Comicsgirl

When cartoonist Cathy Guisewite announced on Aug. 11 that her strip Cathy was ending on Oct. 3, the reaction didn’t surprise me. Mostly, people spoke up to say how terrible the comic was, how Cathy was just about a woman who loved chocolate and worried about men and not being able to fit into a bathing suit.

But you know what? I like Cathy — the strip and the character. I’m sorry to see her go.

I haven’t really read the comic in years, but I’ve enjoyed going back and looking at the archive of strips. In them, I see a woman who has her flaws but nonetheless approaches life with clarity and humor. Yes, she’s obsessed with her weight and gets into small battles with her well-meaning mother, but she’s still capable of taking care of herself.

Is Cathy a role model, someone women should aspire to be? Maybe not, but I don’t think she needs to be. In some ways, she’s better — she’s someone we all know and can relate to. Am I as weight-obsessed as Cathy? No, but I still feel apprehension when I go to try things on in the dressing room. Do I console myself with chocolate? No, but that’s just because I tend to like savory things more as my indulgence.

She’s not me, but I see pieces of myself in Cathy. Certainly, she’s a caricature of some of the less-than-flattering parts of womanhood, but I think that just allows us to laugh at ourselves that much more.

I was talking about Cathy with my mom (I had sent her Shaenon K. Garrity’s Survey of Aacks because I thought she’d get a kick out of it) and she said she always related to Cathy’s experiences. My mom is a smart, independent and capable woman and always has been. If she likes Cathy, that’s a good enough recommendation for me.

The panel included on this entry is from one of our favorite Cathy strips. I actually still have a copy of it from when my mom cut it out of the newspaper for me.

The Comic Riffs interview with Cathy Guisewite is wonderful, and reveals her to be, not surprisingly, witty and charming. I wish her the best of luck.

And I will miss Cathy on the comics pages.

A Drunken Dream and Other Stories Buy at Amazon.com

I didn’t buy that much while I was at Comic-Con. Yes, a good portion of that was because I lost my wallet on Saturday (and it never turned up, by the way. I’m going to assume it’s in a landfill somewhere now) but I really didn’t have that much money to spend in the first place.

But it was a privilege to purchase Moto Hagio’s A Drunken Dream and Other Stories (Fantagraphics, 2010, with translation by Matt Thorn). It should go without saying that if you’re at all interested in women’s comics or manga, you should buy this book. But in all honesty, I think even if you just like comics and beautifully-told stories, this should be a part of your bookshelf.

Most of the stories here revolve around loss. Sometimes the loss is a physical death or departure. Sometimes it is more psychological as characters try to come to grips with who they are or aren’t. Often, it’s quite a bit of both. “Angel Mimic” has a young woman coming to terms with her choices and “The Child Who Comes Home” has a family facing pain they’d rather forget. Hagio treats her characters with affection and sympathy and rarely is anyone ever completely right or completely wrong. Through their anguish, she show tenderness for the human spirit.

Hagio does deal quite a bit with what it’s like to be a girl or woman in a changing world. The earlier “Girl on the Porch with a Puppy” focuses on a little girl who does not behave in the way her family expects, with a disturbing ending. “Hanshin: Half-God” focuses on conjoined sisters. One is beautiful but empty-headed and the other is ugly but intelligent. Told from the perspective of the “ugly” sister, it deals with how she perceives her own worth in the world, especially once she and her sister are separated and she is the one to survive.

The centerpiece of the book is Hagio’s “Iguana Girl” about a girl, Rika, whose mother can only see her as an iguana and subsequently shuns her. As Rika grows up, she has to find her own self-worth (even she believes she’s an iguana) and make peace with who she is and her relationship with her mother. It’s a powerful story — Rika is strong and funny despite her mistreatment and Hagio makes the wise choice of drawing Rika-as-iguana as cute rather than realistic. It gives the story a lightness and humor that balances the thoughtful tone.

Hagio’s art is, of course, constantly gorgeous. This is evident throughout the collection, but very much so in the title story, “A Drunken Dream.” The lush scenes of this romantic tragedy are shaded in white, black, gray and red and transition from space to ancient Rome. Her talent for expressive faces and small, every-day details from the interiors of homes to clothing make all these stories feel like they’re populated by real people.

Thorn’s translation definitely seems to be true to Hagio’s stories. He is obviously a great admirer of her and he does her justice.

Also included is an overview of the manga scene Hagio was a part of, “The Magnificient Forty-Niners,” and an extensive interview with Hagio. Both are by Thorn and originally appeared in the July 2005 issue of The Comics Journal.

This is a beautiful book by an incredible creator. Whether or not you knew of Hagio before or this is going to be your introduction to her, it’s a book you need to have.

Moto Hagio is considered to be one of modern shōjo manga’s pioneers, but English-language audiences haven’t gotten much of her work. Fantagraphics‘ forthcoming A Drunken Dream and Other Stories (available now at Comic-Con) will help to remedy some of that. (I did buy it yesterday, as I reported.)

Moto Hagio is also a recipient this year of Comic-Con Inkpot Award and this was her first-ever visit to the U.S.

During her interview session yesterday with manga expert Matt Thorn, who translated her comments from Japanese, Hagio was utterly charming and fascinating.

She said she made her professional debut at the age of 20 and gained fame through her vampire story, The Poe Clan. Greatly influenced by American science fiction writers like Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clark (she specifically cited Philip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” as one of the stories that had a big impact on her), she tried her hand at sci-fi stories like They Were Eleven and Marginal.

Hagio incorporates a lot of darker ideas into her work. The short story, “Iguana Girl” is about a girl whose mother only sees her as being a lizard, although to everyone else she looks normal. Hagio said she created this story because she was trying to deal with her own issues with her mother, who believed that being a manga-ka was a “vulgar” profession.

Her longest-running story to date is A Cruel God Reigns about a young man seeking redemption after killing his stepfather who was molesting him.

During the audience question-and-answer session, someone asked if she had trouble getting published. She said when she first started out, she was doing comics for a magazine aimed at elementary school girls and her editors wanted energetic, happy stories. Instead, she was turning in depressing stories where people died. Another publisher approached her and it was glad to publish her dark stories. She said she kept right on killing people in her stories after that.

Someone else asked if she liked how shōjo manga now had a lot of strong female characters, and she said that it’s a good development. Japan has always been male-dominated, she said, and women are expected to get married, have kids and stay at home (she also remarked that she thinks that’s why her job was a source of conflict with her parents). She then went onto say that “The idea that men should do this and women should do this is ridiculous.” That got the most applause of anything she said.

At the end of her presentation, it was announced that she was donating the books of her works that she had brought with her to Comic-Con.

No Girls Allowed Buy at Amazon.com

No Girls Allowed: Tales of Daring Women Dressed as Men for Love, Freedom and Adventure (2008, Kids Can Press) is a collection of stories of women from history who impersonated men for whatever reason. It’s created by two women — writer Susan Hughes and illustrator Willow Dawson and aimed at intermediate readers.

Given all of the above, aren’t you as baffled as I am that I have not picked this up before?

I love the diversity of the stories here — Hatshepsut and Mu Lan were already familiar to me, but I loved Alfhild, a Viking princess who became a pirate. Even more fun was James Berry, a woman whose real name isn’t known (she could be one of two people) who originally dressed as a man to become a doctor in the early 19th century and then stuck with her male identity for the rest of her life.

The thread that runs through all of these stories is that these women felt limited in their roles as women — they couldn’t rule or fight for their country, they couldn’t travel freely. Further complicating some of their stories was the matter of race or religion — Esther Brandeau at some points tells people she’s Catholic, although she’s Jewish. Ellen Craft impersonates a white man so she and her husband can escape slavery. While it’s disappointing that these women didn’t have the freedom they desired, it’s fun seeing how they gamed the system.

Hughes’ writing is fast-paced and informative. She gives depth to history while still sharing the facts of these women’s lives. She never bogs down the stories and provides entertaining biographical sketches of each of these women. I definitely felt like I learned something and I’m pleased by the “Further Reading” page in the back because I’d definitely like to know more.

Dawson’s art is stylized and quirky and communicates these stories well. She makes good use of contrast and negative space and the thick black outlines give her characters each a distinctive look. While it’s aimed at younger readers, the art has a surprising sophistication and maturity. It’s definitely not a book that talks down to kids, either through the art or writing. It looks very cool.

Seek this one out. Buy it for your local library. Buy it for your niece or daughter. It’s a delightful testament to what comics can do, and is a pretty fun call-to-action of what women can become when they put their minds to it.

This will be a quick and incoherent post (if you’d like to read my slightly more coherent thoughts, they’re here) but it was a Good Time so I felt the need to post again about it here.

Yeah, there were the usual suspects, but there were also a lot of newbies. And I mean that in the best possible way. Look, I love (just about) everyone that makes comics but the more you go to cons and shows and such, the more you see the same people over and over again.

A lot of the women at this were young (like I probably have a decade on many of them) and that’s awesome (I will probably be using that word too many times here). I love that many of them came to this by themselves because they thought it sounded like a neat thing. And while there were some “names” there (and I mean that with respect — to me, some of the women there are famous), everyone felt like equals. We were there because we loved comics and we wanted to meet other people who loved comics.

I know some men have kind of grumbled (even if it’s mostly jokingly) about how it’s sexist and exclusionary. And maybe some of them sort of have a point (but I’d also like to point out that men who make comics have no shortage of opportunities to hang out with each other), but this didn’t feel like anyone was being left out. It felt very welcoming and very friendly.

I’ve been reading comics a long time (almost longer than I think some of the attendees tonight have been alive — no, I’m not kidding) and there was a time I figured that such a thing like Drink & Draw Like a Lady could never exist. It’s a powerful and wonderful thing and I’d love to see the concept take off even more (I know there will be one before Stumptown this year). It’s really that good.

(And now, I am crashing. I spent six hours on a bus — when it should’ve been about four and a half hours — in front of a group of guys going to a bachelor party in New York, and oh, from their conversation, it showed. Tomorrow will be a long day at MoCCA and running around the city so I need my sleep.)