So What Does A Gal Have to Do To Get Into Comics?

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Editor’s Note: This first appeared as a comment on Heidi MacDonald’s recent post “So What Does a Gal Have To Do to Get Into the Comics Journal Anyway?” Annie edited her comment slightly before reprinting it here.
 
I grew up idealizing male cartoonists: Berkeley Breathed, Herge, Schulz, Jim Davis, Gary Larson, Maurice Sendak, and unbeknownst to me at the time, Art Spiegelman (for his work on the garbage pail kids). I had literally no idea I could even be a cartoonist until I got older–I had unconsciously relegated the vocation to the exclusive world of men. Until I rifled through my first roommate’s collection and had my mind blown open by Phoebe Gloeckner, Debbie Drechsler, Julie Doucet, Lynda Barry, and Love and Rockets (I was still too scared of myself to pick up a copy of Dykes to Watch Out For> and plus I was a punk, so I got my lesbian comics fix with L&R at the time).

summer1011I remember when Dylan (Williams) told me Debbie Drechsler’s Summer of Love was the most important graphic novel in his life, his favorite book. i think he is the only man I have even heard bring her merits up in a conversation. For the comics class we were teaching, he suggested we assign the interview with Drechsler in TCJ # 249. But when I read it I was appalled at Groth’s insensitivity, disrespect and dismissal. Like, it was reaaally bad. And guess who stopped drawing comics altogether (shortly after creating the #1 book in Dylan’s library)?

I have not been able to stomach Groth’s interview with Gloeckner in the comics journal long enough to finish it (haven’t seen any new comics from her for awhile, though I am anticipating her newest project, a book that takes a close look at the femicides in Juarez. Wonder how that one’s going to go over with critics?)
By the time the interview with Alison Bechdel came out in #287, someone had the sense to ask a woman to interview her–but then added an addendum from some dude at the end who felt that the woman interviewer had not been thorough enough (I thought the interview was brilliant) and proceeded to ask Alison a bunch of asshat questions including something about masturbation to which she replied “did you ask Crumb these questions?” Reading this addendum turned my thrill at reading the article a little sour.

So I’m saying, all this relates to the environment of comics at large, the confidence of women artists, and the inclusion of people besides just straight white men. Groth’s comment about what is ‘good’ or not is the rule, not the exception. I cannot tell you how many women, queers, people of color have told me that they used to draw but stopped completely after someone told them their drawing was not ‘good’, because it did not look like what the straight white men were drawing. I’ve heard this from dozens and dozens and dozens.

My experience teaching in the IPRC comics and certificate program in Portland illustrates this point. Pre-program, we had a meeting to decide how to divide up the accepted applicants between the two teams of teachers (two different classes). When I entered the room, I saw that the director had already divided the applications up into two groups: ‘good art’, students whose work was perceived as ‘more advanced’ were on one side of the table (assigned to the teacher he considered the ‘expert’–a man) while on the other side were the beginners, the ‘unclassifiable’ applications, and the artists that he considered ‘less advanced’–assigning them to the ‘fun’ team of teachers (one of which was a woman). As I circled the table and read the applications, a rock grew in my stomach. “Did you notice that nearly all the artists you consider ‘good’ and ‘advanced’ are men, and the artists you consider ‘less good’ and ‘less advanced’ are all women?” Radio silence. I was the only female in the room. It took several minutes before the other men reading the applications could assess the situation and reiterate my observation to the director who eventually acknowledged (albeit through a different, male teacher) that my critique was valid. The gender imbalance being obvious, at first glance, only to me.

Is it any wonder that The Comics Journal gets so many proposals from women on the subject of comics education? It’s one of the only spheres in which we are granted authority, at best. Of course women want to have a say in what gets taught and how in all of the new schools.

The irony of a company whose name and image were built on the foundations of feminist artwork/stories, drawn by two people of color, whose most loved and reknowned characters are two Latina queers and a badass lady who carries a hammer around for protection and rage, is not lost on me.

32 thoughts on “So What Does A Gal Have to Do To Get Into Comics?”

  1. I loved Dreschler and Doucet. Dreschler stopped doing comics because of an interview with Groth? I don’t remember that interview being so awful, but I don’t remember it at all. I thought he was a fan of hers.

    And looking around at web for some evidence of this controversy, I found this interview from 2008 (at the time of a re-release of Daddy’s Girl), which doesn’t support some animus between them (or the notion that Groth led to her quitting comics):

    Tim O’Shea: Again, in the back of the book, you thank a number of people for making the book possible, and in particular, editor Gary Groth, for keeping you laughing as you put the book together. How important was it for you to be able to laugh when dealing with such a subject and such a process?

    Drechsler: Really, the laughter happened after all the stories were written, and helped more with what I find to be the boring process of revisiting work I’ve already done. Gary was great at keeping me going when I just wanted to go and work on something NEW instead of reworking something already done.

  2. I didn’t get Annie as saying Dreschler quit because of the interview. More painful juxtaposition than cause and effect, was what I took her as saying.

  3. Why should we guess who stopped drawing comics after the mention of that interview, then? Surely the interview had to provide some clue as to that inference, otherwise the juxtaposition makes little sense. Whether the Groth interview was the sole cause or one cause among many, her words are saying it was a cause (maybe that’s not Annie’s intention, though).

  6. In undergraduate school, I had an art teacher who had never been known to give a woman an A. At that time, almost all of the art majors were women; the guys in his class were mostly architecture majors who basically did renderings. You could walk into class the first day and pretty much predict who would get what grade based on what they looked like; there was a certain type of guy who would always get top grades and be pointed out to the rest of us as an example during critiques.

    Being part of a group of strong women helped a lot. We knew this professor was bogus and pretty much laughed it off, then went and did our own thing.

  7. If you were aware of Breathed, Schulz, Davis, Larson via the newspaper comics page (and not just the book collections) then surely you must have seen female cartoonists like Guisewite and Johnston and understood that, yes, women can be cartoonists? Your “ignorance” in that regard seems feigned at best, obstinate at worst. You didn’t see Lynda Barry’s work at some point in the last 35 years?

  8. Bill, I think Annie is talking about what struck her when she was a kid. What crosses your attention at that point can be fairly arbitrary (and Guisewite and Johnston had a significantly lower profile than the other cartoonists she discusses.)

  9. Whooey! Thanks Noah for holding it down while I was down for the count, but that last comment sent me flying straight outta my sick bed and to the keyboard! So thank you Bill, for that.

    First off: Did you notice that you rattled off two of the only (very) few women creators on the comics page and assumed that, based on their content and last name alone, a young girl like me would see herself reflected in those cartoonists and thus aspire to be ‘like them’?

    First off, I got most of my early cartoonist exposure from the book collections I picked up in the library. I don’t remember seeing the newspaper strips except as collected in those books and I liked it that way: the collections made for longer stories and held my attention more.

    I did see the color Sunday comics section around though. And much respect to Lynn Johnston and Cathy Guisewite, but if you read the list of creators I was attracted to as a child (noted in the article above)–you can see that I liked adventure, politics, fantasy, talking dinosaurs, stories of children left to their own devices, talking penguins, and talking cats (the fact that Garfield was only just ‘thinking’ was completely lost on me at the time). On the other hand, CATHY was kinda boring, very repetitious (I appreciate its merits now) and clearly directed at a very different target audience that a 7 year-old tomboy. Similarly (but opposite) to Lynda Barry’s obsession with the Family Circus, I grew markedly distressed reading ‘Better or Worse’ because it depicted a sort of loving, mild-mannered middle-class family situation that was so far from my reality at the time, it was disturbing. Plus I had the distinct feeling that it was geared more towards parents than kids. I preferred fantastical, exciting comics. And plus I only learned several years ago that a woman even wrote For better of For Worse (my subconscious had assumed Lynn was a man). Nicole Hollander on the other hand–now she was a different story! She had talking cats. My aunt and I have shared a love for Sylvia most of my life.

    But speaking of Lynda Barry, I did list above that she was a seminal artist for me, did I not? Luckily, I had her work forced on my by a friend. I say forced because, at the time, I had fallen under the spell of most comics critics at the time (and my own internalized misogyny) that ‘she was a good writer, but not a good artist’. Me, I would read almost anything if the art appealed to me and that guided my interests for a while. But sitting down with One! HUndred! Demons! pretty much changed my life. I hung my head in shame and hoped for some reissues of her older comics. As I laughed and cried my way through Demons. Though as a kid I bought Life Is Hell from Powell’s with my birthday money, I somehow missed Groening’s counterpart, Northwest gem Lynda Barry. Once I had finally had her work in my hands, I saw the genius of her craft and her art.

    This conversation really reminds me of the interview I’ve been re-reading over the past few days (I’ve beeen quite ill, so it’s taking a while) between Gary Groth and Debbie Drechsler, as referenced above (apologies on the previous name misspell!).

    In it, Drechsler explains that her first exposure to comics came from hanging around the spinner racks in her father’s drugstore. She says, “I was pretty much hooked on the Supers–Superman and Superboy.”

    To which Groth responds: “I’m sure that you’ve been told that that’s a little unusual for a girl” (??)
    And Drechsler responds with, “I have been. I was a real Tomboy…I liked playing, like, Cops and Robbers and that kind of stuff, more than dress-up.”
    And then Groth goes: “Well now, reading comics when you were 8 to 11 or whenever in that period, it seems to me that you were a late bloomer when it comes to being a cartoonist and exploiting that early interest in comics, and that your early exposure didn’t have the profound effect that it has on so many of us who became obsessive at an early age and continued that obsession into adulthood.”(??)
    “I’m not sure that I wasn’t reading them earlier. I just can’t remember it. [throughout the interview, she consistently references her spotty childhood memory–a trait many sex abuse survivors share, something Groth has an incredibly hard time wrapping his head around in at least a couple interviews I’ve read. fair enough, it’s hard to wrap one’s head around.] We had a subscription to Mad magazine in our house, probably for a pretty long time.It’s quite likely that I read comics when I was really young, especially because of my father’s drugstore [as she’d already explained]. I just don’t remember it.”
    Unable to believe, relent, or recall her initial answer to his question, Groth persists: “I can’t believe you never read Little Lulu when you were a girl.” [!!]
    To which Drechsler responds, “No, I did. I just didn’t like it. Maybe when I was a little kid I liked it [how generous of her to posit the possibility] and I just don’t remember that. I certainly remember reading Archie, and I remember reading Little Lulu and Richie Rich. Ugh! I hated Richie Rich! I hated Richie Rich always.”
    My point being that if all you came up with after reading my comment above was ‘But hey, didn’t you notice that Cathy and For Better or Worse were done by women, thereby making your point moot?!’ then maybe you should read it again.

  10. There’s only a tenuous connection between Little Lulu and Cathy/For Better or Worse. Little Lulu was created by Marge but Gary is undoubtedly talking about the John Stanley Little Lulu. It’s little read nowadays but is still easily one of the best children’s comics ever created. And it had enough of a “feminist” streak that Friends of Lulu paid homage to it by using the character in its organizational name. In this instance, I assume Friends of Lulu were thinking about the Marge strip.

    Gary’s problem was that he assumed that a girl would be attracted to “girlish” things and, more importantly, that Drechsler would see any connection between the happy go lucky/assertive comfortable middle class life of Lulu and her own. I also think Gary mistakenly assumes that Little Lulu was widely available when Drechsler was a kid.

  11. I haven’t read Little Lulu. My son, who is an enthusiastic reader of children’s comics, from Asterix to Tintin to the original Wonder Woman to Bloom County and on and on, tried it and was utterly uninterested, though.

  14. I think there’s the idea that if more people read things like Little Lulu as kids, they wouldn’t be as inclined to produce those malodorous depictions of women as exemplified by modern day Marvel/DC comics. Probably wishful thinking.

  15. Annie said to me:

    “you rattled off two of the only (very) few women creators on the comics page and assumed that, based on their content and last name alone, a young girl like me would see herself reflected in those cartoonists and thus aspire to be ‘like them’?”

    Um, you yourself said (first, in the article above): “I had literally no idea I could even be a cartoonist until I got older–I had unconsciously relegated the vocation to the exclusive world of men”. Last I checked, “Cathy” is a woman’s name and “Lynn” is also, more often than not. My point, which you misconstrued in an illogical fantasy of your own making, still stands. They were women cartoonists, therefore an example that women can be cartoonists. Not sure what their last names have to do with anything I said; nor did I mention their content (which I consider total excrement) or your relation to it.

  16. Noah said about Little Lulu:

    “We got it out of the library; I just didn’t get to it”

    You’ll hate it — there’s hardly any gender-bending or race riots.

  17. I didn’t quit comics because of the interview with Gary.

    I was surprised to read Annie’s assessment of the interview as insensitive, disrespectful and dismissive. My recollection was that Gary did an excellent job of asking questions that gave the reader (and myself) more information about who I was and how I approached my work in comics. I went back and reread the interview after reading this post to see if I could find what made Annie so angry about it. I couldn’t. I still think it was a great interview.

  18. Not to put words in her mouth, but I can see what Annie Murphy is getting at about Groth (and by extent, the Comics Journal/Fantagraphics): he can be extremely abrasive in print as well as very certain of himself, something TCJ has taken over as a housestyle, which works well for a certain type of (usually male, usually white) reader, steeped as it is in a certain arrogance and privilege that of course your opinion is not only valuable, but right and therefore it’s no more than normal to state it forcibly. For those without these privileges or less sure of themselves, this is offputting and hostile, makes it harder to engage.

    Now this is of course a subjective judgment about Groth/TCJ and opinions can vary about this, but it should not be controversial that if you want to attract more women into comics criticsm, having that sort of boy’s own clubhouse atmosphere is a major obstacle.

  20. “there’s hardly any gender-bending or race riots.”

    Don’t think there’s necessarily a ton of that in Peanuts, which is my favorite comic. (Peanuts is smart about gender stuff, but not necessarily through gender bending.)

  21. Debbie Drechsler, I’m glad it was a good experience for you! I should say here that on a re-read it was a fabulously informative interview, especially for those of us who knew little about your artistic history, process and motivations. It still irritates me the way it appears that Groth wasn’t listening at times and brushed over your references to feminism. Dont get me wrong. I found the interview–despite my critique–valuable on multiple levels. If it’s really you…thank you for offering your time and two cents to this conversation! For context, I brought up the interview in a flurry of rage over his recent comment: after being asked why no women were featured in the new hefty print version of the Comics Journal, “I have to admit I’m gender-blind when it comes to good writing. And to subject matter.” and I don’t think he is, as evinced by some of his interviews with women artists he is very gender-focused. *That being said* I will of course differ to you as the last word on the interview. Much respect to you.

  22. For the record: I did not mean to imply that Gary made Debbie stop making comics. Clearly he is a huge fan of hers and supported her work, particularly with Daddy’s Girl. And apparently the interview was not ‘Reaally bad’ for its subject–and I am happy to hear it–even if I may have experienced the read differently.
    I am positing the perspective (in the comment above triggering these posts, triggered originally by Heidi MacDonald’s astute post on Comics Beat) that the reception and critique of art and writing by women in a male-dominated sphere can make or break an artist. Some people are motivated by the experience of rejection and exclusion. Like with Brigid’s comment above: “Being part of a group of strong women helped a lot. We knew this professor was bogus and pretty much laughed it off, then went and did our own thing.”
    It seems some people are steeled against this type of exclusion while others are highly sensitized to it. While still others benefit from being exceptions to the rule in a boys’ club. I know I swing back and forth and every which way on this pendulum.

    Also, I know that Debbie Drechsler is an artist of many talents, styles, and areas of interest. I’m assuming that comics was not her be-all end-all goal in life…but I know what assumptions do, and I want to avoid any more erroneous ones. Debbie, if you are still in the conversation, would you care to weigh in on why (or if) you stopped publishing comics after Summer of Love?
    We are not owed an explanation of course. But curiosity killed the Capricorn…

  23. I asked Debbie to comment. Annie’s take on that interview wasn’t in accord with mine, and I was curious as to what Debbie had to say.

    As for why Debbie hasn’t done new comics since Summer of Love, here’s what she said in the Groth interview:

    It’s a number of things and I’m not even sure if I know all the things that it is. I think part of it is I’m more conscious of people reading my stuff now, which makes it a little harder. Before, I thought, “Well, who cares what anybody thinks? I’m just going to do what I’m going to do.” That’s kind of gone. Part of it is: Do I really want to continue with Lily? I have been writing or trying to write. I have some ideas and, so far, none of them have clicked. The other thing is waiting for that moment where the story grabs me and starts writing itself. That sounds glib, but I just can’t be like, “OK, I need a story. Let’s write it.” It doesn’t work that way for me. I sit down and start writing and wait for the story to say, “OK. Here we go.” And it hasn’t happened yet.

    For those curious about what Debbie’s been up to or interested in, here’s her website:

    http://www.debdrex.com

    Here’s her blog:

    http://debdrex-drawing.blogspot.com

    I’m a fan of Summer of Love, and I’d be delighted if she took a dip in the comics pool again.

  24. Thanks Robert for posting those links to Debbie Drechsler’s blog. I wonder what, if anything has changed in her sentiments since the interview. I have been seriously digging her naturalist wanderings and field guide-esque studies over the years. ‘Field Guide’ is one of my favorite graphic narrative formats, and find them no less important than her comics-just different. I hope to see those collected in a book someday..! (?)

  25. I’m afraid I (seriously) haven’t been keeping up with my blog but thank you, Robert, for the links. Annie, I stopped creating comics because of health issues.

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