an interview with bust she

10:17

said this, there's this myth that women

10:19

didn't draw comics, or that they had to

10:21

change their names. This is untrue.

10:24

If you were good, they published you. Women

10:26

were drawing comics and people loved them,

10:28

just as many women read newspapers as men, and

10:31

the editors were smart enough to carry the strips

10:33

the women liked. Nel Brinkley

10:35

was a major leader in this time as well,

10:37

creating the young, working, attractive

10:40

suffragist illustrated ideal through

10:42

a character style that became known as

10:44

Brinkley Girls, and she wrote some of the

10:46

most overtly feminist comic

10:48

strips of the time. In a strip called

10:51

Dimple's day Dreams, a flapper named

10:53

Dimple would fantasize about becoming the

10:55

president, or an aviator or a

10:57

chorus girl, things that weren't attainable

10:59

at that time. Virginia Hugett's work

11:01

centered on girls from working class backgrounds,

11:04

and she made strips like Molly the Manicure

11:07

Girl or Babs in Society, a

11:09

strip about a shop girl who suddenly

11:11

inherits a massive fortune. And

11:13

what was more, this community of women

11:15

comic artists knew and liked

11:17

each other. Brinkley and King would often

11:20

draw each other and took turns doing

11:22

illustrations in court at the highly publicized

11:25

case of the Albert Snyder murder, which I

11:27

could make an entire podcast about

11:29

what a Wikipedia rabbit hole, And instead

11:32

of focusing on the murder victim, the husband,

11:34

Brinkley and King of course drew the

11:36

murderer Ruth his wife.

11:40

It's all very cool. Moving right

11:42

along onto the comics of the Depression

11:45

and World War Two era. Unlike

11:47

the early days of flappers and first wave

11:49

feminism. Most of the women appearing on the

11:51

funny pages at this time were created

11:53

by men and tended to fall into predictable

11:56

categories. You recognize these

11:58

the lionized mother, the heavily

12:00

sexualized loose girl, and the occasional

12:03

film fatale professional. My favorite

12:05

of these was a character called Brenda's

12:07

Star. It was a strip that followed the

12:10

soap opera e story of a reporter

12:12

named Brenda Starr who had this wild

12:15

romantic life and would solve crimes.

12:17

It was originally conceived by a

12:19

male artist, Dale Messick, but was

12:21

soon taken up by women until its

12:23

conclusion in two thousand eleven,

12:26

and even inspired a B movie featuring

12:28

the character starring Brookshields back in

12:30

the nineties. She's much more than

12:32

a woman, much

12:38

more than your average reporter. Give

12:40

me the White House, please, much

12:46

more than any man good handle they

12:49

want you. And

12:51

just as many of the mainstream feminist

12:53

movements were gate kept by race,

12:56

women who were given a platform in the

12:58

early comic strip days were overwhelmingly

13:01

white, with some exceptions.

13:04

Enter Jackie ORMs. Jackie

13:07

ORMs was born in nineteen eleven

13:09

grew up in the Chicago suburbs and went

13:11

on to become the first black woman to

13:13

be a nationally syndicated comic

13:15

artist, writing a number of popular

13:17

strips over her career. Because

13:19

of the deeply normalized segregation

13:22

in the US throughout her life, Orms's

13:24

work appeared primarily in black

13:26

newspapers, most prominently The Pittsburgh

13:29

Courier and the Chicago Defender.

13:31

Her work gained a huge following and

13:33

was said to reach over one million people a

13:35

day. Lankston Hughes even once said

13:38

in the late forties that quote, if I

13:40

were marooned on a desert island, I would

13:42

miss Jackie Orms's cute drawings.

13:44

That's so cool. Her first strip in

13:47

nineteen thirty seven and thirty eight was

13:49

called Torchy Brown in Dixie

13:51

to Heart, and it was the story of a teenager

13:53

from Mississippi who became famous

13:55

singing at the Cotton Club, which

13:58

was a nightclub in Harlem that ran in

14:00

the nine twenties and thirties that ended

14:02

up launching the careers of many

14:04

famous black performers while still

14:06

being operated under Jim Crow's

14:08

segregation laws. That is, it was

14:11

at first a whites only and later a

14:13

segregated club. Torchy was

14:15

a hit with readers immediately, and

14:17

the character made a huge comeback in

14:19

the nineteen fifties with Torchy and Heartbeats,

14:22

where Jackie ORMs updated the protagonists

14:25

as an adventurous young woman who dates

14:27

around in search of true love while pursuing

14:29

her dreams. Most famously, Torchy

14:32

had a storyline in nineteen fifty four

14:34

where she and her boyfriend, a doctor

14:36

in a predominantly black neighborhood, talked

14:38

about how environmental racism

14:40

affected his patients after waste

14:42

from a local chemical plant began to leak

14:44

into the local water supply. In

14:48

the studio of Jackie Arms, one of

14:50

the few women cartoonists, the

14:52

popular comic strip characters of Torchy

14:55

and Heartbeat and Patty Joe literally

14:57

spring to life. Syndicated in

14:59

scores of news papers, her cartoons

15:01

reached more than a million raiders each week.

15:05

Torchy became a fashion icon,

15:07

and not by mistake. Alongside the comic

15:09

strip that ORMs drew, would often be a

15:12

paper doll model of Torchy with several

15:14

outfits, giving young black women an outlet

15:16

with which to see themselves in the fashions

15:19

of the day and act out their own stories

15:21

with the paper. Doll Ormes's

15:37

most famous work was called Patty Joe

15:39

and Ginger, a comic strip that ran from to

15:42

nineteen fifty six and consisted of

15:45

two black sisters, one a chatty

15:47

kid and the other a tall, lean teenager.

15:50

The format was very simple, and

15:52

each one panel strip, Patty Joe the

15:54

kid, would make a comment about modern life

15:56

to her sister Ginger, who never spoke.

15:58

Depending on the occasion, Ginger reacted

16:01

with shock, or annoyance, or tenderness

16:03

to whatever Patty Joe sets through. Patty

16:06

Joe Jackie ORMs was able to

16:08

use an innocuous, seeming kids Say

16:10

the Darndest Things format to launch

16:12

biting commentary on the oppression

16:14

experienced by Black Americans of

16:17

this time. ORMs this strip, from

16:19

the day after the white murderers

16:21

of young Black boy Emmett till We're

16:23

Found Not Guilty in has

16:26

been cited as one of the most important works

16:28

in the strips run. In it, Patty

16:31

Joe stands in the kitchen doorway as

16:33

the ever silent Ginger hides a newspaper

16:36

with the news of the not guilty verdict hidden

16:38

behind her back. Patty Joe says

16:41

I don't want to seem touchy on the subject, but that

16:43

new little white tea kettle just whizzled at

16:45

me. Patty Joe was very much

16:47

the star here, and it led to one of the

16:49

most successful comic strip merchandising

16:52

moves in the early history of comics,

16:54

and a very important one in addition to

16:56

the Patty Joe paper dolls that appeared

16:58

alongside the strip. Much like Torchy,

17:01

Jackie ORMs oversaw the release of

17:03

a Patty Joe doll between nine in

17:06

ninety nine that gave young black

17:08

girls a toy of the character that many

17:10

modeled their behavior on. In a toy market

17:12

where very often the only representations

17:15

of Black women and girls relied heavily

17:17

on Mammy stereotypes, the Patty

17:20

Joe doll was a big deal, and

17:22

ORMs oversaw the production herself. The

17:24

sharp commentary that ORMs made in her

17:26

work didn't come without consequences.

17:29

The powers that be viewed her very

17:31

much as a threat. According

17:33

to Matthew Tuche at the African American

17:36

Intellectual History Society,

17:38

the FBI had a file on Jackie

17:40

ORMs that went from nineteen forty eight

17:43

to nineteen fifty eight. At the height of

17:45

the Red Scare, the agency interviewed

17:47

her, and agents would sometimes come

17:49

to follow her to the bookstore she frequented

17:52

in not just a stunning waste of

17:54

government funds, but an attempt to

17:56

establish a connection between ORMs

17:58

and the communist part. Her FBI

18:01

file was two hundred and eighty

18:03

seven pages long, longer than Jackie

18:05

Robinson's file by over a hundred

18:08

pages, which brings me to this panel

18:10

of Patti, Joe and Ginger from the period

18:12

that ORMs was under surveillance. It

18:15

would be interesting to discover which committee

18:17

decided it was Unamerican to be black.

18:20

This strip, of course, is a reference to the

18:22

House of Unamerican Activities

18:24

Committee during the Red Scare, and

18:26

it makes sense why this committee

18:28

was on Jackie Orms's mind in particular.

18:31

ORMs retired from cartooning in ninety

18:34

six, was a founding board member of the

18:36

Disabled Museum of African American

18:38

History, and was a longtime member

18:41

of an antique doll enthusiast club

18:43

in Chicago. Her legacy continues

18:45

now through the ORMs Society, an

18:47

online collective that promotes black women

18:49

in the comics industry. Another

18:52

icon of the Depression era, was an

18:55

artist named Marge Buell. She

18:57

worked professionally just as Marge

19:00

Love, a mononymous artist. Very confident.

19:03

Marge was born on a farm in nineteen

19:05

o four. She worked her way up in the

19:07

industry as a magazine illustrator

19:09

and started the beloved strip Little

19:11

Lulu in nineteen thirty five, about

19:14

a young girl who's known for challenging boys

19:16

to prove that she can do anything they can.

19:19

The comic only ran for ten years, but

19:21

You'll set the stage for women to merchandise

19:24

the hell out of their most popular

19:26

characters. As Kathy Leader Would,

19:29

Lulu outlived the strip through merchandizing,

19:32

through cartoon shorts in the nineteen forties,

19:34

through an anime in the nineteen seventies,

19:37

through an HBO animated series

19:39

in the nineties. Like Kathy Leader Would,

19:41

Lulu was also used heavily in American

19:44

commercials. She was a spokes cartoon

19:46

for Kleenex, tissues for Pepsi,

19:49

and she was featured in a permanent Time Square

19:51

billboard for over ten years.

19:54

Yet Clean Next tissues in the economy

19:56

Back and to Jeff any tissue

19:59

You'll never and back for the

20:01

new pack of clean Up four hundred

20:03

gives more more for your money

20:05

than ever before. Like Kathy

20:08

guys White would be later, Marge was heavily

20:10

involved in the marketing of her character, and

20:12

it paid off in a huge way. She sold

20:14

off the copyrights to Lulu in nineteen

20:17

seventy one, doing very well

20:19

for herself. Little Lulu would go on to

20:21

inspire Friends of Lulu, a nonprofit

20:24

that ran from eleven

20:26

to promote comic books by women and to get

20:28

girls involved in making comics themselves.

20:31

The nineteen forties also brought a series

20:34

of successful strips about teenage

20:36

girls, lining up pretty closely with the

20:38

explosion in marketing to American

20:40

teenagers, and these strips tend to be pretty

20:42

lighthearted and mostly about teen

20:45

girls pining over teen boys in strips

20:47

like Lynda Walter's Susie Q. Smith,

20:49

which she wrote with her husband, and Hilda Terry's

20:52

Tina and Hilda. Terry fought

20:55

very hard to be the first woman to

20:57

be accepted into the National Cartoonist

20:59

Society and was finally successful

21:01

in nineteen fifty one. Nineteen

21:04

fifty one, there was also

21:06

wartime propaganda comic strips. Gladys

21:08

Parker, who had been working back since the Flapper

21:11

strips in the nineteen twenties made the comic

21:13

Betty g I to inspire women

21:15

to get involved in American war efforts,

21:18

and then went on to create a semi autobiographical

21:20

comic called Mopsi in ninety

21:23

nine. Mopsy was a protagonist that was

21:25

an absolute dead ringer for

21:27

Gladys Parker herself, in a move

21:30

that mirrored many American women's experiences

21:32

in World War Two. Mopsie worked

21:34

as a munitions plant worker and a nurse

21:37

in the comic strip and then was

21:39

fired from her defense job in nineteen seven

21:41

and had to leave the workforce d pressing.

21:45

However, you should google a picture of Gladys

21:47

Parker. She's I think my new style icon.

21:50

She's incredible. The nineteen fifties

21:52

was not a good time for honestly,

21:55

anybody, really, anybody

21:57

who wasn't a white guy in America,

21:59

and women's presence in the funny pages

22:02

dipped. In their place came

22:04

the Donna redified domestic goddesses

22:07

that exemplified the indoctrination

22:09

that set the stage for Betty Free Dance,

22:11

the feminine mystique to become such

22:13

a hit among white middle class housewives

22:16

who had been pushed out of the workforce after

22:18

the war ended. You've got Lois of High

22:20

and Lois a suburban housewife. You've

22:22

got flow from Andy Capp, the long

22:24

suffering wife who deals with her husband's

22:27

womanizing and excess drinking like it's

22:29

her job, which it kind of was. And

22:31

into the sixties, as the civil rights

22:33

movement and social unrest surrounding

22:36

the Vietnam War dominated headlines,

22:38

not much of this was reflected in the funny

22:41

pages. For the most part, the medium

22:43

was stuck about ten years in the past in

22:46

the comic strips that took awards home at

22:48

the Alley Awards for comics were

22:51

Peanuts by Charles Schultz, a soap

22:53

opera strip called on Stage by

22:55

Leonard Starr, and Dennis the

22:57

Menace, not exactly strips

22:59

that reflected social progress,

23:02

radicalism, or gains made by

23:04

these movements, and that applied to the feminist

23:06

movement as well. But when the newspapers

23:08

wouldn't carry the radical messaging of the time,

23:11

a bunch of women decided to do it themselves, enter

23:14

the underground comics movement. Well,

23:16

the newspaper pages lagged far behind

23:19

the times in the fifties into the sixties,

23:21

and seventies. Prior to Kathy,

23:23

Beginning in ninety six, another

23:26

comic scene was thriving,

23:28

that being underground comics,

23:31

comics with two MS and an AX by the

23:33

way, a scene that was very vibrant

23:35

in the US and the UK. For

23:38

as long as there had been illustrated comics,

23:40

there had been poorn knockoffs of comic

23:43

book characters, but in the late sixties,

23:45

illustrators began to organize, independently,

23:47

publish, and create their own

23:50

X rated characters. They're basically the

23:52

edge lords of the late sixties, very

23:54

much a part of the sex, drugs, and rock and roll

23:56

era with its start in the early sixties

23:58

with stuff like Stacts Adventures

24:01

of Jesus. The big thing about underground

24:03

comics was that they were completely

24:05

uncensored. Are Crumb, one of the

24:07

most prominent artists of this movement,

24:10

spoke to what the scene meant in an interview

24:12

from He said this,

24:15

people forget that. That's what it was all about. That's

24:17

why we did it. We didn't have anybody standing

24:20

over us saying no, you can't draw this or

24:22

you can't show that. We could do whatever we wanted,

24:25

and so they did whatever they wanted.

24:28

Centered in the San Francisco area. At

24:30

the height of free Love, Crume and Company started

24:32

a number of self published comics issues

24:35

full of truly some of the most fucked up things

24:37

You'll ever see in your life. ZAP Comics,

24:40

a project helmed by Our Crumb,

24:42

became a flagship publication for the

24:44

movement and launched a number of artists

24:47

after getting get start sold on the sidewalk

24:49

of Hate Ashbury out of a baby stroller

24:52

by Crumb's then wife. So yeah,

24:54

these were the edge lords of the sixties

24:56

and seventies. The comics were shock, talking

24:59

hard, and not in the way that all radical

25:02

artists liked. The movement was built

25:04

around drawing and saying whatever

25:06

you want and consisted of

25:08

almost completely white guys.

25:10

Artist Grass Green was one of the only black

25:13

artists involved in underground comics,

25:15

and so that meant that sometimes they were just

25:17

saying funked up stuff for the sake of saying

25:19

fucked up stuff. And the comics from these

25:21

majority male collectives would often

25:23

feature themes like incest, murder,

25:26

rape, and pretty aggressive able

25:29

is um and you guess it, misogyny

25:31

ran rampant. This brings us

25:33

back to Trina Robbins, the world's

25:36

leading historian and women comics artist,

25:38

who was also at the helm of creating

25:40

space for women in the underground comics

25:42

movement. Robbins didn't want to get involved

25:45

in zap comics. She wanted to start

25:47

her own thing, and this was a fairly controversial

25:50

move. Robbins said this of

25:52

our Crumb's work. It's weird

25:54

to me how willing people are to overlook

25:56

the hideous darkness in Crumb's work. What

25:58

the hell is funny? Ab out rape and murder?

26:01

And this resistance made a lot of sense for the

26:03

time. By the late sixties, the second

26:06

wave of feminism was well underway

26:08

in the US, and by vent, Trina

26:11

Robbins had had enough of the misogyny

26:13

in existing underground comics. After

26:15

meeting fellow cartoonist Barbara Willie

26:18

Mendez, the two decided to make their

26:20

own comics and recruited other women

26:22

to do it with them, artists like Meredith

26:24

Kurtzman, the daughter of Mad magazine

26:27

creator Harvey Kurtzman, like Carol

26:29

Kaylish, like socialist cartoonist

26:32

Lissa Lions, and Michelle Brand to

26:34

make the first issue ever of women's

26:36

underground comics. Called it

26:38

Ain't Me Babe. Here's an interview Robin's

26:41

did in about her motivation

26:43

to start comics of her own. I

26:46

mean, for the longest time, if

26:48

you wanted to draw comics, you

26:51

really had two choices. One

26:53

was mainstream and mainstream you

26:55

know, the big two, Marvel and DC was

26:58

all about guys punching other guys.

27:00

You know, That's basically what it was about.

27:03

And this isn't something that women and

27:06

I don't awful autaman to, This isn't something

27:08

we want to draw, This isn't

27:10

even something we can draw. You know, I'm

27:12

not very good at guys punching each

27:15

other. It's not what I do. And they

27:17

but the other alternative was the Underground.

27:19

But the Underground was completely male

27:22

dominated mail and

27:26

and it was all about sex and drugs

27:28

and rock and roll, and you know, the

27:31

sex part was extremely misogynists

27:33

towards women. It was all male gaze and male

27:36

viewpoint. So there was until

27:38

Babe, until It Ain't Me Babe, there

27:40

was nothing really for women. So

27:43

suddenly we had another kind of

27:46

comic with another kind of

27:48

contributors. And the cover

27:50

of It Ain't Me Babe does not shy

27:52

away from iconic women of

27:54

the funniest pages. It references

27:56

them explicitly. The cover has Olive

27:59

Oil Popeye, it has Wonder

28:01

Women, It has Little Lulu from

28:03

Marge member Her. It has Mary

28:06

Marvel, She and a Queen of the Jungle, and

28:08

Elsie the Cow, who I guess

28:10

was a mascot for a dairy company. And

28:12

these characters are all charging

28:15

together with their fists raised and

28:17

furious in solidarity. The

28:19

cover reads it ain't Me Babe, Women's

28:22

Liberation, and the contents are

28:24

much the same. The majority see women

28:26

reimagining themselves as the centered

28:29

parties in fables and fantasy

28:31

stories and even Sunday funnies. My

28:33

favorite one of these is called Breaking

28:35

Out. Artist Carol Kalish imagines

28:38

the existing women in the comics banding

28:40

together for world domination. Little

28:43

Lulu decides to stop trying to prove

28:45

to boys that she's worthwhile and strike

28:47

out on her own. Supergirl gets sick

28:49

of Superman's condescension. Veronica

28:51

realizes that Betty is far more important

28:54

to her than Archie. Petunia Pig

28:56

tells Porky to cook his own dinner, and

28:58

they all strike out on their own to create a

29:00

women's only clubhouse. It holds Up

29:02

It Ain't Me Babe was a huge

29:05

success, selling over forty copies

29:07

from an independent printer. So early

29:09

on, Trina Robbins was rightfully confident

29:12

that there was a whole market for women in

29:14

the underground, and two

29:16

began a longer sustaining project,

29:19

Women's Comics, spelled w I

29:21

M M E N. In

29:36

the first issue alone, Women's

29:38

Comics addresses teenage abortion,

29:41

female masturbation, leaving an abusive

29:43

marriage, leaving a job where a woman

29:45

is being sexually harassed, and one

29:48

written by Robbins herself called

29:50

Sandy Comes Out, which was one of the first

29:52

lesbian coming out stories and comics

29:55

ever. Because they were uncensored,

29:57

these strips are deeply unapologetic.

30:00

Women's Comics had no interest in

30:02

engaging in both sides is um,

30:04

and they feature women who take radical views

30:06

without explaining or apologizing. You

30:09

don't like that they don't want an abortion, Okay,

30:12

oh well, you don't like that she wants to leave

30:14

her husband, leave her job. Isn't

30:16

straight? The collection offers no explanation

30:19

and no apologies. A number

30:21

of women whose work appeared in the pages

30:23

of Women's Comics went on to have pretty

30:25

impressive careers. And there was Lee

30:28

Mars, who began as an assistant

30:30

on comics like Little Orphan, Annie

30:32

High and Lois and Prince Valiant,

30:34

who went on to create her own radical works

30:36

that embraced body positivity and queerness

30:39

through her strip called Pudge Girl Blimp

30:42

from nineteen seventy three to seventy seven.

30:44

There was Aileen Kominski, who did a

30:46

comic about an insecure, misfit masturbaiter

30:49

called Goldie Neurotic Woman.

30:51

There was Diane Newman, creator of

30:53

the violent and impulsive icon D

30:56

D. Glitz. There was Sharon Rudol,

30:58

who went on to write the graphic novel biographies

31:01

of famous political activists. And this

31:03

was a roster that grew with each

31:05

passing issue. And once again, while the

31:07

collection grew more diverse in

31:09

including more queer women, later in his run,

31:11

it remained overwhelmingly white.

31:14

A lot of these comics can't really be done justice

31:16

here. What you need to know is that they were

31:18

unapologetic, edgy, sometimes

31:20

in the right direction, that sometimes in a direction

31:23

that very much doesn't age well. They

31:25

were explicit, and they were touching on women's

31:27

issues that would have been virtually impossible

31:30

to do in the funny pages that they were commenting

31:32

on and sometimes directly parodying.

31:35

What you also need to know is that the politics

31:37

of the era and the fact that there is a

31:39

majority of white CIS authors

31:41

means that there are many comic strips

31:44

that other non white or non

31:46

SIS women in a way that is offensive.

31:48

The comic was designed to provide opportunities

31:51

to women as time went on. The collection

31:53

was not just a platform these ideas, but

31:55

to provide opportunities to women comic

31:58

artists as time went on, making point

32:00

to cycle out the editors regularly to

32:02

ensure that new artists and ideas

32:04

and issues would be introduced. In the nineteen

32:07

seventy three issue, editor Lee Mars

32:09

explains what Women's Comics is about.

32:12

The Anthology of Women Cartoonists is

32:15

intended to give support and encouragement

32:17

for aspiring women cartoonists throughout

32:20

the country. We have no desire

32:22

to be an exclusive, divisive

32:24

or female chauvinist group, of

32:26

fear, some of our friends have expressed.

32:29

We do hope that publication

32:31

of high quality beginning work will

32:33

give our womenist artists a chance to be seen

32:36

and a foothold in the industry based

32:38

on their talents of mind, hand

32:40

and eye, rather than more traditionally

32:42

requested parts of their anatomy, and

32:45

provide good comic entertainment for all.

32:48

Women's comics also drew a clear line

32:50

between the radicals that appeared in their

32:52

pages and the more liberal

32:54

American feminists women who are associated

32:57

with the now the National Organization

33:00

Women or MISS magazine, as

33:02

edited by Glorious Steinham. Women's

33:04

comics had an issue with MISS magazine,

33:06

specifically after the comics were refused

33:09

ad space in the feminist magazine Long

33:11

story Short. For a time, MISS

33:13

Magazine was, according to Trina Robbins,

33:16

too afraid to have their magazine pulled

33:18

from the shelves for quote unquote

33:21

advertising pornography, and the

33:23

artists of women's comics were rightfully

33:25

piste. Miss would later reverse this

33:27

decision, but come on, Steinham.

33:30

Here's one of my favorites from women's comics

33:32

in nineteen seventy three, in a strip called

33:34

Reactionary Comics by Marjorie

33:36

pachet Sky. The conversation is between

33:39

two women. Oh. It says here

33:41

that um men are becoming quite

33:44

enthusiastic about women's lib Don't

33:46

I know it? Mine just liberated me by

33:48

taking up with that redhead who runs the food co

33:51

op. But I'm supposed to have his dinner ready whenever

33:53

he shows up. Yeah,

33:55

come to think of it, mine sits at home

33:57

while I go to work, and they still

33:59

won't lift a finger when it comes to doing

34:01

housework. I pay his rent. I'm

34:03

not going to wash his socks too. We

34:06

could pick up a couple of losers, but

34:08

the swing is around here is solo grade. They'd

34:11

probably try and snatch our purses. And

34:13

when you do get down to the nitty gritty,

34:16

everyone is so liberated that there's not a

34:18

bit of affection, not to mention plain

34:20

old manners. Well, we could get liberated

34:23

all the way. I read this article in the New Cosmo,

34:25

The Lesbian Experience. You're

34:28

a great kid and everything, but I sort

34:30

of had something in mind with great, big

34:33

arms to put around me. This character

34:35

has a thought bubble where she's thinking of

34:37

a completely erect penis. The other

34:40

character replies, sigh, we

34:42

might as well go to the laundry room with burno bras.

34:45

When we get done, it'll be time to watch

34:47

Mary Tyler Moore right on, Sister not

34:50

bite my ass. This trip embodies

34:52

the early issues of women's comics

34:54

for me. It features two women talking

34:57

in a pretty dated way about their frustrations.

35:00

They have interesting talking points. They're

35:02

resenting how women's liberation had

35:04

been intended to free them of the demands

35:06

that men put upon them, but instead

35:09

empowered men to ask more

35:11

of them. Now that they have jobs, why

35:13

not pay his rent and cook his food. Similar

35:16

topics are explored in the early days

35:18

of the Kathy comics in the nineteen seventies,

35:20

where men asked Kathy to pay the check

35:23

as some sort of proof of her

35:25

own liberation. It's not an

35:27

acknowledgement, it's a challenge. In

35:29

nineteen seventy five, Alien Kaminsky

35:31

and Diane Newman departed the collective

35:34

due to differences in opinions on both

35:36

feminism and Trina Robbins

35:39

ongoing criticism of Our Crumb,

35:41

who Kaminsky was in a relationship

35:43

with and is still married to today. Kaminsky

35:45

and Newman started a separate women driven

35:48

comics collective called Twisted Sisters

35:51

that ran from nineteen seventy six to

35:53

ninety four and featured pretty significant

35:55

crossover with artists who appeared

35:57

in women's comics well. This came out of

35:59

an in ternal conflict. This meant that the

36:01

community had actually expanded and

36:03

began to provide even more opportunities

36:06

for aspiring artists. However,

36:08

while women's Comics and Twisted Sisters

36:11

were doing what quite literally no one else

36:13

was at this time, and this space was very

36:15

hard one, having been created outside

36:18

of the male dominated underground comics

36:20

movement that was sometimes actively

36:22

hostile to them. The issues that exist

36:25

and are explored in women's comics are

36:27

the same ones that surrounded the second

36:29

wave feminist movement at large. Women's

36:32

comics, while increasingly inclusive

36:34

as time went on, remained overwhelmingly

36:36

white for the duration of its run, and

36:38

while women of color were included in

36:40

the collections fairly often, they were more

36:42

often than not written by white artists.

36:45

In many cases, particularly early

36:47

in women's comics run, white women draw

36:50

and write black and brown characters

36:52

as other whether it be playing into

36:54

tired exotic stereotypes of

36:57

Asian and African women to set up

36:59

a narrative where white women dominate

37:01

or escape Western white patriarchy,

37:04

or by using non white women as

37:06

side characters with no purpose

37:08

but to serve as plot set up for white protagonists.

37:11

In the Western world and especially

37:13

interesting issue came in nineteen where

37:16

women's comics observed the bi centennial

37:18

of America by using women's stories

37:21

and their historical erasure to tell

37:23

the nationalistic display of this

37:25

year to fuck off. On

37:27

the cover is Betsy Ross wearing a soldier's

37:29

uniform and holding a gun, but still

37:32

being handed the fabric for the American flag

37:34

by a general. Can you have it ready by next

37:36

week? He asks? Indigenous women are

37:38

acknowledged in this issue, although as

37:40

far as I could tell, no Indigenous cartoonists

37:43

contributed. Queen Lilio Collani

37:45

and Harriett Tubman were celebrated

37:47

the Salem which trials were addressed. The

37:49

first woman to run for president was spotlighted.

37:52

The list goes on. These themed issues

37:54

became a feature of the collection.

37:57

We saw the work issue, the fashion

37:59

issue, the occult issue, the three

38:01

D issue, I Kid you Not The book

38:04

came with three D glasses and gave

38:06

me a my grain.

38:09

There was also the child Psychology issue

38:11

that explored how girls are socially

38:13

conditioned to accept a whole lot of

38:15

ship. Another standout was the Men's

38:19

issue, in which women artists

38:21

put the let's say female gazed

38:23

on issues of masculinity. Here's one

38:25

last favorite of mine from the nine

38:27

Horrible Relationships issue from

38:29

Angela Bocage. Titled New

38:32

Age, Same Old Ship. It parodies

38:34

a shock jock radio show that shows

38:36

how women have handled domestic abuse

38:38

from their partners throughout the years. It

38:40

starts with a woman from eight

38:43

with a big smile and a black eye, saying

38:45

this, it really was thoughtless

38:47

of me, even at our family

38:49

meals. I knew he wanted the plates warmed,

38:52

so when I forgot when Chuck's boss was

38:54

at dinner, well maybe

38:57

I was asking for this, but I

39:00

can't even see it, can you. I

39:02

like these new makeup formulas today

39:05

they do cover We hear similar

39:07

phrases from different women from n N.

39:11

The final woman in the strip is from and

39:14

stands with a fat lip, smiling

39:17

in front of a cooing baby in a high chair.

39:19

She says, this, Gerald a model

39:21

husband. In so many ways. You

39:23

can get really stressful around here for someone

39:26

who's used to an optimal office environment.

39:28

And if that gets to Gerald sometimes and he acts

39:31

out, well, when you consider I had a

39:33

better chance of getting killed by terrorists and getting

39:35

married much less to a guy with a job,

39:37

well, the bottom line

39:39

is I created this

39:41

reality. I

39:44

take responsibility for my

39:46

life, even forgetting battered,

39:49

and I feel damned bloody. That

39:51

terrorist statistic she's referring to is

39:53

totally bogus, and the author knows it.

39:56

She includes a parenthetical saying that quote.

39:58

This dubious statistic was actually reported

40:00

in one of the USA's bougies newsies

40:03

to scare eighties spinsters. Unquote.

40:05

That bougie newsy was Newsweek.

40:08

That dubious statistic was from

40:11

a study that claimed

40:13

that women over forty had less

40:15

than a three percent chance of getting

40:17

married. As they put it, it was more

40:19

likely a woman of that age would be killed

40:21

by a terrorist than be married. This stat

40:24

was repeated ad nauseam and had

40:26

a hold on the culture for some time, even

40:28

though it was completely fake. I remember

40:30

it most clearly appearing in Sleepless

40:33

in Seattle. To conclude the comic

40:35

strip, the host of the fake shock Jock

40:37

radio show returns and says, this, okay,

40:40

lots of you got it on the nose, so to speak.

40:43

Betty, Shadow, Shock Treat, and Cathy

40:45

all died of injuries. So remember,

40:48

get hit, get out. This

40:50

is women's comics and the underground movement

40:52

at its best edgy and shocking, but

40:54

also with a clear perspective and purpose.

40:58

I'm very glad that these collections were made

41:00

and think that their legacy is still felt

41:02

today. By over

41:05

financial struggles and internal issues,

41:07

the comics stopped publishing. So no,

41:10

Kathy guys White was far from the first

41:13

woman to work in comics in a major

41:15

way and never claimed to be. And

41:17

maybe you've heard about some of the women in this episode

41:20

before. Maybe you haven't, but it's

41:22

clear that the Jackie ORMs is of the

41:24

world. The fay Kings, the women

41:26

whose work thrived in their day in spite

41:29

of pop culture history at large letting

41:31

them fall to the wayside in favor of

41:33

their white male cohort, were important

41:36

and warrant continued discussion. The

41:38

last handful of years have brought marginalized

41:40

people erased from history back into focus,

41:42

and the comics industry should be a part of this

41:45

discussion. Basically, what I'm saying is, give

41:47

me my Jackie ORMs biopic yesterday.

41:51

In part two of this episode, will be looking

41:53

at four comic artists working at the

41:55

same time as Kathy guys White, Alison

41:57

Bechdel, Gary Trudeau, Aaron McGrew

42:00

r and Lynn Johnston artists who,

42:02

like Kathy, took some risks and

42:05

the way that the culture responded to those

42:07

risks is telling.

42:10

That's coming up Wednesday on ac

42:13

Cast. Oh Jesus passed the

42:15

Lane cuisine. Let's just eat chocolate,

42:18

dude, And before we go, I

42:20

wanted to add a maya culpa to our

42:22

last episode. I quoted a writer

42:24

named Robin Morgan, who a listener

42:27

graciously informed me is a notorious

42:30

transphobe. I was not aware. I

42:32

feel very foolish for not knowing, and

42:34

I apologize for the oversight and anyone

42:36

that it may have upset. Fuck

42:39

that at Cast is an I Heeart

42:41

radio production hosted, written, and researched

42:44

by me Jamie Loftus. The show is executive

42:46

produced by the wonderful Sophie Lichterman, edited

42:48

by the wonderful Isaac Taylor. Music

42:51

is from Zoey Blade and the slapper

42:53

of a theme comes from Brad dick

42:55

Art. Voices you heard today include

42:58

my Mommy, Joel Smith,

43:01

not my my mom, Comma

43:04

Joel Smith. Joel Smith is not my mom.

43:06

It would be cool. Also Caitlin

43:09

Toronte and Jackie Michelle Johnson

43:11

as Kathy, see you Wednesday,