July 21, 2021 • 38 mins
In part two of Jamie's exploration into who shared the American funny pages with Cathy Guisewite, we take a look at the artists chronicling the experiences of the boomer and Gen X crowd day to day along with her -- Gary Trudeau of Doonesbury, Aaron McGruder of The Boondocks, Alison Bechdel of Dykes to Watch Out For, and Lynn Johnston of For Better or For Worse. Tell your moms!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to ac cast. I am your host, Jamie Loftus,
and I've made it three whole nights without a large
two D Kathy cartoon appearing at the foot of my
bed and threatening my one human life. We'll take the
winds where we can get them. In Part one of
this episode, we explored the women who preceded Kathy, guyswhite
in the comic strip industry, who were frequently erased, as
(00:21):
well as the radicals who worked in underground comics that's
c O, M, M, I X, thank you very much,
while Kathy was getting her start in the far more
restrictive national funny pages. In Part two, I want to
feature four of her contemporaries, all boomers with one exception,
whose strips had missions similar to Kathy's, with very different
(00:42):
approaches that goal to document the day to day struggles
of the boomer generation. The difference is all about who
is being put into focus on that mission. Our first
artist came straight out of the women's comic scene, far
from the mainstream funny pages. So let's get the theme
song going right. She burst into the world in nineteen
(01:05):
seventy six. She's at what she's out on dates and
she don't like politics from Mama and herb and two
with feminist friends. She's fighting all the stands with some
chocolate and hair. Cathe she's fighting back to stressed with success.
Let's call her some slack oh Cathey my Cathy, fun Cather,
(01:28):
She's gotta like going on. The biggest star to come
(01:49):
out of women's comics was, hands down, Alison Bechtel, who's
now a MacArthur Genius Award recipient. She's the author of
books like fun Home and Are You My Mother? Fun
Home was turned into a huge Broadway musical also, but
that ascent to the top was a slow and challenging one,
and one that women's comics helped lift Early in her career.
(02:11):
She first appeared in issues in the nineteen eighties. Beckdel
established herself as a cartoonist through her independent comic strip
Dikes to Watch Out For, which ran in local feminist
newspaper Woman News beginning in nineteen eighty three and was
eventually syndicated in other all weekly papers beginning in nineteen
eighty five. Most famously, a comic of two characters discussing
(02:33):
the lack of women speaking to each other in popular
movies led to the coining of the Bechdel Test, popular
media metric that requires that two women need to speak
to each other about something other than a man for
two lines of dialogue to pass the test. Some people
we've even started podcasts about this, I've heard. Although it
is just a jumping off point for discussion, I'm sure
(02:54):
it's funny because the context of that comic is two
lesbian characters frustrated that women I ever speak to each
other in movies, meaning that lesbian audience members couldn't ship
them together. So it's also a strip about a lack
of queer representation as well. Anyways, here's Bechdel and an
introduction for a two thousand and eight publication of the
comics entire run, explaining why she started the strip. Readers
(03:18):
seemed to like it and egged me on. But to
be honest, it was so comforting to see my queer
life reflected back at me. I would have kept drawing
these dikes to watch out for just for myself. Let
me tell you, my friends, those were benighted times. Despite
what my mother thought about my lesbianism, being an Outdike
was not an easy row to hoe. We had no
(03:39):
L word, we had no lesbian daytime TV hosts. We
had no openly lesbian daughters of the creepy vice President.
We had personal best and we liked it. I saw
my cartoons as an antidote to the prevailing image of
lesbians as sick, humorless, and undesirable, our model, like Olympic
pent athletes, objective fodder for the mail gays. By drawing
(04:00):
the everyday lives of women like me, I hope to
make lesbians more visible, not just to ourselves but to everyone.
If people could only see us, how could they help
but love us. Dikes To Watch Out For has an
expansive cast of characters who aged in real time for
the twenty five years that the comic ran in a
fictional city whose world reflected the reality of the US
(04:21):
at that time. The comics protagonist is mo Testa, a
radical leftist lesbian who's trying to navigate building a life
for herself while upholding her values. Her achilles heel is
a tendency to complain about everything, and she works at
a lesbian feminist bookstore where we meet most of our
other characters. There's Clarice, an environmental lawyer, and most college
(04:43):
x who's in a long term relationship and eventually marries Tony,
a CPA. They later have a kid together as well.
There's Lois, a drag king who encourages everyone to be
more accepting. There's Ginger, the eternal grad student Sparrow who
runs a battered women's shelter and eventually comes out as
a by sexual lesbian. There's Moe's girlfriend Sidney, and there's Jisanna,
(05:04):
who owns and runs the bookstore. Not only is this
comic really good, it touches on so many issues, issues
relevant to queer people, to women, to boomers in general.
Just like Kathy chronicled the week to week worries of
a number of white, middle class boomer ladies, Beckdel's work
does the same for the lesbian community over the course
of decades, and while Beckdel herself is a white lesbian,
(05:26):
she makes a concerted effort to show the diversity of
her community in race, gender, sexuality, and ability. One of
the early taboo topics that newspaper comics wouldn't have been
able to touch with a ten foot poll was the
AIDS crisis, which Beckdel has her characters talk about frankly
in the eighties and even works to correct some of
the popular myths around the disease. Here's a strip from
(05:49):
nineteen eighty seven with Moe and Lois. Lois has just
had unprotected sex, Mos as Lois, you can't just go
around betting every woman you meet. Haven't you heard there's
an epidemic going on, ah, Mo, relax. Lesbians are a
low risk group. I'm not going to get AIDS from
sleeping around with other women, Lois. Being a doesn't mean
(06:11):
you can't get AIDS. This conversation continues, with Mo overreacting
and demanding Lois b celibate. Lois refuses. Then Ginger shows
up and diffuses the situation by telling Lois that of
course she can have sex, but while gay men were
at higher risk for AIDS, that didn't mean that she
wasn't obligated to practice safe sex. And it all manages
(06:32):
to be funny somehow. It's great Mo and her friends
experience the world in real time. The whole gang goes
to a kiss in to protest anti gay laws at
the Real March on Washington in nineteen eighty seven. Clarice
and Tony struggle to have their union formally recognized four
years whether it's issues allowing Clarice to formally adopt her
(06:52):
son that they have through artificial insemination, or by having
their eventual marriage recognized in states where gay people still
could not marry at that time. Trans characters enter the
story as well. Mo is stupendously turfy at the start
of one storyline that's short for trans exclusionary radical feminist
and they can say it with me flock right off
(07:14):
to hell. In this storyline, a transwoman new to the
bookstore wants to join Moe's book club, and mo Is
hesitant to include her. Lois educates Mo and tells her
that she's being a bigoted asshole, and Mo changes her
perspective much later in the comic. There is also a
trans teen coming out story from the early two thousands
(07:36):
in which Lois's partner's daughter navigates gender dysphoria, coming out
to her mom, and becoming a young transactivist. The economic
trends of these years are shown as well, when the
independent bookstore that everyone works at closes due to a
big box store coming to town. Mo's girlfriend survives breast cancer.
They attend anti war protests for every war that takes
(07:58):
place between the eighties and the late two thousands, so
quite a few. Because Bechtel's characters had all kinds of
different opinions on politics and pop culture, Dikes to Watch
out For was able to challenge schisms within the queer community,
within political parties, within friend groups. Here's a conversation between
Ginger and Lois from nineteen ninety three about their frustration
(08:19):
with white gay men being quicker to be embraced by
pop culture than queer women. Ginger says, news flash. A
recent sex survey of twenty somethings revealed that among men
who fantasize about celebrities, Cindy Crawford and Demi Moore rank high.
Women opt for Luke Perry and President Clinton, while gay
men tapped Markie Mark and Tom Cruise period end of paragraph.
(08:43):
Do you think that means lesbians don't fantasize about celebrities
or they don't answer surveys? How come men get to
be totally queer but women don't. I'm sick of being
portrayed as some straight slob's porno fantasy and on paper,
Kathy and dikes to watch out For sound and are
extreme different, but at their core their goal is pretty similar.
It's for their authors to pull from their own lives
(09:06):
as boomer women to comment on the world around them,
on the changing politics and standards of the US at
the end of the twentieth century. It's their perspectives and
where they published that are different. While Alice and Bechdel,
an outspoken queer, feminist and leftist, could talk about almost
anything she wanted and addressed topics that were still a
taboo in the mainstream, the tradeoff was that less people
(09:28):
would see it, and she would make a fraction of
the money her funny paid colleagues dead. Kathy was always
beholden to the editors of the United Press Syndicate and
the individual papers that carried her work. The trade off
for her more money and more eyeballs. But good luck
if you happen to want to vote for Michael Ducaucus.
The mainstream papers were not ready for Alice and Bechdel,
(09:50):
and certainly not for the women of women's comics, but
they hold a very important place in women's comic art,
and in the case of Bechdel and Trina Robbins, are
finally getting their inside note. Even Alison Bechdeal made a
jab at Kathy and a strip of hers Mo's ex
Harriet is like reading a newspaper in the Sunday Funnies
with a Kathy comic and the four panels Beckdal puts
(10:12):
in our Kathy saying diet by over read ak yeah, yeah,
take a number. That is so insulting. I am so
sorry she did that. Kathy. Alison Beckdale has spoken about
the power of telling one's own story and her similarities
to her protagonist Mo and a talk in twenty fifteen.
(10:33):
I didn't see images anywhere of women who looked like
me and my friends, so I decided I would just
make them myself. Another thing I really liked about working
with words and pictures together was the fact that cartoons
were lowbrow. They were accessible and populist, and they didn't
get scrutinized the way that fine art or literary writing
or criticized in the same way. I was very insecure
(10:54):
as a young person after all those rejection letters. I
always liked being an outsider as a lesbian. It gave
me a certain objectivity about how the world worked that
I would lose if I were on the inside and
benefiting tremendously from the system. But I also, of course
yearned on some deep level to just the normal, to
(11:15):
just have everything. That'd be such a big deal for
my queerness to be seen as normal. Indics to watch
out for. Alison Bechdel and Mo aren't the same person,
but Moe is a tool for Bechdel to say what
she thought. Same guest for Kathy. Guys white and Kathy,
I want them to hang out. I'd consider it. Okay,
Relax now, I want to take a look at some
(11:52):
of Kathy's contemporaries from inside the Funny Pages. All from
the Universal Press indicate Gary Trudeau of Douansbury, Lynn Johnston
of For Better or for Worse, and Aaron McGruder of
The Boondocks. All three of these writers made strides in
the Funny Pages, and as you know by now, it's
not really an easy medium to take strides in. We're
(12:13):
talking mostly about strips that pushed against the norm in
this series, but it's important to remember what that norm was.
It's indisputable that for the majority of American comic strip
history there have been more strips about household pets by
white guys. However, beloved Garfield stand here, than there were
marginalized people working in the Funny Pages. Well, into the
(12:34):
nineteen eighties. Even when comic strips were not actively hostile
to women, queer people, and non white people, they were
disproportionately centered around white boys and men or traditional family values.
Family Circus is a comic that I'm pretty sure is
completely built around white children misunderstanding various words. Andy Kapp
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was a character famous for beating his wife. Dilbert had
some commentary on nineteen nineties office culture while also serving
as a proto in cell Beetle Bailey was war propaganda
with gags. Oh, and there was The Farside, which still
fucking rocks. But most beloved strips like Peanuts and Calvin
and Hobbes are classic childhood tales with larger casts, but
(13:17):
centered on the childhood experiences of white boys in the
middle class, which, to be fair, is how Gary Trudeau's
Dunesbury starts. Dunesbury is the rare comic strip that has
been pretty intellectualized since it debuted back in nineteen seventy.
Creator Gary Trudeau is the son of a legacy family
of doctors from Saranac Lake, New York. Went to a
(13:40):
private New Hampshire High School and then Yale, where he
started writing a comic strip called bull Tails, which was
an early version of Doonesbury. While Doonesbury would later become
synonymous with political commentary and satire, it started and in
many ways remained semi autobiographical and pulled from the life
experiences of the people Trudeau was surrounded by. Here's what
(14:03):
he said to PBS News Hour in twenty ten about
the beginnings of Dunesbury. Well, I think what it began
as a kind of diary of my generation coming of
age became the main driving force behind it. It's just
inherently fun watching a generation evolved, to see to see
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what it's meant. That's what you've always thought about it.
I'm going to watch my generation evolved, I think. So.
I don't think it was I had quite such a
grandiose take on it. I was just trying to get
through the day and create a series of jokes and
meet a series of deadlines. But I think looking back
on it, that's that's that's pretty much what it became.
It was certainly marketed that way. What's that do you say?
(14:46):
Another comic strip that was a chronicle of boomer life
over the course of decades. In nineteen seventy, at age
twenty two, the Universal Press indicates signed Trudeaux On had
him change the name of the comic from bull Tails
to Dunesbury, and it was off to the races. Dunesbury
began with a relatively small casp that would expand rapidly
(15:06):
in the fifty years that followed, and much like Alice
and Bechdel's characters in Dice to watch out for, Trudeau's
characters aged in real time and some of them even die.
Even as someone who would rather cut my own head
off than hand it an ivy league educated white guy
from a rich family, I do have to hand it
to Gary Trudeau. Dunesbury is maybe the riskiest, boldest work
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in the funny pages in the twentieth century. It's pretty
punk and you don't need to just take my word
for it. Aaron Recruiter, creator of The Boondocks, who we'll
be talking about in a bit, has regularly credited Trudeau
as his biggest influence. Its beginnings are pretty innocuous. We
meet Mike Dunesbury, a hippie womanizer of a college student,
b d the quarterback, Mark Slackmeyer, the radical, and Zonker,
(15:53):
the stoner student who joins the football team and pisses
bad off endlessly, so kind of another strip for the boy,
it seemed like at first, but the comic made political
commentary right away. Many of the students at Trudeau's fictional
Walden College were firmly anti Vietnam Smoked Weed, and Trudeau
commented on his strong anti war feelings and criticism of
(16:16):
protest and activism through his different characters. As the comic continued,
the cast widened and became more inclusive to better comment
on the movements that were on fire in the seventies.
Commentary on Black American activism told through the law student
turned congressional candidate Jinny, Feminist activism through Jinny and her
eventual roommate Joanie, who left her husband and children when
(16:38):
Mike and Mark drove past on their motorcycle and offered
to let her live on their commune. Joanie's one of
my favorite characters, and she's featured heavily in the Dunesbury
special from nineteen seventy seven, where we see her working
to make ends meet at a day care center with
a bunch of young girls who were reacting to the
second wave feminist movement and feeding them and picking a
(17:00):
back of them mostping to fight. Yes, but I'm getting
paid for it? How much not? In Nut Honey, the
strip touches on boomer women who were raised to be
housewives discovering their personal power through the character Boopsie b
D's quote unquote cheerleader bimbo girlfriend who goes on to
(17:23):
build a successful career as an actress and remains very
happy in her marriage. B D enlists in Vietnam thinking
he was being patriotic in his early twenties, only to
befriend a member of the Vietcong and questioned the war himself.
Andy Lippencott was an early out gay character in the
comic from Og character Mark later in the strip. In
(17:44):
its heyday, Doonesbury caused a lot of controversy, either for
its political commentary or by representing people who were simply
not accepted by the media of the day. In the
newspaper Funnies a shortlist of Doonesbury controversies, Let's get the
Music started. The Washington Post ran an editorial criticizing Doonesbury
character Mark for calling Nixon guilty, guilty, guilty during Watergate.
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Trudeau got in trouble for implying that two forty year
olds were having premarital sex. In nineteen seventy six, he
got busted for criticizing tobacco companies for refusing to acknowledge
the link between cancer and cigarettes. John McCain once said
on the floor of the Senate in nineteen ninety five,
suffice it to say that I hold Trudeau in utter contempt.
(18:30):
When Doonesbury criticized Bob Dole, Hunter s Thompson, Santa Gary,
Trudeau a bag full of his own shit and a classic.
He got in trouble for saying son of a bitch.
So yeah, it was a lot, and there were a
few misfires thematically from Doonesbury, but for the most part,
the strip does a great job at pissing off government conservatives.
(18:51):
So a victim was crime. So yes, Trudeau had dealt
with his comic being moved from the funnies to the
op ed page of newspapers repeat seatedly over his fifty
year tenure, usually when his subject matter went against the
political leanings of the paper it was being printed in,
or upset readers. But you don't have to cry for him.
Trudeau is maybe one of the most decorated comic strip
(19:14):
artists of all time. In fact, he became the first
strip cartoonist to win the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning
for his Watergate series, and was a Pulitzer finalist again
in nineteen ninety, two thousand four, and two thousand and five.
That nineteen seventy seven Doonesbury special I played a clip
of that was nominated for an Academy Award in nineteen
(19:34):
seventy eight. So for all the risks that Trudeau took,
a lot of them paid off, and the strip is
still well regarded today. Doonesbury was so much the intellectual's
comic strip that Kathy Geiswite references it in a strip
from the late seventies of Kathy. Kathy is talking to
Andrea and the strip and says, this man happens to
be very bright. He says he reads Doonesbury every day.
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Andrea shrugs and says, big deal. Millions of people read
Sberry every day. Kathy melts, She's like in full crush mode,
and she says, yeah, but he understands it every day.
So this was like smart people content, and I could
talk about Dudesbury for much longer. How Trudeau taking a
hiatus in eighty three and eighty four and returning with
(20:17):
his characters aged up as boomers who would shed their
activists past and become sellout adults. Was completely inspired or
how I can't stand the illustration style, or how early
the strip was to denouncing Trump, or Janie's radical career,
or Mike Doonesbury's turn as a single father, or the
comics pivoting to the millennial children of the original characters
(20:40):
over time. But what Doonesbury does stand for is proof
that the Funny Pages could say a lot in the seventies.
As a white Ivy League guy, Trudeau had less to
lose than many of his counterparts, He took a lot
of risks, He moved the medium forward in many ways,
and he was rewarded handsomely for it. By ninety nine
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there had been a lot of boundaries pushed in comics.
Doonesbury made political commentary in The Funny Pages Pulitzer worthy
and inspired many impostors and women cartoonists like Kathy and
Lynn Johnston had found a foothold in the industry and
the money to back it up. But the Funnies were
and always had been extremely white and center liberal, too
(21:21):
conservative in their politics. Enter the Boondocks by Aaron McGruder,
a comic about black socialist nine year old Huey Freeman
and his brother, the gangster rap obsessed Riley, moving to
a predominantly white neighborhood in Maryland with their granddad. Other
characters regular in the strip are Jasmine, a naive by
racial child of lawyers, one black and one white, who
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believe in the democratic establishment and are constantly at odds
with Huey, and Michael Caesar, who is Huey's best friend,
also a black socialist, but has a brighter outlook on
the future of the world. And if you haven't read
The Boondocks, which ran in papers with the Universal Press
indicate from nineteen ninety nine two thousand and six, just
turn off the podcast and go read some or the
(22:03):
animated series, which is also great, is streaming on HBO Max.
This is a clip from the pilot of that show,
which is also pulled from the comics. Excuse me, everyone,
I have a brief announcement to make Jesus was black,
Ronald Reagan was the devil, and the government is lying
(22:24):
about ninety eleven. Thank you for your time, and good
night dad. That's the tone of the Boondocks, black radicalism
is in its DNA, and as much as his readers
loved it, old guard comic publishers were afraid of it.
(22:44):
Aaron mcgruder's journey into the newspaper was distinctly gen x.
He began publishing it online at hitlist dot com in
nineteen ninety six, and it was extremely popular. But when
the still college student wanted to take it nationally, he
was met with a ton of resistance from the traditional
comic syndicates. This is from a Washington Post piece on
(23:06):
the topic by Lena O'Neill Parker in nineteen ninety seven,
almost two years before the Universal Press Indicate finally gave
it the green light. Now he wants to take it national,
but things are a little too edgy in the Boondocks
to suit the cartoon syndicators. McGruder has submitted The Boondocks
to seven of the nine major comic strip syndicates and
has gotten some praise and encouragement in return, but six,
(23:29):
including the Washington Post Writers Group, have turned him down
so far. Too angry, too college oriented, one syndicator said,
too confrontational, said another. Amy Lago, executive editor for Comic
Art at United Media says it's a conservative market. There
are complaints among edgier readers or cartoonists who would like
to do edgier material that everything on the newspaper comic
(23:51):
page is milktoast. It becomes very difficult for newspapers to
take chances anymore. Lago says there's too much chance that
enough readers will come playing about the subject matter of
the strip and they'll threaten to cancel their subscription. The
real criticism McGruder believes is that his strip is too black,
and it doesn't seem like McGruder was wrong. All of
(24:12):
the syndicates who rejected the Boondocks told him not to
change a thing. It's just that the world wasn't ready
for it, as if these people had no control over
whether they could syndicate the strip or not. In nineteen
ninety seven, there were only four nationally syndicated black cartoonists,
and those numbers have not improved that much over time.
(24:46):
After years of this rejection and patronizing responses from the
white higher ups who refused to carry a black socialist
cartoon in spite of its huge audience, the Universal Press
syndicate Home of Dunsberry and Kathy, Finally we picked it up.
Unlike Gary Trudeau, Aery mcgruder's journey to being a comic
strip star was met with constant barriers to entry, in
(25:08):
spite of the fact that their missions to talk about
issues that affected them in an explicit and political way
weren't dissimilar at all. But the Boondocks took off in
the papers, immediately criticizing the then massive culture of gangster
rapp through Riley's character, the hollow nationalism and warmongering the
came after nine to eleven, the entire concept of working
(25:29):
within the system and the different ways that Huey, Riley
and their granddad navigated a world of racist, micro and
macro aggressions at school, in their neighborhood, and in the
media they consumed, and McGruder had a lot of controversies
as well. Let's cue the music again. Newspapers pulled a
strip of Huey calling a tipline to report Ronald Reagan
(25:50):
for funding terrorism after nine to eleven. The strip was
also pulled for a calling Condoleeza Rice a quote female
Darth Vader type that seeks a loving mate to torture. Unquote.
Strips got pulled or moved to the op ed section
when Huey criticized black Conservative commentator Larry Elder Beet got
mad when the Boondogs made fun of their repeated failures
(26:10):
to connect with black audiences, and one of my favorites.
There was a lot of criticism of mcgruder's ribbon and
flaggy propaganda comics made after nine eleven to mock strips
that were going whole uncritical nationalists instead of examining the
war that George W. Bush was starting for no reason. Okay,
(26:30):
we can stop the music. And again, there were some
misfires within the strip. For example, the way that the
strip treated Whitney Houston through her addiction was very cruel.
But mcgruder's controversies generally mirror Trudeau's in that they intentionally
pissed the establishment publishing his work all the way off.
But he didn't get the Pulitzers or establishment recognition that
(26:51):
Trudeau had, and given how much racism he'd been subjected
to in the pursuit of getting published nationally in the
first place, it is easy to guess why that may be.
What the establishment couldn't take were the sheer number of
people who loved the comic and Huey Freeman, and much
of this has to do with its successful marketing crossover
into an animated series on Adult Swim that ran from
(27:12):
two thousand and six to twenty fourteen, with mcgruder's close involvement,
including a role as head writer. That was a major
component of mcgruder's choice to not return to the strip
in two thousand and six, in spite of the universal
press indicate begging him to return. Here he is in
nineteen ninety nine, as the comic was becoming a cultural phenomenon.
On Charlie Rose, Sorry, and he's speaking about the challenges
(27:35):
of working in the medium. That's a tough question. I
mean some people said, well, did you get were you
just picked up because it was a black strip? And
is that why it's I'm just positive that's all these
other things first, right, No, I mean, but does it
breakthrough because of that? But you know, I mean, let's
we had you know, this is a it is certainly
a black strip. You know, there is nothing in comics
history to indicate that it is at all benefit to
(27:57):
be a black cartoonist or to do a black strip.
Those cartoonists that I mentioned again, Rob Armstrong is the
biggest and distribution. He's in over three hundred papers, and
he's been doing it for over ten years. And you
want to compare that to the Peanuts or Calvin Howes,
which each which are each in two thousand, two hundred papers.
So there has been no hugely successful black strip in
(28:20):
the over one hundred year history of the medium. So
in that sense, it would the argument would be, you know, no,
it's probably successful in spite of it being a black strip.
The Boondocks is a classic, and black cartoonists, non white
cartoonists in general, are routinely passed over for wide syndication
awards and recognition to this day. Again, for every time
(28:42):
that a comic syndicate has taken what they consider to
be a risk, they take ten boring comics by white
guys about household pets or literally nothing. Finally, I want
to discuss the comic that was most directly influenced and
was originally picked up off of Cathy's success, Lynn Johnston's
For Better or for Worse, launched in nineteen seventy nine
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in the Universal Press Syndicate, partially off the strength of
Kathy's success in that same syndicate, starting in nineteen seventy six.
Johnson was a trained Canadian artist that had worked in
animation and as a medical artist, and got her start
in strips while she was pregnant and drew single panel
cartoon for her obstetrician's office. This collection later got published
(29:25):
as a book called David We're Pregnant in nineteen seventy three,
leading to a contract with the Universal Press Indicate that
was for twenty years. That is some scientology shit. An
early friend and mentor to Johnston was Charles Schultz of Peanuts.
He was also an early advocate for Kathy Guyswighte and
was known to mentor younger comic creators and provide support
(29:47):
for people who were relatively new to the medium. Upon
accepting her twenty year contract, one of the first people
who called Lynn Johnston was wait for it, it was Kathy.
Kathy called her. Here's Lynn Johnston talking about that in
twenty nineteen to interviewer Bob Andelman, I mean, what a
great group of people, and we all got to know
(30:12):
each other quite well. In fact, Kathy was the first
person I talked to. Lee gave me her home phone number,
and she was gracious enough to have a nice long
conversation and sort of tell me how she worked the
way she managed. I mean, coming up with ideas is
the one thing we all ask each other about. I mean,
how do you do it? Where do you do it?
Sparky Schultz used to sit and doodle on yellow legal pads,
(30:34):
but I like to sit on a couch with a
coffee and a pad on my lap. And Kathy said
the thing that helped her the most was to write
vignettes as if she was writing for a play, like
a short, a short, four panel play. And I found
that work the best for me. And you want to
just make clear what Kathy we're talking about. Yeah, the
guys who has done called Kathy for many, many, many
(30:59):
years and also suggested I not call the strip the
Johnston's because she said, I have really wondered if it
was a good idea to call the strip Kathy because
she was so closely connected to it. And really, I mean,
even if the characters look like you or your family's all,
it's all pretty well made up. I love it. I
love Kathy. Okay, for better or for worse follows. The
(31:21):
Patterson family primarily stressed out matriarch Ellie Patterson who is
the wife to Sweetie Pie, dentist John and mother to Michael, Elizabeth,
and eventually April Patterson. In nineteen ninety one, Lynn Johnston
takes a pretty different tack to Kathy guys White when
exploring the anxieties of boomer women, though many of those
anxieties are the same. For Better or for Worse was
(31:44):
much more mellow and realistic in tone than Kathy's more
manic achisms. Ellie Patterson goes through periods of feeling bad
about her body, often postpartum. There's a strip from the
eighties that shows three silent panels of Ellie trying to
put on her pre pregnancy pants, looking at herself in
the mirror, looking at herself in a bathing suit, and
in the final strip, her well meaning husband looks at
(32:05):
a vacation brochure and says, yes, sir, if there's one
thing I'm looking forward to when this cruise were taken,
it's the bood. Ellie looks at him blankly, knowing that
he doesn't get it. I've read quite a bit of
For Better for Worse and I like it. Ellie Patterson
is more or less the woman that Kathy was told
she needed to be. She's a supermom, a loving wife
and daughter who is trying to have a career on
(32:27):
top of it all, and this seems pretty firmly rooted
in Johnston's own experiences as a wife, mother, and career woman.
But Ellie's career is very start and stop, depending on
the state of her family. At the beginning of the strip,
she works as a dental assistant in her husband's office,
then gets a job at a library, loses that job,
starts a part time job at a bookstore, and her
(32:48):
husband eventually buys the bookstore for her to run. Things
end well for her, but unlike Kathy, Ellie is a
family before career woman, not too uncommon for the funny pages,
but again it's Lynn Johnston's lived experience that gives the
strip dimension. Ellie is constantly second guessing her life choices
in spite of being generally pretty happy. Is she not
(33:11):
being a good enough modern woman? Is wanting more for herself?
Inherently selfish, She's by no means a passive, happy housewife.
She's constantly trying and often failing, to find a better
balance in her life. Here's a strip from the early
nineties to that effect. Ellie is returning to work after
having her third child and thinks to herself the following,
(33:33):
I haven't reviewed a book for weeks. I wonder how
my typing is. I wonder if the girl who's replaced
me as doing a good job. Is she doing better?
Do they miss me? I feel lost at work. I
had my identity, I had a title that meant something.
Her daughter, Elizabeth walks up to her desk, says, hi, mom,
(33:54):
and hugs her. Ellie thinks this to herself in the
final panel, and again, maybe I still do. And Lynn
Johnston did more than just the comic strips. She also
served as the president of the National Cartoonist Society in
the nineties. You know that organization that refused to admit
women at all until nineteen fifty one. And you won't
(34:15):
believe this, but she wasn't always treated with respect there.
Here's how she describes her experience with the old Guard
of Cartoonists in that twenty nineteen interview. Well, at one
point I was actually president in National Cartoonists Society, and
they would draw naked pictures of me as I'm trying
to conduct a meeting, right, But I drew a few
naked pictures of my own and got back at them.
(34:37):
But you know, it was hard. They kind of preferred
that I would make them coffee and serve them tea
and not really run the meeting. In the long run, sorry,
in the long run, when it comes right down to it,
we really like each other, We really care for each other,
and I know that they like me. So it's water
under the bridge. But at the time, if you're trying
to conduct a meeting, put that pencil down. Johnston went
(35:01):
on to become the first woman and Canadian to ever
win the Reuben Award in nineteen eighty five, a full
thirty nine years after it started to be given out.
The second woman to win that award was Kathy Geiswhite
in nineteen ninety two. Johnston was also a finalist to
win a Pulitzer Prize for a coming out story that
ran in the comic strip in the early nineties at
(35:22):
the height of the AIDS epidemic, when no other artists
in the Funnies besides maybe Gary Trudell would touch it.
She's spoken out over the years on being a survivor
of child abuse, domestic abuse, and feeling unprepared to have
a child for the first time. For Better for Worse
was a well loved, quietly subversive comic with a well loved,
quietly subversive creator, and the work still holds up. Two
(35:45):
conclude where Kathy falls in boundary push and comics very
much depends on what lens you're using. On the pages
of the Funnies, she represented the beginning of a resurgence
of women in nationally syndicated strips talking about their own experiences,
a surge that hadn't been seen for around fifty years.
If you use women's comics as a yardstick, it's a
(36:07):
reminder that Kathy was far from one of the radical
voices that shaped the underground movement. Again, the role to
Kathy character serves was as an observer of how things
were for women like her at the time, not an
attempt to shift the norm. Okay, Kathy, you can come
out now. You didn't talk about Dalebird? No, I didn't.
I decided to love myself again? Or Ziggy? Is he cool?
(36:29):
We fucked? Don't talk much anymore, Kathy. You really do fuck,
don't you? I really do, I really really do. Okay,
we'll be talking more about the comics and comic artists
who came after Kathy in a future episode, and the
explosion in new voices that came to the forefront when
zines and the Internet became the norm, and how the
(36:50):
Funnies lagged so far behind that they've arguably become kind
of irrelevant in their time and the format where they appeared.
Kathy and for Better or for Worse found their strength
in showing women who were not particularly subverting expectations, but
we're doing their best in a world where they were
never supposed to have at all. But for all the
(37:10):
airtime Boomers were given in the newspapers, they went on
to become one of the country's most despised generations of
all time, by me specifically, but by others too. And
that's what we're talking about next episode, Kathy and the
boomer generation's journey from young radicals to Reagan era yuppies
to a generation that even now can't let go of power.
(37:32):
We'll talk about the generation at large and to a
series of boomer women your Mommy's about their journey in
the workplace, and of course we'll talk to our girl, Kathy.
That's in two weeks on ac Cast. Ac Cast is
an iHeartRadio production hosted, written and researched by me Jamie Loftus.
The show is executive produced by the wonderful Sophie Lichtermann,
(37:54):
edited by the wonderful Isaac Taylor. Music is by Zoe
Blade and our theme from Brad Dickert. Voices you heard
today include my Mother. Also includes Joel Smith, Caitlin Durante,
and Jackie Michelle Johnson as Kathy. This has been the
first half of Act cast. We are taking next week
off for you to just soak it in, and we'll
(38:17):
be back with the remainder of the show a week
from Monday. Bye.
Welcome back to ac cast. I am your host, Jamie Loftus,
and I've made it three whole nights without a large
two D Kathy cartoon appearing at the foot of my
bed and threatening my one human life. We'll take the
winds where we can get them. In Part one of
this episode, we explored the women who preceded Kathy, guyswhite
in the comic strip industry, who were frequently erased, as
(00:21):
well as the radicals who worked in underground comics that's
c O, M, M, I X, thank you very much,
while Kathy was getting her start in the far more
restrictive national funny pages. In Part two, I want to
feature four of her contemporaries, all boomers with one exception,
whose strips had missions similar to Kathy's, with very different
(00:42):
approaches that goal to document the day to day struggles
of the boomer generation. The difference is all about who
is being put into focus on that mission. Our first
artist came straight out of the women's comic scene, far
from the mainstream funny pages. So let's get the theme
song going right. She burst into the world in nineteen
(01:05):
seventy six. She's at what she's out on dates and
she don't like politics from Mama and herb and two
with feminist friends. She's fighting all the stands with some
chocolate and hair. Cathe she's fighting back to stressed with success.
Let's call her some slack oh Cathey my Cathy, fun Cather,
(01:28):
She's gotta like going on. The biggest star to come
(01:49):
out of women's comics was, hands down, Alison Bechtel, who's
now a MacArthur Genius Award recipient. She's the author of
books like fun Home and Are You My Mother? Fun
Home was turned into a huge Broadway musical also, but
that ascent to the top was a slow and challenging one,
and one that women's comics helped lift Early in her career.
(02:11):
She first appeared in issues in the nineteen eighties. Beckdel
established herself as a cartoonist through her independent comic strip
Dikes to Watch Out For, which ran in local feminist
newspaper Woman News beginning in nineteen eighty three and was
eventually syndicated in other all weekly papers beginning in nineteen
eighty five. Most famously, a comic of two characters discussing
(02:33):
the lack of women speaking to each other in popular
movies led to the coining of the Bechdel Test, popular
media metric that requires that two women need to speak
to each other about something other than a man for
two lines of dialogue to pass the test. Some people
we've even started podcasts about this, I've heard. Although it
is just a jumping off point for discussion, I'm sure
(02:54):
it's funny because the context of that comic is two
lesbian characters frustrated that women I ever speak to each
other in movies, meaning that lesbian audience members couldn't ship
them together. So it's also a strip about a lack
of queer representation as well. Anyways, here's Bechdel and an
introduction for a two thousand and eight publication of the
comics entire run, explaining why she started the strip. Readers
(03:18):
seemed to like it and egged me on. But to
be honest, it was so comforting to see my queer
life reflected back at me. I would have kept drawing
these dikes to watch out for just for myself. Let
me tell you, my friends, those were benighted times. Despite
what my mother thought about my lesbianism, being an Outdike
was not an easy row to hoe. We had no
(03:39):
L word, we had no lesbian daytime TV hosts. We
had no openly lesbian daughters of the creepy vice President.
We had personal best and we liked it. I saw
my cartoons as an antidote to the prevailing image of
lesbians as sick, humorless, and undesirable, our model, like Olympic
pent athletes, objective fodder for the mail gays. By drawing
(04:00):
the everyday lives of women like me, I hope to
make lesbians more visible, not just to ourselves but to everyone.
If people could only see us, how could they help
but love us. Dikes To Watch Out For has an
expansive cast of characters who aged in real time for
the twenty five years that the comic ran in a
fictional city whose world reflected the reality of the US
(04:21):
at that time. The comics protagonist is mo Testa, a
radical leftist lesbian who's trying to navigate building a life
for herself while upholding her values. Her achilles heel is
a tendency to complain about everything, and she works at
a lesbian feminist bookstore where we meet most of our
other characters. There's Clarice, an environmental lawyer, and most college
(04:43):
x who's in a long term relationship and eventually marries Tony,
a CPA. They later have a kid together as well.
There's Lois, a drag king who encourages everyone to be
more accepting. There's Ginger, the eternal grad student Sparrow who
runs a battered women's shelter and eventually comes out as
a by sexual lesbian. There's Moe's girlfriend Sidney, and there's Jisanna,
(05:04):
who owns and runs the bookstore. Not only is this
comic really good, it touches on so many issues, issues
relevant to queer people, to women, to boomers in general.
Just like Kathy chronicled the week to week worries of
a number of white, middle class boomer ladies, Beckdel's work
does the same for the lesbian community over the course
of decades, and while Beckdel herself is a white lesbian,
(05:26):
she makes a concerted effort to show the diversity of
her community in race, gender, sexuality, and ability. One of
the early taboo topics that newspaper comics wouldn't have been
able to touch with a ten foot poll was the
AIDS crisis, which Beckdel has her characters talk about frankly
in the eighties and even works to correct some of
the popular myths around the disease. Here's a strip from
(05:49):
nineteen eighty seven with Moe and Lois. Lois has just
had unprotected sex, Mos as Lois, you can't just go
around betting every woman you meet. Haven't you heard there's
an epidemic going on, ah, Mo, relax. Lesbians are a
low risk group. I'm not going to get AIDS from
sleeping around with other women, Lois. Being a doesn't mean
(06:11):
you can't get AIDS. This conversation continues, with Mo overreacting
and demanding Lois b celibate. Lois refuses. Then Ginger shows
up and diffuses the situation by telling Lois that of
course she can have sex, but while gay men were
at higher risk for AIDS, that didn't mean that she
wasn't obligated to practice safe sex. And it all manages
(06:32):
to be funny somehow. It's great Mo and her friends
experience the world in real time. The whole gang goes
to a kiss in to protest anti gay laws at
the Real March on Washington in nineteen eighty seven. Clarice
and Tony struggle to have their union formally recognized four
years whether it's issues allowing Clarice to formally adopt her
(06:52):
son that they have through artificial insemination, or by having
their eventual marriage recognized in states where gay people still
could not marry at that time. Trans characters enter the
story as well. Mo is stupendously turfy at the start
of one storyline that's short for trans exclusionary radical feminist
and they can say it with me flock right off
(07:14):
to hell. In this storyline, a transwoman new to the
bookstore wants to join Moe's book club, and mo Is
hesitant to include her. Lois educates Mo and tells her
that she's being a bigoted asshole, and Mo changes her
perspective much later in the comic. There is also a
trans teen coming out story from the early two thousands
(07:36):
in which Lois's partner's daughter navigates gender dysphoria, coming out
to her mom, and becoming a young transactivist. The economic
trends of these years are shown as well, when the
independent bookstore that everyone works at closes due to a
big box store coming to town. Mo's girlfriend survives breast cancer.
They attend anti war protests for every war that takes
(07:58):
place between the eighties and the late two thousands, so
quite a few. Because Bechtel's characters had all kinds of
different opinions on politics and pop culture, Dikes to Watch
out For was able to challenge schisms within the queer community,
within political parties, within friend groups. Here's a conversation between
Ginger and Lois from nineteen ninety three about their frustration
(08:19):
with white gay men being quicker to be embraced by
pop culture than queer women. Ginger says, news flash. A
recent sex survey of twenty somethings revealed that among men
who fantasize about celebrities, Cindy Crawford and Demi Moore rank high.
Women opt for Luke Perry and President Clinton, while gay
men tapped Markie Mark and Tom Cruise period end of paragraph.
(08:43):
Do you think that means lesbians don't fantasize about celebrities
or they don't answer surveys? How come men get to
be totally queer but women don't. I'm sick of being
portrayed as some straight slob's porno fantasy and on paper,
Kathy and dikes to watch out For sound and are
extreme different, but at their core their goal is pretty similar.
It's for their authors to pull from their own lives
(09:06):
as boomer women to comment on the world around them,
on the changing politics and standards of the US at
the end of the twentieth century. It's their perspectives and
where they published that are different. While Alice and Bechdel,
an outspoken queer, feminist and leftist, could talk about almost
anything she wanted and addressed topics that were still a
taboo in the mainstream, the tradeoff was that less people
(09:28):
would see it, and she would make a fraction of
the money her funny paid colleagues dead. Kathy was always
beholden to the editors of the United Press Syndicate and
the individual papers that carried her work. The trade off
for her more money and more eyeballs. But good luck
if you happen to want to vote for Michael Ducaucus.
The mainstream papers were not ready for Alice and Bechdel,
(09:50):
and certainly not for the women of women's comics, but
they hold a very important place in women's comic art,
and in the case of Bechdel and Trina Robbins, are
finally getting their inside note. Even Alison Bechdeal made a
jab at Kathy and a strip of hers Mo's ex
Harriet is like reading a newspaper in the Sunday Funnies
with a Kathy comic and the four panels Beckdal puts
(10:12):
in our Kathy saying diet by over read ak yeah, yeah,
take a number. That is so insulting. I am so
sorry she did that. Kathy. Alison Beckdale has spoken about
the power of telling one's own story and her similarities
to her protagonist Mo and a talk in twenty fifteen.
(10:33):
I didn't see images anywhere of women who looked like
me and my friends, so I decided I would just
make them myself. Another thing I really liked about working
with words and pictures together was the fact that cartoons
were lowbrow. They were accessible and populist, and they didn't
get scrutinized the way that fine art or literary writing
or criticized in the same way. I was very insecure
(10:54):
as a young person after all those rejection letters. I
always liked being an outsider as a lesbian. It gave
me a certain objectivity about how the world worked that
I would lose if I were on the inside and
benefiting tremendously from the system. But I also, of course
yearned on some deep level to just the normal, to
(11:15):
just have everything. That'd be such a big deal for
my queerness to be seen as normal. Indics to watch
out for. Alison Bechdel and Mo aren't the same person,
but Moe is a tool for Bechdel to say what
she thought. Same guest for Kathy. Guys white and Kathy,
I want them to hang out. I'd consider it. Okay,
Relax now, I want to take a look at some
(11:52):
of Kathy's contemporaries from inside the Funny Pages. All from
the Universal Press indicate Gary Trudeau of Douansbury, Lynn Johnston
of For Better or for Worse, and Aaron McGruder of
The Boondocks. All three of these writers made strides in
the Funny Pages, and as you know by now, it's
not really an easy medium to take strides in. We're
(12:13):
talking mostly about strips that pushed against the norm in
this series, but it's important to remember what that norm was.
It's indisputable that for the majority of American comic strip
history there have been more strips about household pets by
white guys. However, beloved Garfield stand here, than there were
marginalized people working in the Funny Pages. Well, into the
(12:34):
nineteen eighties. Even when comic strips were not actively hostile
to women, queer people, and non white people, they were
disproportionately centered around white boys and men or traditional family values.
Family Circus is a comic that I'm pretty sure is
completely built around white children misunderstanding various words. Andy Kapp
(12:55):
was a character famous for beating his wife. Dilbert had
some commentary on nineteen nineties office culture while also serving
as a proto in cell Beetle Bailey was war propaganda
with gags. Oh, and there was The Farside, which still
fucking rocks. But most beloved strips like Peanuts and Calvin
and Hobbes are classic childhood tales with larger casts, but
(13:17):
centered on the childhood experiences of white boys in the
middle class, which, to be fair, is how Gary Trudeau's
Dunesbury starts. Dunesbury is the rare comic strip that has
been pretty intellectualized since it debuted back in nineteen seventy.
Creator Gary Trudeau is the son of a legacy family
of doctors from Saranac Lake, New York. Went to a
(13:40):
private New Hampshire High School and then Yale, where he
started writing a comic strip called bull Tails, which was
an early version of Doonesbury. While Doonesbury would later become
synonymous with political commentary and satire, it started and in
many ways remained semi autobiographical and pulled from the life
experiences of the people Trudeau was surrounded by. Here's what
(14:03):
he said to PBS News Hour in twenty ten about
the beginnings of Dunesbury. Well, I think what it began
as a kind of diary of my generation coming of
age became the main driving force behind it. It's just
inherently fun watching a generation evolved, to see to see
(14:24):
what it's meant. That's what you've always thought about it.
I'm going to watch my generation evolved, I think. So.
I don't think it was I had quite such a
grandiose take on it. I was just trying to get
through the day and create a series of jokes and
meet a series of deadlines. But I think looking back
on it, that's that's that's pretty much what it became.
It was certainly marketed that way. What's that do you say?
(14:46):
Another comic strip that was a chronicle of boomer life
over the course of decades. In nineteen seventy, at age
twenty two, the Universal Press indicates signed Trudeaux On had
him change the name of the comic from bull Tails
to Dunesbury, and it was off to the races. Dunesbury
began with a relatively small casp that would expand rapidly
(15:06):
in the fifty years that followed, and much like Alice
and Bechdel's characters in Dice to watch out for, Trudeau's
characters aged in real time and some of them even die.
Even as someone who would rather cut my own head
off than hand it an ivy league educated white guy
from a rich family, I do have to hand it
to Gary Trudeau. Dunesbury is maybe the riskiest, boldest work
(15:29):
in the funny pages in the twentieth century. It's pretty
punk and you don't need to just take my word
for it. Aaron Recruiter, creator of The Boondocks, who we'll
be talking about in a bit, has regularly credited Trudeau
as his biggest influence. Its beginnings are pretty innocuous. We
meet Mike Dunesbury, a hippie womanizer of a college student,
b d the quarterback, Mark Slackmeyer, the radical, and Zonker,
(15:53):
the stoner student who joins the football team and pisses
bad off endlessly, so kind of another strip for the boy,
it seemed like at first, but the comic made political
commentary right away. Many of the students at Trudeau's fictional
Walden College were firmly anti Vietnam Smoked Weed, and Trudeau
commented on his strong anti war feelings and criticism of
(16:16):
protest and activism through his different characters. As the comic continued,
the cast widened and became more inclusive to better comment
on the movements that were on fire in the seventies.
Commentary on Black American activism told through the law student
turned congressional candidate Jinny, Feminist activism through Jinny and her
eventual roommate Joanie, who left her husband and children when
(16:38):
Mike and Mark drove past on their motorcycle and offered
to let her live on their commune. Joanie's one of
my favorite characters, and she's featured heavily in the Dunesbury
special from nineteen seventy seven, where we see her working
to make ends meet at a day care center with
a bunch of young girls who were reacting to the
second wave feminist movement and feeding them and picking a
(17:00):
back of them mostping to fight. Yes, but I'm getting
paid for it? How much not? In Nut Honey, the
strip touches on boomer women who were raised to be
housewives discovering their personal power through the character Boopsie b
D's quote unquote cheerleader bimbo girlfriend who goes on to
(17:23):
build a successful career as an actress and remains very
happy in her marriage. B D enlists in Vietnam thinking
he was being patriotic in his early twenties, only to
befriend a member of the Vietcong and questioned the war himself.
Andy Lippencott was an early out gay character in the
comic from Og character Mark later in the strip. In
(17:44):
its heyday, Doonesbury caused a lot of controversy, either for
its political commentary or by representing people who were simply
not accepted by the media of the day. In the
newspaper Funnies a shortlist of Doonesbury controversies, Let's get the
Music started. The Washington Post ran an editorial criticizing Doonesbury
character Mark for calling Nixon guilty, guilty, guilty during Watergate.
(18:08):
Trudeau got in trouble for implying that two forty year
olds were having premarital sex. In nineteen seventy six, he
got busted for criticizing tobacco companies for refusing to acknowledge
the link between cancer and cigarettes. John McCain once said
on the floor of the Senate in nineteen ninety five,
suffice it to say that I hold Trudeau in utter contempt.
(18:30):
When Doonesbury criticized Bob Dole, Hunter s Thompson, Santa Gary,
Trudeau a bag full of his own shit and a classic.
He got in trouble for saying son of a bitch.
So yeah, it was a lot, and there were a
few misfires thematically from Doonesbury, but for the most part,
the strip does a great job at pissing off government conservatives.
(18:51):
So a victim was crime. So yes, Trudeau had dealt
with his comic being moved from the funnies to the
op ed page of newspapers repeat seatedly over his fifty
year tenure, usually when his subject matter went against the
political leanings of the paper it was being printed in,
or upset readers. But you don't have to cry for him.
Trudeau is maybe one of the most decorated comic strip
(19:14):
artists of all time. In fact, he became the first
strip cartoonist to win the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning
for his Watergate series, and was a Pulitzer finalist again
in nineteen ninety, two thousand four, and two thousand and five.
That nineteen seventy seven Doonesbury special I played a clip
of that was nominated for an Academy Award in nineteen
(19:34):
seventy eight. So for all the risks that Trudeau took,
a lot of them paid off, and the strip is
still well regarded today. Doonesbury was so much the intellectual's
comic strip that Kathy Geiswite references it in a strip
from the late seventies of Kathy. Kathy is talking to
Andrea and the strip and says, this man happens to
be very bright. He says he reads Doonesbury every day.
(19:56):
Andrea shrugs and says, big deal. Millions of people read
Sberry every day. Kathy melts, She's like in full crush mode,
and she says, yeah, but he understands it every day.
So this was like smart people content, and I could
talk about Dudesbury for much longer. How Trudeau taking a
hiatus in eighty three and eighty four and returning with
(20:17):
his characters aged up as boomers who would shed their
activists past and become sellout adults. Was completely inspired or
how I can't stand the illustration style, or how early
the strip was to denouncing Trump, or Janie's radical career,
or Mike Doonesbury's turn as a single father, or the
comics pivoting to the millennial children of the original characters
(20:40):
over time. But what Doonesbury does stand for is proof
that the Funny Pages could say a lot in the seventies.
As a white Ivy League guy, Trudeau had less to
lose than many of his counterparts, He took a lot
of risks, He moved the medium forward in many ways,
and he was rewarded handsomely for it. By ninety nine
(21:00):
there had been a lot of boundaries pushed in comics.
Doonesbury made political commentary in The Funny Pages Pulitzer worthy
and inspired many impostors and women cartoonists like Kathy and
Lynn Johnston had found a foothold in the industry and
the money to back it up. But the Funnies were
and always had been extremely white and center liberal, too
(21:21):
conservative in their politics. Enter the Boondocks by Aaron McGruder,
a comic about black socialist nine year old Huey Freeman
and his brother, the gangster rap obsessed Riley, moving to
a predominantly white neighborhood in Maryland with their granddad. Other
characters regular in the strip are Jasmine, a naive by
racial child of lawyers, one black and one white, who
(21:43):
believe in the democratic establishment and are constantly at odds
with Huey, and Michael Caesar, who is Huey's best friend,
also a black socialist, but has a brighter outlook on
the future of the world. And if you haven't read
The Boondocks, which ran in papers with the Universal Press
indicate from nineteen ninety nine two thousand and six, just
turn off the podcast and go read some or the
(22:03):
animated series, which is also great, is streaming on HBO Max.
This is a clip from the pilot of that show,
which is also pulled from the comics. Excuse me, everyone,
I have a brief announcement to make Jesus was black,
Ronald Reagan was the devil, and the government is lying
(22:24):
about ninety eleven. Thank you for your time, and good
night dad. That's the tone of the Boondocks, black radicalism
is in its DNA, and as much as his readers
loved it, old guard comic publishers were afraid of it.
(22:44):
Aaron mcgruder's journey into the newspaper was distinctly gen x.
He began publishing it online at hitlist dot com in
nineteen ninety six, and it was extremely popular. But when
the still college student wanted to take it nationally, he
was met with a ton of resistance from the traditional
comic syndicates. This is from a Washington Post piece on
(23:06):
the topic by Lena O'Neill Parker in nineteen ninety seven,
almost two years before the Universal Press Indicate finally gave
it the green light. Now he wants to take it national,
but things are a little too edgy in the Boondocks
to suit the cartoon syndicators. McGruder has submitted The Boondocks
to seven of the nine major comic strip syndicates and
has gotten some praise and encouragement in return, but six,
(23:29):
including the Washington Post Writers Group, have turned him down
so far. Too angry, too college oriented, one syndicator said,
too confrontational, said another. Amy Lago, executive editor for Comic
Art at United Media says it's a conservative market. There
are complaints among edgier readers or cartoonists who would like
to do edgier material that everything on the newspaper comic
(23:51):
page is milktoast. It becomes very difficult for newspapers to
take chances anymore. Lago says there's too much chance that
enough readers will come playing about the subject matter of
the strip and they'll threaten to cancel their subscription. The
real criticism McGruder believes is that his strip is too black,
and it doesn't seem like McGruder was wrong. All of
(24:12):
the syndicates who rejected the Boondocks told him not to
change a thing. It's just that the world wasn't ready
for it, as if these people had no control over
whether they could syndicate the strip or not. In nineteen
ninety seven, there were only four nationally syndicated black cartoonists,
and those numbers have not improved that much over time.
(24:46):
After years of this rejection and patronizing responses from the
white higher ups who refused to carry a black socialist
cartoon in spite of its huge audience, the Universal Press
syndicate Home of Dunsberry and Kathy, Finally we picked it up.
Unlike Gary Trudeau, Aery mcgruder's journey to being a comic
strip star was met with constant barriers to entry, in
(25:08):
spite of the fact that their missions to talk about
issues that affected them in an explicit and political way
weren't dissimilar at all. But the Boondocks took off in
the papers, immediately criticizing the then massive culture of gangster
rapp through Riley's character, the hollow nationalism and warmongering the
came after nine to eleven, the entire concept of working
(25:29):
within the system and the different ways that Huey, Riley
and their granddad navigated a world of racist, micro and
macro aggressions at school, in their neighborhood, and in the
media they consumed, and McGruder had a lot of controversies
as well. Let's cue the music again. Newspapers pulled a
strip of Huey calling a tipline to report Ronald Reagan
(25:50):
for funding terrorism after nine to eleven. The strip was
also pulled for a calling Condoleeza Rice a quote female
Darth Vader type that seeks a loving mate to torture. Unquote.
Strips got pulled or moved to the op ed section
when Huey criticized black Conservative commentator Larry Elder Beet got
mad when the Boondogs made fun of their repeated failures
(26:10):
to connect with black audiences, and one of my favorites.
There was a lot of criticism of mcgruder's ribbon and
flaggy propaganda comics made after nine eleven to mock strips
that were going whole uncritical nationalists instead of examining the
war that George W. Bush was starting for no reason. Okay,
(26:30):
we can stop the music. And again, there were some
misfires within the strip. For example, the way that the
strip treated Whitney Houston through her addiction was very cruel.
But mcgruder's controversies generally mirror Trudeau's in that they intentionally
pissed the establishment publishing his work all the way off.
But he didn't get the Pulitzers or establishment recognition that
(26:51):
Trudeau had, and given how much racism he'd been subjected
to in the pursuit of getting published nationally in the
first place, it is easy to guess why that may be.
What the establishment couldn't take were the sheer number of
people who loved the comic and Huey Freeman, and much
of this has to do with its successful marketing crossover
into an animated series on Adult Swim that ran from
(27:12):
two thousand and six to twenty fourteen, with mcgruder's close involvement,
including a role as head writer. That was a major
component of mcgruder's choice to not return to the strip
in two thousand and six, in spite of the universal
press indicate begging him to return. Here he is in
nineteen ninety nine, as the comic was becoming a cultural phenomenon.
On Charlie Rose, Sorry, and he's speaking about the challenges
(27:35):
of working in the medium. That's a tough question. I
mean some people said, well, did you get were you
just picked up because it was a black strip? And
is that why it's I'm just positive that's all these
other things first, right, No, I mean, but does it
breakthrough because of that? But you know, I mean, let's
we had you know, this is a it is certainly
a black strip. You know, there is nothing in comics
history to indicate that it is at all benefit to
(27:57):
be a black cartoonist or to do a black strip.
Those cartoonists that I mentioned again, Rob Armstrong is the
biggest and distribution. He's in over three hundred papers, and
he's been doing it for over ten years. And you
want to compare that to the Peanuts or Calvin Howes,
which each which are each in two thousand, two hundred papers.
So there has been no hugely successful black strip in
(28:20):
the over one hundred year history of the medium. So
in that sense, it would the argument would be, you know, no,
it's probably successful in spite of it being a black strip.
The Boondocks is a classic, and black cartoonists, non white
cartoonists in general, are routinely passed over for wide syndication
awards and recognition to this day. Again, for every time
(28:42):
that a comic syndicate has taken what they consider to
be a risk, they take ten boring comics by white
guys about household pets or literally nothing. Finally, I want
to discuss the comic that was most directly influenced and
was originally picked up off of Cathy's success, Lynn Johnston's
For Better or for Worse, launched in nineteen seventy nine
(29:04):
in the Universal Press Syndicate, partially off the strength of
Kathy's success in that same syndicate, starting in nineteen seventy six.
Johnson was a trained Canadian artist that had worked in
animation and as a medical artist, and got her start
in strips while she was pregnant and drew single panel
cartoon for her obstetrician's office. This collection later got published
(29:25):
as a book called David We're Pregnant in nineteen seventy three,
leading to a contract with the Universal Press Indicate that
was for twenty years. That is some scientology shit. An
early friend and mentor to Johnston was Charles Schultz of Peanuts.
He was also an early advocate for Kathy Guyswighte and
was known to mentor younger comic creators and provide support
(29:47):
for people who were relatively new to the medium. Upon
accepting her twenty year contract, one of the first people
who called Lynn Johnston was wait for it, it was Kathy.
Kathy called her. Here's Lynn Johnston talking about that in
twenty nineteen to interviewer Bob Andelman, I mean, what a
great group of people, and we all got to know
(30:12):
each other quite well. In fact, Kathy was the first
person I talked to. Lee gave me her home phone number,
and she was gracious enough to have a nice long
conversation and sort of tell me how she worked the
way she managed. I mean, coming up with ideas is
the one thing we all ask each other about. I mean,
how do you do it? Where do you do it?
Sparky Schultz used to sit and doodle on yellow legal pads,
(30:34):
but I like to sit on a couch with a
coffee and a pad on my lap. And Kathy said
the thing that helped her the most was to write
vignettes as if she was writing for a play, like
a short, a short, four panel play. And I found
that work the best for me. And you want to
just make clear what Kathy we're talking about. Yeah, the
guys who has done called Kathy for many, many, many
(30:59):
years and also suggested I not call the strip the
Johnston's because she said, I have really wondered if it
was a good idea to call the strip Kathy because
she was so closely connected to it. And really, I mean,
even if the characters look like you or your family's all,
it's all pretty well made up. I love it. I
love Kathy. Okay, for better or for worse follows. The
(31:21):
Patterson family primarily stressed out matriarch Ellie Patterson who is
the wife to Sweetie Pie, dentist John and mother to Michael, Elizabeth,
and eventually April Patterson. In nineteen ninety one, Lynn Johnston
takes a pretty different tack to Kathy guys White when
exploring the anxieties of boomer women, though many of those
anxieties are the same. For Better or for Worse was
(31:44):
much more mellow and realistic in tone than Kathy's more
manic achisms. Ellie Patterson goes through periods of feeling bad
about her body, often postpartum. There's a strip from the
eighties that shows three silent panels of Ellie trying to
put on her pre pregnancy pants, looking at herself in
the mirror, looking at herself in a bathing suit, and
in the final strip, her well meaning husband looks at
(32:05):
a vacation brochure and says, yes, sir, if there's one
thing I'm looking forward to when this cruise were taken,
it's the bood. Ellie looks at him blankly, knowing that
he doesn't get it. I've read quite a bit of
For Better for Worse and I like it. Ellie Patterson
is more or less the woman that Kathy was told
she needed to be. She's a supermom, a loving wife
and daughter who is trying to have a career on
(32:27):
top of it all, and this seems pretty firmly rooted
in Johnston's own experiences as a wife, mother, and career woman.
But Ellie's career is very start and stop, depending on
the state of her family. At the beginning of the strip,
she works as a dental assistant in her husband's office,
then gets a job at a library, loses that job,
starts a part time job at a bookstore, and her
(32:48):
husband eventually buys the bookstore for her to run. Things
end well for her, but unlike Kathy, Ellie is a
family before career woman, not too uncommon for the funny pages,
but again it's Lynn Johnston's lived experience that gives the
strip dimension. Ellie is constantly second guessing her life choices
in spite of being generally pretty happy. Is she not
(33:11):
being a good enough modern woman? Is wanting more for herself?
Inherently selfish, She's by no means a passive, happy housewife.
She's constantly trying and often failing, to find a better
balance in her life. Here's a strip from the early
nineties to that effect. Ellie is returning to work after
having her third child and thinks to herself the following,
(33:33):
I haven't reviewed a book for weeks. I wonder how
my typing is. I wonder if the girl who's replaced
me as doing a good job. Is she doing better?
Do they miss me? I feel lost at work. I
had my identity, I had a title that meant something.
Her daughter, Elizabeth walks up to her desk, says, hi, mom,
(33:54):
and hugs her. Ellie thinks this to herself in the
final panel, and again, maybe I still do. And Lynn
Johnston did more than just the comic strips. She also
served as the president of the National Cartoonist Society in
the nineties. You know that organization that refused to admit
women at all until nineteen fifty one. And you won't
(34:15):
believe this, but she wasn't always treated with respect there.
Here's how she describes her experience with the old Guard
of Cartoonists in that twenty nineteen interview. Well, at one
point I was actually president in National Cartoonists Society, and
they would draw naked pictures of me as I'm trying
to conduct a meeting, right, But I drew a few
naked pictures of my own and got back at them.
(34:37):
But you know, it was hard. They kind of preferred
that I would make them coffee and serve them tea
and not really run the meeting. In the long run, sorry,
in the long run, when it comes right down to it,
we really like each other, We really care for each other,
and I know that they like me. So it's water
under the bridge. But at the time, if you're trying
to conduct a meeting, put that pencil down. Johnston went
(35:01):
on to become the first woman and Canadian to ever
win the Reuben Award in nineteen eighty five, a full
thirty nine years after it started to be given out.
The second woman to win that award was Kathy Geiswhite
in nineteen ninety two. Johnston was also a finalist to
win a Pulitzer Prize for a coming out story that
ran in the comic strip in the early nineties at
(35:22):
the height of the AIDS epidemic, when no other artists
in the Funnies besides maybe Gary Trudell would touch it.
She's spoken out over the years on being a survivor
of child abuse, domestic abuse, and feeling unprepared to have
a child for the first time. For Better for Worse
was a well loved, quietly subversive comic with a well loved,
quietly subversive creator, and the work still holds up. Two
(35:45):
conclude where Kathy falls in boundary push and comics very
much depends on what lens you're using. On the pages
of the Funnies, she represented the beginning of a resurgence
of women in nationally syndicated strips talking about their own experiences,
a surge that hadn't been seen for around fifty years.
If you use women's comics as a yardstick, it's a
(36:07):
reminder that Kathy was far from one of the radical
voices that shaped the underground movement. Again, the role to
Kathy character serves was as an observer of how things
were for women like her at the time, not an
attempt to shift the norm. Okay, Kathy, you can come
out now. You didn't talk about Dalebird? No, I didn't.
I decided to love myself again? Or Ziggy? Is he cool?
(36:29):
We fucked? Don't talk much anymore, Kathy. You really do fuck,
don't you? I really do, I really really do. Okay,
we'll be talking more about the comics and comic artists
who came after Kathy in a future episode, and the
explosion in new voices that came to the forefront when
zines and the Internet became the norm, and how the
(36:50):
Funnies lagged so far behind that they've arguably become kind
of irrelevant in their time and the format where they appeared.
Kathy and for Better or for Worse found their strength
in showing women who were not particularly subverting expectations, but
we're doing their best in a world where they were
never supposed to have at all. But for all the
(37:10):
airtime Boomers were given in the newspapers, they went on
to become one of the country's most despised generations of
all time, by me specifically, but by others too. And
that's what we're talking about next episode, Kathy and the
boomer generation's journey from young radicals to Reagan era yuppies
to a generation that even now can't let go of power.
(37:32):
We'll talk about the generation at large and to a
series of boomer women your Mommy's about their journey in
the workplace, and of course we'll talk to our girl, Kathy.
That's in two weeks on ac Cast. Ac Cast is
an iHeartRadio production hosted, written and researched by me Jamie Loftus.
The show is executive produced by the wonderful Sophie Lichtermann,
(37:54):
edited by the wonderful Isaac Taylor. Music is by Zoe
Blade and our theme from Brad Dickert. Voices you heard
today include my Mother. Also includes Joel Smith, Caitlin Durante,
and Jackie Michelle Johnson as Kathy. This has been the
first half of Act cast. We are taking next week
off for you to just soak it in, and we'll
(38:17):
be back with the remainder of the show a week
from Monday. Bye.
Host
Jamie Loftus
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