day63: Angry Girl (objectionable content)

 

Angry Girl (1995) Sharpie over pencil on paper. Some digital cleanup because the scan was bad and I can't find the original right now.

I did this as the flier art for an Accustomed To Nothing gig, in 1995 or so when I worked with the band's manager at Comic Relief in Berkeley CA. Brian asked, I drew stuff all the time, so I did it, and I got to go to the gig too. The flier had a big chunk of text over the middle finger so people wouldn't yank them from where they got posted, but this is the original art, no censorship.

I struggled with posting it. I had to get angry enough over something to even put that picture out there. I have to say that I'm afraid of the backlash, that I might never get a creative job again, etc.

But, if it puts another voice on the side of the WTF? Maybe it's worth it.

I'm posting this particular piece today because things are getting weirder than usual with regard to how women are presented in comics. Like, hentai-weird, in non-brown-wrapper packages. Super girls have always been treated like the cheerleaders of the super world before now, but lately it's become ridiculous, and they are being treated, routinely, like softcore porn actresses in bad victimization storylines. It wasn't this bad in the 1940's.

Women of the comic world are getting more vocal than they had been, and it's not like the women who write, draw and edit comics have been exactly silent on the subject. The ire has always been there, but now it's getting more organized. I don't really count myself in with this, since I never wrote a comic, or got beyond storyboarding one, and working up character designs, but I've always been a reader. Since I can remember. I used to read comics at recess in the fourth grade. I loved MAD, I read Xmen and Batman and Sgt Rock. I didn't like the girly comics. I'm such a tomboy that some of my male friends would forget there was a girl around.

Hey guys? I like the gritty, real-life tone that a lot of comics have taken. I love satire, the worse, the better. HOWEVER - this is a big however - gritty does not equal violently porny. Ever. If you can't wrap your head around that, the gesture above is for you.

Thanks.

Visceral reaction on my part follows:

Strong women can be strong without the necessity of their getting spanked by some bad guy in spandex, honest. It won't make your dick shrink to read about it. Grow the balls to buy some hentai books and stop trying to make regular comics into porn. I swear nobody will laugh at you if you by a copy of Legend of the Overfiend.