FFB: WIMMEN'S COMIX #13; TWISTED SISTERS (& TS2) edited by Diane Noomin; CHICKEN FAT by Will Elder

So, having picked up such fairly recent books over the last few weeks as Jules Feiffer's memoir, Backing into Forward (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday--"a division of Random House," still seems so odd), and Lynda Barry's book of inspiration mostly for young adult writers (but for anyone, really, particularly those of us who are fans of her "Ernie Pook's Comeek"), What It Is (Drawn & Quarterly), the earlier influences also come to mind, including the two titles that really sucked me back into reading comics aimed at adults...Love and Rockets, the intertwined comics stories by Jaime, Gilbert and sometimes Mario Hernandez (and now an annual magazine), and the assembled contributors to Wimmen's Comix, not least the 13th issue, from 1988 (courtesy the Women in Comics wikia):

Occult Issue

Editors: Lee Binswanger and Caryn Leschen
Cover by Krystine Kryttre
The Visit by Trina Robbins
Ladies by Carol Tyler
The Magic Lemon by Caryn Leschen
Hoodoo Voodoo by Leslie Ewing
Beyond Reason by Joey Epstein
The Night by Cécilia Capuana
Becoming Normal by Judy Becker
Clair de Lune by Rebecka Wright, Barb Rausch and Angela Bocage
Ella Gets Her Man by Pauline Murray and Suzy Varty
Futures by Angela Bocage
Emil's Cafe by Lee Binswanger
The Dead Girl by William Clark and Mary Fleener
Voodoo Woman by Carel Moiseiwitsch

While Wimmen's Comix was soon to fold (might have just folded as I was catching up with it), other similar projects arose, including one that produced some magazine issues after two popular, now ridiculously out of print anthologies:


Diane Noomin's anthologies, which of course also followed various projects of similar scope (often in magazine form) by the likes of Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Joyce Farmer and Lyn Chevli, and Trina Robbins, were certainly clarion calls, as well as great fun to read. (I've certainly cited the collected work of contributor Mary Fleener in FFBs past. In fact, here's a handy page from her story "The Jelly," collected in Twisted Sisters:)

Another recent purchase really goes back to my initial love of comics, particularly Harvey Kurtzman's Mad, inasmuch as it's a collection of sketches and finished work exploring the processes of Kurtzman's long-term partner (on the Playboy cartoon strip "Little Annie Fanny"), Will Elder. Chicken Fat touches on nearly all Elder's work, from the early art school studies through his solo cartoon work (including his failed pitch for a continuing one-panel in the Charles Addams or "Family Circus" mode, "Adverse Anthony"), including caricature for newsmagazines and ad campaigns, even as a rather small book. Among the more amusing oddities included are the roughs and finished work of illustration for a parody that Playboy published 1960, "Girls for the Slime God," which Cele Goldsmith at Amazing: Fact and Science Fiction commissioned Isaac Asimov to respond to, published in the magazine as "Playboy and the Slime God" and reprinted in his collections as "What Is This Thing Called Love?"--the William Knoles article, the mildly salacious Henry Kuttner pulp stories that had been reprinted in the November 1960 Playboy from the brief experiment in sexed-up sf pulp Marvel Tales, and various explications were much later anthologized by Mike Resnick, with new analysis by Barry Malzberg and others, under the Knoles title (another FFB, if ever there was).



Meanwhile, back to Mad...the latter parody puzzled me slightly as to how to pronounce the title, since I'd only seen the Yiddish word for "thief" (with implication of thug) transliterated as "goniff" previously...


For more of today's books, please see Patti Abbott's blog...

August "Forgotten" Music/Friday's "Forgotten" Book: BLUE ROSE by Blue Rose (Sugar Hill, 1989); LIFE OF THE PARTY by Mary Fleener (Fantagraphics, 1996)

Life is not cooperative at all at the moment, so I shall have less to say than I'd like about this wonderful book, which collects most of Mary Fleener's most autobiographical comix stories (as of the '96 publication date) and this bluegrass "supergroup" album, I believe the first all-female gathering of veterans, rather than younger folk who came up together in bluegrass (as the Dixie Chicks initially did, or such younger bands as Uncle Earl).

From her middle-class LA early-teen years, through adventures in the bohemian subcultures (including latter-day 1970s hippiedom and the fringes of American punk rock, surf culture and more), the weirdness of the theoretically conventional "straight" life around that and various eerie bits of coincidence that seemingly could verge on the supernatural, Fleener's bold style (given, particularly in portraying incidences of stress or ecstacy, to Cubist abstractions, such as the cover above) is an excellent match with her wit and wry take on the passing show.


Life of the Party is a good introduction to her work, as would be particularly the three issues of Fleener, one of the several shortlived comics titles she's produced on her own or in collaboration (she was one of the most talented of the contributors to the durable Wimmen's Comix and one of the founding group of contributors to its heir, Twisted Sisters. However, Life is, as too many books are, barely in print, from Fantagraphics and others.

Some samples of her b&w work:








Meanwhile, Blue Rose the band: Cathy Fink, Marcy Marxer, Laurie Lewis, Sally Van Meter, and Molly Mason (no relation as far as I know) simply recorded this wonderful album, toured a bit as a group, but didn't find sufficient support to remain a unit, if that was ever the intent, and that's really too bad (as well as a poor commentary on the tough life a bluegrass band could face in the '80s and '90s)...these truncated clips, more at the band link above than I replicate here, will give you a sense of their wonderful sound (though the instrumental solos are often what's truncated, in favor of the lovely vocal harmonies):

1. River of Change
2. Geraldine and Ruthie Mae
3. Blue Love
4. Little Birds
5. Your Friendship Carries Me
6. Sad But True
7. Wild Rose of the Mountain
8. Careless Love
9. Train of Life
10. Time Has Made A Change

--though I'm tempted to simply post them all. You probably need this record. I did.

For more of August's "forgotten" music, please see Scott Parker's blog; for more of this Friday's "forgotten" books, please see Patti Abbott's...