comics chatty (non-buffyverse! shocking, I know)

[angearia]

My urge to read ALL THE THINGS is re-awakening, and I've decided I want to venture forth into reading more comics besides my Buffyverse monthlies and the occasional X-Men issue. I'm planning on hunting down library copies of some of these works, simply because I price-shopped on Amazon and I'm pretty sure dropping a few hundred dollars on comics is

Comments

[rebcake]

Yes to Sandman and Watchmen, though both are very dense, art and story-wise. No to Frank Miller. (I liked his Daredevil run, when he introduced the character of Elecktra, but fun and women-friendly he is not.)

I keep hammering away at this, but you must read Love & Rockets by The Hernandez Brothers. Start with the early-ish things (it's been going for 30 years). "Mechanics" and "Death of Speedy" by Jaime H. and "Heartbreak Soup" by Gilbert H. are often taught in college lit classes. These guys rule at strong female characters, as well as characters of color. (Some of Gilbert's later stuff is hard to take, though.) There is a guide on where to start here:

http://www.fantagraphics.com/index.php?Itemid=135&id=76&option=com_content&task=view

I have loooong lists of great comics by women, but be aware that these women artists are generally not afraid of the hard stuff and do not make their life experiences glossy and soft-focus as much as men tend to. I like that, but YMMV. Here are a few names:

Phoebe Gloeckner, Diane Noomin, Carol Lay, Carol Tyler, Alison Bechdel, Ellen Fornay, Roberta Gregory, Dame Darcy, and Mary Fleener.

Also, anything by Joe Sacco, who is a sort of cartoon-journalist war correspondent, is amazing.

I never read Cerebus, but I've met Dave Sim. I cannot imagine that anything he wrote could possibly be considered feminist. Read Jeff Smith's Bone instead.

All of the above are on the old classic side of things. I'm not really following comics these days.

[angearia]

Thanks for all the recs! Yeah, the rec I read of Dave Sim's Cerebus included categorically defining it as misogynist, but I'm nonetheless curious (though it's not at the top of my list and at the rate I'm accruing titles I might never get to it).

I still think I'll give Frank Miller a shot, if only because I grew up with a major love for Batman, and I wanna see how this ~great~ comic sits with me.

Thank you so much for bringing me lots of ladies! I'm not too familiar with any of these names, so it's a huge help to me. ♥

[rebcake]

Ack! I forgot French-Canadian Julie Doucet and French cartoonist Claire Bretecher. Ms. Bretecher is the most amazing 2nd wave feminist cartoonist of them all!

There's also the New Yorker regular, Roz Chast, who doesn't do comic books per se, but is a fantastic storyteller in her chosen format.

[rahirah]

I read about half of Cerebus, back when it was coming out. I can sort of recommend it up until the point when Sim went completely batshit. (You could see the batshit rising in the middle of Church & State II, IIRC, and by the time "Reads" came out, it had grown from a trickle to a raging torrent, and I gave up.) The first few story arcs had moments of inspired loony satire, but I wonder how well they hold up for anyone who wasn't a fan of comics in the 80s.

It's probably worth reading just as an iconoclastic achievement of comics art, but feminist it ain't.

[angearia]

Yeah, the rec I saw of it came with the disclaimer that it was misogynist, so I'd be going into it with that expectation. At this point, I'm really curious to check it out now -- "moments of inspired loony satire" while I get to look for the oncoming crazy misogynism? Sounds interesting. Thanks for the pointers on when it starts running off the track.

Texts not being feminist aren't dealbreakers for me -- if it was, I'd never get to read or watch anything. I just love to be on the lookout for the feminist texts too.