0:00

Welcome back to ac cast. I am your

0:02

host, Jamie Loftus, and I've made it three

0:04

whole nights without a large two D Kathy

0:06

cartoon appearing at the foot of my bed and threatening

0:09

my one human life. We'll take the

0:11

winds where we can get them. In Part

0:13

one of this episode, we explored the women

0:15

who preceded Kathy, guyswhite in the comic

0:18

strip industry, who were frequently

0:20

erased, as well as the radicals

0:22

who worked in underground comics

0:24

that's c O, M, M, I X,

0:26

thank you very much, while Kathy was getting her

0:29

start in the far more restrictive national

0:31

funny pages. In Part two, I

0:33

want to feature four of her contemporaries,

0:36

all boomers with one exception, whose

0:38

strips had missions similar to Kathy's,

0:41

with very different approaches that

0:43

goal to document the day to

0:45

day struggles of the boomer generation.

0:48

The difference is all about

0:50

who is being put into focus

0:52

on that mission. Our first artist came

0:55

straight out of the women's comic scene, far

0:57

from the mainstream funny pages. So

1:00

let's get the theme song going right. She

1:03

burst into the world in nineteen

1:05

seventy six. She's at what she's

1:07

out on dates and she don't like politics

1:10

from Mama and herb and two with feminist

1:13

friends. She's fighting all the stands

1:15

with some chocolate and hair. Cathe

1:19

she's fighting back to stressed

1:21

with success. Let's call her some slack

1:24

oh Cathey my Cathy, fun

1:26

Cather, She's gotta

1:28

like going on. The

1:47

biggest star to come out of women's comics

1:50

was, hands down, Alison Bechtel,

1:53

who's now a MacArthur Genius Award

1:55

recipient. She's the author of books

1:57

like fun Home and Are You My Mother? Fun

2:00

Home was turned into a huge Broadway

2:02

musical also, but that ascent to

2:05

the top was a slow and challenging

2:07

one, and one that women's comics helped

2:09

lift Early in her career. She

2:11

first appeared in issues in the nineteen eighties.

2:14

Beckdel established herself as a cartoonist

2:17

through her independent comic strip Dikes

2:19

to Watch Out For, which ran in local

2:21

feminist newspaper Woman News

2:23

beginning in nineteen eighty three and

2:25

was eventually syndicated in other all weekly

2:28

papers beginning in nineteen eighty five. Most

2:30

famously, a comic of two characters

2:33

discussing the lack of women speaking to

2:35

each other in popular movies led to

2:37

the coining of the Bechdel Test, popular

2:40

media metric that requires that two women

2:42

need to speak to each other about something other

2:44

than a man for two lines of dialogue

2:46

to pass the test. Some people we've even

2:49

started podcasts about this, I've heard.

2:51

Although it is just a jumping off point for discussion,

2:53

I'm sure it's funny because the context

2:55

of that comic is two lesbian

2:58

characters frustrated that women I ever

3:00

speak to each other in movies, meaning that

3:02

lesbian audience members couldn't ship

3:04

them together. So it's also a strip about

3:06

a lack of queer representation as

3:08

well. Anyways, here's Bechdel and

3:11

an introduction for a two thousand and eight

3:13

publication of the comics entire run,

3:15

explaining why she started the strip.

3:18

Readers seemed to like it and egged me

3:20

on. But to be honest, it was so comforting

3:22

to see my queer life reflected back

3:24

at me. I would have kept drawing these dikes

3:26

to watch out for just for myself. Let

3:29

me tell you, my friends, those were benighted

3:31

times. Despite what my mother thought about

3:33

my lesbianism, being an Outdike

3:36

was not an easy row to hoe.

3:38

We had no L word, we had no lesbian

3:40

daytime TV hosts. We had no

3:43

openly lesbian daughters of the creepy vice

3:45

President. We had personal best

3:47

and we liked it. I saw my cartoons

3:49

as an antidote to the prevailing image

3:51

of lesbians as sick, humorless, and undesirable,

3:55

our model, like Olympic pent athletes,

3:57

objective fodder for the mail gays. By

4:00

drawing the everyday lives of women like me,

4:02

I hope to make lesbians more visible, not

4:04

just to ourselves but to everyone. If

4:07

people could only see us, how could they

4:09

help but love us. Dikes

4:11

To Watch Out For has an expansive cast

4:13

of characters who aged in real time

4:16

for the twenty five years that the comic ran in

4:18

a fictional city whose world reflected the

4:20

reality of the US at that time. The

4:22

comics protagonist is mo Testa,

4:25

a radical leftist lesbian who's trying

4:27

to navigate building a life for herself while

4:30

upholding her values. Her achilles heel

4:32

is a tendency to complain about

4:34

everything, and she works at a lesbian feminist

4:37

bookstore where we meet most of our other characters.

4:39

There's Clarice, an environmental lawyer,

4:42

and most college x who's in a long term

4:44

relationship and eventually marries Tony,

4:46

a CPA. They later have a kid together

4:48

as well. There's Lois, a drag king

4:50

who encourages everyone to be more accepting.

4:53

There's Ginger, the eternal grad student

4:55

Sparrow who runs a battered women's

4:57

shelter and eventually comes out as a by

5:00

sexual lesbian. There's Moe's girlfriend

5:02

Sidney, and there's Jisanna, who

5:04

owns and runs the bookstore. Not only

5:06

is this comic really good, it touches

5:08

on so many issues, issues relevant

5:11

to queer people, to women, to boomers

5:13

in general. Just like Kathy chronicled

5:15

the week to week worries of a number of

5:18

white, middle class boomer ladies, Beckdel's

5:20

work does the same for the lesbian community

5:22

over the course of decades, and while Beckdel

5:25

herself is a white lesbian, she makes

5:27

a concerted effort to show the diversity

5:29

of her community in race, gender,

5:31

sexuality, and ability.

5:34

One of the early taboo topics that newspaper

5:36

comics wouldn't have been able to touch with a

5:38

ten foot poll was the AIDS crisis,

5:40

which Beckdel has her characters talk about

5:43

frankly in the eighties and even works

5:45

to correct some of the popular myths around

5:47

the disease. Here's a strip from nineteen eighty

5:49

seven with Moe and Lois. Lois has

5:52

just had unprotected sex, Mos

5:54

as Lois, you

5:56

can't just go around betting every woman you

5:58

meet. Haven't you heard there's

6:00

an epidemic going on, ah,

6:02

Mo, relax. Lesbians are

6:04

a low risk group. I'm not going to get AIDS

6:07

from sleeping around with other women, Lois.

6:10

Being a doesn't mean you can't

6:12

get AIDS. This conversation

6:15

continues, with Mo overreacting and demanding

6:17

Lois b celibate. Lois refuses. Then

6:19

Ginger shows up and diffuses the situation

6:22

by telling Lois that of course she can

6:24

have sex, but while gay men were at higher

6:26

risk for AIDS, that didn't mean that she wasn't

6:28

obligated to practice safe sex. And

6:31

it all manages to be funny somehow. It's

6:33

great Mo and her friends experience

6:35

the world in real time. The whole

6:37

gang goes to a kiss in to protest

6:39

anti gay laws at the Real March

6:42

on Washington in nineteen eighty seven.

6:44

Clarice and Tony struggle to have their

6:46

union formally recognized four years

6:49

whether it's issues allowing Clarice to

6:51

formally adopt her son that they have through

6:53

artificial insemination, or by having

6:55

their eventual marriage recognized in states

6:58

where gay people still could not marry at

7:00

that time. Trans characters enter the

7:02

story as well. Mo is stupendously

7:05

turfy at the start of one storyline

7:08

that's short for trans exclusionary

7:10

radical feminist and they can say

7:12

it with me flock right off to hell.

7:16

In this storyline, a transwoman

7:18

new to the bookstore wants to join Moe's

7:20

book club, and mo Is hesitant

7:22

to include her. Lois educates

7:24

Mo and tells her that she's being a

7:27

bigoted asshole, and Mo changes

7:29

her perspective much later in the

7:31

comic. There is also a trans teen

7:34

coming out story from the early two thousands

7:36

in which Lois's partner's daughter navigates

7:39

gender dysphoria, coming out to her

7:41

mom, and becoming a young transactivist.

7:44

The economic trends of these years are shown

7:46

as well, when the independent bookstore that

7:48

everyone works at closes due to a big

7:50

box store coming to town. Mo's girlfriend

7:53

survives breast cancer. They attend

7:55

anti war protests for every

7:57

war that takes place between the eighties

7:59

and the late two thousands, so quite

8:01

a few. Because Bechtel's characters

8:03

had all kinds of different opinions on politics

8:06

and pop culture, Dikes to Watch out For was

8:08

able to challenge schisms within

8:11

the queer community, within political

8:13

parties, within friend groups. Here's

8:15

a conversation between Ginger and Lois from

8:17

nineteen ninety three about their frustration

8:19

with white gay men being quicker to be

8:21

embraced by pop culture than queer

8:23

women. Ginger says, news

8:26

flash. A recent sex survey

8:28

of twenty somethings revealed that among men

8:30

who fantasize about celebrities, Cindy

8:32

Crawford and Demi Moore rank high.

8:35

Women opt for Luke Perry and President

8:37

Clinton, while gay men tapped Markie

8:39

Mark and Tom Cruise period

8:41

end of paragraph. Do you think that

8:44

means lesbians don't fantasize about celebrities

8:46

or they don't answer surveys? How

8:48

come men get to be totally queer but women don't.

8:51

I'm sick of being portrayed as some straight slob's

8:53

porno fantasy and on paper,

8:56

Kathy and dikes to watch out For sound

8:58

and are extreme different, but at

9:00

their core their goal is pretty similar.

9:03

It's for their authors to pull from their own

9:05

lives as boomer women to comment

9:07

on the world around them, on the changing

9:09

politics and standards of the US at

9:12

the end of the twentieth century. It's their

9:14

perspectives and where they published that

9:16

are different. While Alice and Bechdel, an

9:19

outspoken queer, feminist and leftist,

9:21

could talk about almost anything she wanted

9:23

and addressed topics that were still a taboo

9:25

in the mainstream, the tradeoff was

9:27

that less people would see it, and she would

9:29

make a fraction of the money her funny

9:32

paid colleagues dead. Kathy was always

9:34

beholden to the editors of the United

9:36

Press Syndicate and the individual

9:38

papers that carried her work. The trade

9:40

off for her more money and more

9:43

eyeballs. But good luck if you happen

9:45

to want to vote for Michael Ducaucus. The

9:47

mainstream papers were not ready for Alice

9:49

and Bechdel, and certainly not for the women of

9:51

women's comics, but they hold a very important

9:54

place in women's comic art, and

9:56

in the case of Bechdel and Trina Robbins,

9:58

are finally getting their inside

10:01

note. Even Alison Bechdeal

10:03

made a jab at Kathy and a strip of

10:05

hers Mo's ex Harriet is

10:07

like reading a newspaper in the Sunday Funnies

10:09

with a Kathy comic and the four panels

10:11

Beckdal puts in our Kathy saying diet

10:14

by over read ak yeah,

10:17

yeah, take a number. That

10:20

is so insulting. I am so sorry

10:22

she did that. Kathy. Alison Beckdale

10:24

has spoken about the power of telling

10:27

one's own story and her similarities

10:29

to her protagonist Mo and a talk

10:31

in twenty fifteen. I didn't

10:33

see images anywhere of women who looked like me

10:36

and my friends, so I decided I would just make

10:38

them myself. Another thing I

10:40

really liked about working with words and pictures

10:42

together was the fact that cartoons were lowbrow.

10:45

They were accessible and populist, and

10:47

they didn't get scrutinized the way that fine

10:49

art or literary writing or

10:51

criticized in the same way. I was very

10:53

insecure as a young person after all

10:55

those rejection letters. I always liked

10:58

being an outsider as a lesbian. It

11:00

gave me a certain objectivity about

11:02

how the world worked that I would lose if

11:04

I were on the inside and benefiting

11:07

tremendously from the system.

11:10

But I also, of course yearned

11:12

on some deep level to just the normal,

11:15

to just have everything. That'd be such a big deal for

11:18

my queerness to be seen as normal. Indics

11:21

to watch out for. Alison Bechdel and Mo aren't

11:24

the same person, but Moe is a tool for Bechdel

11:26

to say what she thought. Same guest for

11:28

Kathy. Guys white and Kathy, I want

11:30

them to hang out. I'd

11:33

consider it. Okay, Relax

11:50

now, I want to take a look at some of Kathy's

11:52

contemporaries from inside the Funny Pages.

11:55

All from the Universal Press indicate Gary

11:58

Trudeau of Douansbury, Lynn

12:00

Johnston of For Better or for Worse, and

12:03

Aaron McGruder of The Boondocks.

12:05

All three of these writers made strides

12:07

in the Funny Pages, and as you know by

12:09

now, it's not really an easy medium

12:11

to take strides in. We're talking mostly

12:13

about strips that pushed against the norm in

12:15

this series, but it's important to remember what

12:18

that norm was. It's indisputable

12:20

that for the majority of American comic

12:22

strip history there have been more strips

12:25

about household pets by white

12:27

guys. However, beloved Garfield

12:29

stand here, than there were marginalized

12:32

people working in the Funny Pages. Well,

12:34

into the nineteen eighties. Even when comic

12:36

strips were not actively hostile to women,

12:39

queer people, and non white people, they

12:41

were disproportionately centered around

12:43

white boys and men or traditional

12:45

family values. Family Circus

12:48

is a comic that I'm pretty sure is completely

12:50

built around white children misunderstanding

12:53

various words. Andy Kapp was a

12:55

character famous for beating

12:57

his wife. Dilbert had some commentary

13:00

on nineteen nineties office culture while also

13:03

serving as a proto in cell

13:05

Beetle Bailey was war propaganda with

13:07

gags. Oh, and there was The Farside, which

13:09

still fucking rocks. But most beloved

13:11

strips like Peanuts and Calvin and

13:13

Hobbes are classic childhood tales

13:15

with larger casts, but centered on

13:17

the childhood experiences of white

13:20

boys in the middle class, which, to

13:22

be fair, is how Gary Trudeau's

13:24

Dunesbury starts. Dunesbury

13:27

is the rare comic strip that has

13:29

been pretty intellectualized since

13:31

it debuted back in nineteen seventy.

13:33

Creator Gary Trudeau is the son of

13:35

a legacy family of doctors from

13:38

Saranac Lake, New York. Went to a private

13:40

New Hampshire High School and then Yale,

13:43

where he started writing a comic strip called

13:45

bull Tails, which was an early version

13:47

of Doonesbury. While Doonesbury would

13:49

later become synonymous with political commentary

13:52

and satire, it started and

13:54

in many ways remained semi

13:57

autobiographical and pulled from

13:59

the life experiences of the people Trudeau

14:02

was surrounded by. Here's what he said to PBS

14:04

News Hour in twenty ten about the beginnings

14:06

of Dunesbury. Well, I think what it

14:09

began as a

14:12

kind of diary of my generation

14:14

coming of age became

14:18

the main driving force behind it. It's

14:20

just inherently fun watching a generation

14:23

evolved, to see to see what it's meant. That's

14:25

what you've always thought about it. I'm going to watch

14:27

my generation evolved, I think. So. I don't

14:29

think it was I had quite

14:31

such a grandiose take on it. I was just trying

14:33

to get through the day and create a series of jokes

14:35

and meet a series of deadlines. But

14:38

I think looking back on it, that's that's that's

14:40

pretty much what it became. It was certainly

14:42

marketed that way. What's

14:45

that do you say? Another comic

14:47

strip that was a chronicle of boomer life

14:49

over the course of decades. In

14:51

nineteen seventy, at age twenty two,

14:53

the Universal Press indicates signed Trudeaux

14:55

On had him change the name of the comic

14:58

from bull Tails to Dunesbury, and

15:00

it was off to the races. Dunesbury began

15:02

with a relatively small casp that

15:04

would expand rapidly in the fifty

15:07

years that followed, and much like Alice

15:09

and Bechdel's characters in Dice to

15:11

watch out for, Trudeau's characters aged

15:13

in real time and some of them even

15:16

die. Even as someone who would rather cut

15:18

my own head off than hand it an

15:20

ivy league educated white guy from a rich

15:22

family, I do have to

15:24

hand it to Gary Trudeau. Dunesbury

15:27

is maybe the riskiest, boldest work

15:29

in the funny pages in the twentieth

15:31

century. It's pretty punk and you don't

15:33

need to just take my word for it. Aaron Recruiter,

15:36

creator of The Boondocks, who we'll be talking

15:38

about in a bit, has regularly credited

15:40

Trudeau as his biggest influence. Its

15:42

beginnings are pretty innocuous. We meet

15:45

Mike Dunesbury, a hippie womanizer

15:47

of a college student, b d the quarterback,

15:50

Mark Slackmeyer, the radical, and

15:52

Zonker, the stoner student who joins

15:55

the football team and pisses bad off

15:57

endlessly, so kind of another strip

15:59

for the boy, it seemed like at first, but

16:01

the comic made political commentary right

16:03

away. Many of the students at

16:06

Trudeau's fictional Walden College

16:08

were firmly anti Vietnam Smoked

16:10

Weed, and Trudeau commented on

16:13

his strong anti war feelings and

16:15

criticism of protest and activism

16:17

through his different characters. As the comic

16:19

continued, the cast widened and became

16:21

more inclusive to better comment on the

16:23

movements that were on fire in the seventies.

16:26

Commentary on Black American activism

16:28

told through the law student turned congressional

16:31

candidate Jinny, Feminist activism

16:33

through Jinny and her eventual roommate

16:35

Joanie, who left her husband and children

16:38

when Mike and Mark drove past on their motorcycle

16:40

and offered to let her live on their commune.

16:43

Joanie's one of my favorite characters, and she's

16:45

featured heavily in the Dunesbury special

16:48

from nineteen seventy seven, where we see

16:50

her working to make ends meet at a day

16:52

care center with a bunch of young girls

16:54

who were reacting to the second wave feminist

16:56

movement and feeding them

16:59

and picking a back of them mostping

17:02

to fight. Yes, but

17:05

I'm getting paid for it? How much

17:10

not? In Nut Honey, the

17:12

strip touches on boomer women who were

17:14

raised to be housewives discovering

17:16

their personal power through the character

17:18

Boopsie b D's quote unquote

17:21

cheerleader bimbo girlfriend who goes

17:23

on to build a successful career as an

17:25

actress and remains very happy

17:27

in her marriage. B D enlists

17:29

in Vietnam thinking he was being patriotic

17:32

in his early twenties, only to befriend

17:34

a member of the Vietcong and questioned

17:36

the war himself. Andy Lippencott

17:39

was an early out gay character in the comic

17:41

from Og character Mark later

17:43

in the strip. In its heyday, Doonesbury

17:46

caused a lot of controversy, either

17:48

for its political commentary or by representing

17:51

people who were simply not accepted by

17:53

the media of the day. In the newspaper

17:55

Funnies a shortlist of Doonesbury

17:57

controversies, Let's get the Music started.

18:00

The Washington Post ran an editorial criticizing

18:02

Doonesbury character Mark for calling Nixon

18:05

guilty, guilty, guilty during

18:08

Watergate. Trudeau got in trouble for

18:10

implying that two forty year olds

18:12

were having premarital sex. In

18:14

nineteen seventy six, he got busted

18:17

for criticizing tobacco companies

18:19

for refusing to acknowledge the link between

18:21

cancer and cigarettes. John McCain

18:24

once said on the floor of the Senate in nineteen

18:26

ninety five, suffice it to say that I

18:28

hold Trudeau in utter contempt.

18:30

When Doonesbury criticized Bob Dole,

18:33

Hunter s Thompson, Santa Gary,

18:35

Trudeau a bag full of his own

18:38

shit and a classic. He got

18:40

in trouble for saying son of a bitch. So

18:42

yeah, it was a lot, and there were a few misfires

18:45

thematically from Doonesbury, but for

18:47

the most part, the strip does a great job

18:49

at pissing off government conservatives.

18:51

So a victim was crime. So

18:53

yes, Trudeau had dealt with his comic

18:56

being moved from the funnies to the op ed

18:58

page of newspapers repeat seatedly

19:00

over his fifty year tenure, usually

19:02

when his subject matter went against the political

19:05

leanings of the paper it was being printed

19:07

in, or upset readers. But you

19:09

don't have to cry for him. Trudeau is maybe

19:11

one of the most decorated comic strip

19:14

artists of all time. In fact,

19:16

he became the first strip cartoonist to

19:18

win the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial

19:20

Cartooning for his Watergate series,

19:22

and was a Pulitzer finalist again in

19:24

nineteen ninety, two thousand four, and two

19:27

thousand and five. That nineteen seventy seven

19:29

Doonesbury special I played a clip of that

19:31

was nominated for an Academy Award in nineteen

19:34

seventy eight. So for all the risks

19:36

that Trudeau took, a lot of them paid

19:38

off, and the strip is still well regarded today.

19:41

Doonesbury was so much the

19:43

intellectual's comic strip that Kathy

19:45

Geiswite references it in a strip from the late

19:47

seventies of Kathy. Kathy

19:50

is talking to Andrea and the strip and says,

19:52

this man happens to be very bright. He

19:54

says he reads Doonesbury every day. Andrea

19:57

shrugs and says, big deal. Millions

19:59

of people read Sberry every day. Kathy

20:01

melts, She's like in full crush mode, and she

20:03

says, yeah, but he understands

20:06

it every day. So this was

20:08

like smart people content,

20:10

and I could talk about Dudesbury for much longer.

20:13

How Trudeau taking a hiatus

20:15

in eighty three and eighty four and returning

20:17

with his characters aged up as

20:19

boomers who would shed their activists past

20:21

and become sellout adults. Was completely

20:24

inspired or how I can't stand the

20:26

illustration style, or how early

20:28

the strip was to denouncing Trump,

20:31

or Janie's radical career, or

20:33

Mike Doonesbury's turn as a single father,

20:36

or the comics pivoting to the millennial

20:38

children of the original characters over

20:40

time. But what Doonesbury does stand

20:42

for is proof that the Funny Pages

20:45

could say a lot in the seventies. As

20:47

a white Ivy League guy, Trudeau

20:49

had less to lose than many of his counterparts,

20:52

He took a lot of risks, He moved

20:54

the medium forward in many ways, and

20:57

he was rewarded handsomely for it. By

20:59

ninety nine there had been a

21:01

lot of boundaries pushed in comics.

21:04

Doonesbury made political commentary

21:06

in The Funny Pages Pulitzer worthy

21:08

and inspired many impostors and women

21:11

cartoonists like Kathy and Lynn Johnston

21:13

had found a foothold in the industry

21:15

and the money to back it up. But the Funnies

21:17

were and always had been extremely

21:20

white and center liberal, too conservative

21:22

in their politics. Enter the

21:24

Boondocks by Aaron McGruder, a

21:26

comic about black socialist nine year old

21:29

Huey Freeman and his brother, the gangster

21:31

rap obsessed Riley, moving to a predominantly

21:33

white neighborhood in Maryland with their granddad.

21:36

Other characters regular in the strip are

21:38

Jasmine, a naive by racial child

21:40

of lawyers, one black and one white, who

21:43

believe in the democratic establishment and

21:45

are constantly at odds with Huey,

21:47

and Michael Caesar, who is Huey's best

21:49

friend, also a black socialist, but

21:51

has a brighter outlook on the future of the

21:54

world. And if you haven't read The Boondocks, which

21:56

ran in papers with the Universal Press

21:58

indicate from nineteen ninety nine two thousand

22:00

and six, just turn off the podcast and go read

22:02

some or the animated series, which is also

22:05

great, is streaming on HBO Max.

22:07

This is a clip from the pilot of that show, which

22:09

is also pulled from the comics. Excuse

22:16

me, everyone, I have a brief announcement

22:18

to make Jesus

22:20

was black, Ronald Reagan was the

22:22

devil, and the government is lying about

22:25

ninety eleven. Thank you for

22:27

your time, and good night dad.

22:35

That's the tone of the Boondocks, black radicalism

22:38

is in its DNA, and as much

22:40

as his readers loved it, old guard comic

22:42

publishers were afraid of it.

22:44

Aaron mcgruder's journey into the newspaper

22:47

was distinctly gen x. He

22:49

began publishing it online at

22:52

hitlist dot com in nineteen ninety

22:54

six, and it was extremely popular.

22:56

But when the still college student wanted

22:58

to take it nationally, he was met with a

23:00

ton of resistance from the traditional

23:03

comic syndicates. This is from a Washington

23:05

Post piece on the topic by Lena

23:07

O'Neill Parker in nineteen ninety seven,

23:10

almost two years before the Universal

23:12

Press Indicate finally gave it the

23:14

green light. Now he wants

23:16

to take it national, but things are a little too edgy

23:19

in the Boondocks to suit the cartoon syndicators.

23:21

McGruder has submitted The Boondocks to

23:23

seven of the nine major comic strip syndicates

23:26

and has gotten some praise and encouragement

23:28

in return, but six, including the

23:30

Washington Post Writers Group, have turned

23:32

him down so far. Too angry, too

23:35

college oriented, one syndicator said,

23:37

too confrontational, said another. Amy

23:40

Lago, executive editor for Comic

23:42

Art at United Media says it's a conservative

23:44

market. There are complaints among edgier

23:46

readers or cartoonists who would like to

23:48

do edgier material that everything on the

23:51

newspaper comic page is milktoast.

23:53

It becomes very difficult for newspapers

23:55

to take chances anymore. Lago says

23:57

there's too much chance that enough readers will

23:59

come playing about the subject matter of the strip

24:02

and they'll threaten to cancel their subscription.

24:04

The real criticism McGruder believes

24:07

is that his strip is too black, and

24:10

it doesn't seem like McGruder was wrong. All

24:12

of the syndicates who rejected the Boondocks

24:15

told him not to change a thing. It's

24:17

just that the world wasn't ready

24:19

for it, as if these people had no control

24:22

over whether they could syndicate the strip or not. In

24:24

nineteen ninety seven, there were only four

24:26

nationally syndicated black cartoonists,

24:28

and those numbers have not improved that

24:30

much over time. After

24:46

years of this rejection and patronizing

24:49

responses from the white higher ups who refused

24:51

to carry a black socialist cartoon in

24:54

spite of its huge audience, the

24:56

Universal Press syndicate Home of Dunsberry

24:58

and Kathy, Finally we picked it up.

25:01

Unlike Gary Trudeau, Aery mcgruder's

25:03

journey to being a comic strip star was

25:05

met with constant barriers to entry,

25:08

in spite of the fact that their missions to

25:10

talk about issues that affected them in

25:12

an explicit and political way weren't

25:14

dissimilar at all. But the Boondocks

25:16

took off in the papers, immediately criticizing

25:19

the then massive culture of gangster

25:21

rapp through Riley's character, the hollow

25:24

nationalism and warmongering the

25:26

came after nine to eleven, the entire

25:28

concept of working within the system

25:30

and the different ways that Huey, Riley

25:33

and their granddad navigated a world

25:35

of racist, micro and macro

25:37

aggressions at school, in their neighborhood,

25:40

and in the media they consumed, and McGruder

25:42

had a lot of controversies as well. Let's cue

25:44

the music again. Newspapers pulled

25:46

a strip of Huey calling a tipline to

25:48

report Ronald Reagan for funding terrorism

25:51

after nine to eleven. The strip was also pulled

25:53

for a calling Condoleeza Rice a quote

25:55

female Darth Vader type that seeks

25:58

a loving mate to torture. Unquote. Strips

26:00

got pulled or moved to the op ed section when

26:02

Huey criticized black Conservative

26:05

commentator Larry Elder Beet

26:07

got mad when the Boondogs made fun of their

26:09

repeated failures to connect with black audiences,

26:12

and one of my favorites. There was a lot of criticism

26:14

of mcgruder's ribbon and flaggy

26:17

propaganda comics made after nine

26:19

eleven to mock strips that were

26:21

going whole uncritical nationalists

26:24

instead of examining the war that

26:26

George W. Bush was starting for no

26:29

reason. Okay, we can stop the music.

26:31

And again, there were some misfires within

26:33

the strip. For example, the way that the strip

26:35

treated Whitney Houston through her addiction

26:38

was very cruel. But mcgruder's controversies

26:40

generally mirror Trudeau's in

26:42

that they intentionally pissed the establishment

26:45

publishing his work all the way off.

26:47

But he didn't get the Pulitzers or establishment

26:50

recognition that Trudeau had, and

26:52

given how much racism he'd been subjected

26:54

to in the pursuit of getting published

26:57

nationally in the first place, it is easy

26:59

to guess why that may be. What the establishment

27:01

couldn't take were the sheer number of people

27:03

who loved the comic and Huey Freeman,

27:06

and much of this has to do with its successful

27:08

marketing crossover into an animated

27:10

series on Adult Swim that ran from

27:12

two thousand and six to twenty fourteen, with

27:14

mcgruder's close involvement, including

27:17

a role as head writer. That was a

27:19

major component of mcgruder's choice to

27:21

not return to the strip in two thousand and six,

27:23

in spite of the universal press indicate

27:25

begging him to return. Here he is

27:27

in nineteen ninety nine, as the comic was becoming

27:30

a cultural phenomenon. On Charlie

27:32

Rose, Sorry, and he's speaking about

27:34

the challenges of working in the medium.

27:37

That's a tough question. I mean some people said, well, did

27:39

you get were you just picked up because it was a black

27:42

strip? And is that why it's I'm just positive

27:44

that's all these other things first, right, No, I

27:46

mean, but does it breakthrough because of that? But you

27:48

know, I mean, let's we had you know, this is

27:51

a it is certainly a black strip. You know, there

27:53

is nothing in comics history to indicate that

27:56

it is at all benefit to be a black cartoonist

27:58

or to do a black strip. Those cartoonists

28:00

that I mentioned again, Rob Armstrong

28:03

is the biggest and distribution.

28:05

He's in over three hundred papers, and he's been doing it for over

28:07

ten years. And you want to compare that to the

28:10

Peanuts or Calvin Howes, which each

28:12

which are each in two thousand, two

28:15

hundred papers. So there has

28:17

been no hugely successful

28:19

black strip in the over one hundred year history of

28:21

the medium. So in that

28:23

sense, it would the argument would be, you

28:26

know, no, it's probably successful in spite of it

28:28

being a black strip. The

28:30

Boondocks is a classic, and

28:33

black cartoonists, non white cartoonists

28:35

in general, are routinely passed over

28:37

for wide syndication awards and recognition

28:40

to this day. Again, for every time

28:42

that a comic syndicate has taken what they

28:44

consider to be a risk, they take ten

28:47

boring comics by white guys about household

28:50

pets or literally nothing. Finally,

28:53

I want to discuss the comic that was most

28:55

directly influenced and was originally

28:57

picked up off of Cathy's success,

29:00

Lynn Johnston's For Better or for Worse,

29:02

launched in nineteen seventy nine in the

29:05

Universal Press Syndicate, partially

29:07

off the strength of Kathy's success

29:09

in that same syndicate, starting in nineteen

29:11

seventy six. Johnson was a trained

29:13

Canadian artist that had worked in animation

29:16

and as a medical artist, and got

29:18

her start in strips while she was pregnant

29:20

and drew single panel cartoon for

29:22

her obstetrician's office. This collection

29:25

later got published as a book called David

29:27

We're Pregnant in nineteen seventy three, leading

29:30

to a contract with the Universal Press Indicate

29:32

that was for twenty years.

29:35

That is some scientology shit. An early

29:37

friend and mentor to Johnston was

29:39

Charles Schultz of Peanuts. He was

29:41

also an early advocate for Kathy Guyswighte

29:44

and was known to mentor younger comic

29:46

creators and provide support for people

29:48

who were relatively new to the medium.

29:50

Upon accepting her twenty year

29:52

contract, one of the first people

29:54

who called Lynn Johnston was wait

29:57

for it, it was Kathy.

30:00

Kathy called her. Here's Lynn Johnston talking

30:02

about that in twenty nineteen to interviewer

30:04

Bob Andelman, I

30:07

mean, what a great group of people, and

30:10

we all got to know each other quite well.

30:13

In fact, Kathy was the first

30:15

person I talked to. Lee gave me her home phone

30:17

number, and she was gracious enough

30:19

to have a nice long conversation and sort of

30:21

tell me how she worked the way she

30:24

managed. I mean, coming up with ideas

30:26

is the one thing we all ask each other about. I

30:28

mean, how do you do it? Where do you do it? Sparky

30:31

Schultz used to sit and doodle on yellow

30:33

legal pads, but I like to sit on a

30:35

couch with a coffee and a pad on my lap.

30:38

And Kathy said the thing

30:40

that helped her the most was to write vignettes

30:42

as if she was writing for a play,

30:45

like a short, a short, four panel

30:47

play. And I found that work the best

30:49

for me. And you want

30:51

to just make clear what Kathy we're talking about.

30:54

Yeah, the guys who has done

30:57

called Kathy for many, many, many years

30:59

and also suggested I not call

31:01

the strip the Johnston's because she said,

31:04

I have really wondered

31:06

if it was a good idea to call the strip Kathy

31:08

because she was so closely connected

31:10

to it. And really, I mean, even

31:12

if the characters look like you or your family's

31:15

all, it's all pretty well made up. I

31:18

love it. I love Kathy. Okay, for better

31:20

or for worse follows. The Patterson family

31:23

primarily stressed out matriarch

31:25

Ellie Patterson who is the wife to

31:27

Sweetie Pie, dentist John and mother

31:29

to Michael, Elizabeth, and eventually April

31:32

Patterson. In nineteen ninety one, Lynn

31:34

Johnston takes a pretty different tack

31:36

to Kathy guys White when exploring the anxieties

31:39

of boomer women, though many of those

31:41

anxieties are the same. For

31:43

Better or for Worse was much more mellow and

31:45

realistic in tone than Kathy's more

31:47

manic achisms. Ellie Patterson

31:50

goes through periods of feeling bad about her

31:52

body, often postpartum. There's a

31:54

strip from the eighties that shows three silent

31:56

panels of Ellie trying to put on her pre

31:58

pregnancy pants, looking at herself in

32:00

the mirror, looking at herself in a bathing

32:02

suit, and in the final strip, her well meaning

32:05

husband looks at a vacation brochure and says,

32:07

yes, sir, if there's one thing I'm looking forward to

32:09

when this cruise were taken, it's the bood.

32:12

Ellie looks at him blankly, knowing that he

32:14

doesn't get it. I've read quite a bit of

32:16

For Better for Worse and I like it. Ellie

32:18

Patterson is more or less the woman

32:20

that Kathy was told she needed to

32:22

be. She's a supermom, a loving wife

32:24

and daughter who is trying to have a career

32:27

on top of it all, and this seems pretty

32:29

firmly rooted in Johnston's own experiences

32:32

as a wife, mother, and career woman.

32:34

But Ellie's career is very start and stop,

32:37

depending on the state of her family. At

32:39

the beginning of the strip, she works as a dental

32:41

assistant in her husband's office, then

32:43

gets a job at a library, loses

32:45

that job, starts a part time job at a bookstore,

32:48

and her husband eventually buys the bookstore

32:50

for her to run. Things end well for her,

32:53

but unlike Kathy, Ellie

32:55

is a family before career woman,

32:57

not too uncommon for the funny pages, but

33:00

again it's Lynn Johnston's

33:02

lived experience that gives the strip

33:04

dimension. Ellie is constantly

33:06

second guessing her life choices in spite

33:08

of being generally pretty happy. Is

33:11

she not being a good enough modern woman?

33:13

Is wanting more for herself? Inherently

33:16

selfish, She's by no means a

33:18

passive, happy housewife. She's

33:20

constantly trying and often failing,

33:22

to find a better balance in her life. Here's

33:24

a strip from the early nineties to that effect.

33:27

Ellie is returning to work after having

33:29

her third child and thinks to herself

33:31

the following, I haven't

33:34

reviewed a book for weeks.

33:37

I wonder how my typing is. I wonder

33:39

if the girl who's replaced me as doing

33:41

a good job. Is she doing better?

33:44

Do they miss me? I feel lost at

33:46

work. I had my identity, I had a title

33:49

that meant something. Her daughter,

33:51

Elizabeth walks up to her desk, says, hi,

33:53

mom, and hugs her. Ellie thinks this

33:56

to herself in the final panel, and

33:58

again, maybe I still do. And

34:01

Lynn Johnston did more than just the

34:03

comic strips. She also served as

34:05

the president of the National Cartoonist

34:08

Society in the nineties. You know that

34:10

organization that refused to admit women

34:12

at all until nineteen fifty one. And

34:14

you won't believe this, but she wasn't

34:17

always treated with respect there. Here's how

34:19

she describes her experience with the old Guard

34:21

of Cartoonists in that twenty nineteen

34:23

interview. Well, at one point

34:25

I was actually president in National Cartoonists

34:28

Society, and they would

34:30

draw naked pictures of me as I'm trying to conduct

34:32

a meeting, right, But I drew a few naked

34:34

pictures of my own and got back

34:37

at them. But you know, it was hard. They kind

34:39

of preferred that I would make them coffee

34:41

and serve them tea and

34:44

not really run the meeting. In the long run,

34:46

sorry, in the long run, when it comes right

34:48

down to it, we really like each other,

34:50

We really care for each other, and I know that they

34:52

like me. So it's water

34:55

under the bridge. But at the time, if you're trying to conduct

34:57

a meeting, put that pencil down. Johnston

35:01

went on to become the first woman and

35:03

Canadian to ever win the Reuben Award

35:05

in nineteen eighty five, a full thirty

35:08

nine years after it started to be given

35:10

out. The second woman to win that award was

35:12

Kathy Geiswhite in nineteen ninety two. Johnston

35:15

was also a finalist to win a Pulitzer

35:18

Prize for a coming out story that ran in

35:20

the comic strip in the early nineties at

35:22

the height of the AIDS epidemic, when no other

35:24

artists in the Funnies besides maybe Gary

35:26

Trudell would touch it. She's spoken out over

35:28

the years on being a survivor of

35:31

child abuse, domestic abuse, and

35:33

feeling unprepared to have a child for the first

35:35

time. For Better for Worse was a well

35:37

loved, quietly subversive comic

35:39

with a well loved, quietly subversive

35:42

creator, and the work still holds

35:44

up. Two conclude

35:46

where Kathy falls in boundary push

35:48

and comics very much depends on

35:51

what lens you're using. On the pages

35:53

of the Funnies, she represented the beginning

35:55

of a resurgence of women in nationally

35:57

syndicated strips talking about their own

36:00

experiences, a surge that hadn't

36:02

been seen for around fifty years.

36:04

If you use women's comics as a yardstick,

36:06

it's a reminder that Kathy was far

36:09

from one of the radical voices that shaped

36:11

the underground movement. Again, the

36:13

role to Kathy character serves was as

36:15

an observer of how things were for women

36:18

like her at the time, not an attempt

36:20

to shift the norm. Okay, Kathy, you can

36:22

come out now. You didn't talk about Dalebird?

36:25

No, I didn't. I decided to love myself again?

36:27

Or Ziggy? Is he cool? We fucked?

36:30

Don't talk much anymore, Kathy. You really

36:32

do fuck, don't you? I really do, I

36:35

really really do. Okay,

36:38

we'll be talking more about the comics and

36:40

comic artists who came after Kathy

36:42

in a future episode, and the explosion

36:44

in new voices that came to the forefront when

36:47

zines and the Internet became the norm,

36:49

and how the Funnies lagged so far

36:51

behind that they've arguably become

36:53

kind of irrelevant in their time and

36:56

the format where they appeared. Kathy

36:58

and for Better or for Worse found their strength

37:01

in showing women who were not particularly

37:03

subverting expectations, but we're doing

37:05

their best in a world where they were never

37:08

supposed to have at all. But for all the airtime

37:10

Boomers were given in the newspapers, they

37:13

went on to become one of the country's

37:15

most despised generations

37:18

of all time, by me specifically,

37:20

but by others too. And that's what we're talking

37:22

about next episode, Kathy and

37:24

the boomer generation's journey from young

37:26

radicals to Reagan era yuppies

37:29

to a generation that even now can't

37:31

let go of power. We'll talk about the generation

37:33

at large and to a series of boomer

37:36

women your Mommy's about

37:38

their journey in the workplace, and of course

37:40

we'll talk to our girl, Kathy. That's

37:42

in two weeks on ac

37:45

Cast. Ac Cast is an iHeartRadio

37:47

production hosted, written and researched

37:50

by me Jamie Loftus. The show is

37:52

executive produced by the wonderful Sophie Lichtermann,

37:54

edited by the wonderful Isaac Taylor. Music

37:57

is by Zoe Blade and our theme

38:00

from Brad Dickert. Voices you heard

38:02

today include my Mother. Also

38:05

includes Joel Smith, Caitlin Durante,

38:08

and Jackie Michelle Johnson as Kathy.

38:11

This has been the first half of Act cast. We

38:13

are taking next week off for you to

38:15

just soak it in, and we'll

38:17

be back with the remainder of the show a

38:19

week from Monday. Bye.