Continuing my series of postings on sexuality and sex in the comics — here, here, and here, almost exclusively focused on men — I turn now to some dyke comics that I happened to have around the house. The books are all from the 90s (an accident of my book-collecting history); just to note that dyke comics are alive and well, and it’s not all Alison Bechdel (though she’s a national treasure).
A nice compendium: Roz Warren (ed.), Dyke Strippers: Lesbian Cartoonsts A to Z (1995):
(#1)
(Actually, B to Z, since it starts with Bechdel.)
That’s a Diane DiMassa cover, and she’s one of the three artists I’m featuring, a diverse set: very different visual styles and different preferences for cartoon type and content: DiMassa, drawing whole comic books that she then gathered into larger volumes; Bechdel, favoring multi-panel stories; Andrea Natalie, with single-panel (“gag”) cartoons.
Bechdel, who’s a familiar presence on this blog, is represented here by an early graphic X, a combination of graphic memoir about her life and career and survey of her Dykes to Watch Out For cartoons: The Indelible Alison Bechdel: Confessions, Comix, and Miscellaneous Dykes to Watch Out For (1998):
(#2)
Andrea Natalie drew a series of syndicated cartoons under the heading Stonewall Riots, which she eventually collected into volumes: Stonewall Riots (1990), The Night Audrey’s Vibrator Spoke: A Stonewall Riots Collection (1992), Rubyfruit Mountain: A Stonewall Riots Collection (1993) (note the play on the title of Rita Mae Brown’s 1973 Rubyfruit Jungle). The second of these:
(#3)
And Diane DiMassa, who I talked about on this blog earlier. Two collections of her comics:
(#4, 1993)
(#5, 1995)
Fierce, baby, fierce.
April 26, 2016 at 5:42 am |
Thanks for featuring Dyke Strippers. It was a fun book to put together and I’m very proud of the way it came out.
April 26, 2016 at 6:03 am |
And you should be proud. Now it’s time for an update (which you probably don’t want to put together yourself).