DTWOF: The Blog

If you’re curious about how the DTWOF characters handle the election results (or lack thereof), you’ll have to wait until December 1, when episode 454 comes out. I just finished and sent off episodes 452 and 453, which are scheduled to run during the weeks of 11/3 and 11/17 respectively. Because I had to write these well before the election happened, they obviously could not be about the election. I couldn’t even write about the pre-election anxiety we’re all seething with, because that’ll be old news by 11/2. This was a frustrating prospect, like not being allowed to mention the elephant (or please god, the donkey) in the living room. In the end, I decided to use these two episodes to do some much needed exposition. I’ve devoted so much space to the depredations of the Bush administration lately that I’ve been neglecting the characters’ lives and relationships.

Alison says she's going to post something later, but in the meantime, here are some links to another awesome feminist cartoonist blogger, Mikhaela Reid. If you haven't seen her work, do check it out. Mikhaela draws political cartoons for the Boston Phoenix and for Bay Windows. Her work also appears in Women's eNews, In These Times, Ms., and the Funny Times. She was featured, along with Alison and some other kick-ass strip artists, in Ted Rall's recent book, Attitude II: The New Subversive Alternative Cartoonists. As you can tell by her blog, she's clearly more web savvy than either of us.

Did you know October 13th was National Freeway Free Speech Day? Check out FreewayBlogger.com for some inspiring examples.

I had a fun time speaking at Dartmouth yesterday. I delivered my getting-rather-old rant about being ghettoized as a lesbian cartoonist. "Why can’t I be just a plain, generic cartoonist," I whined. "Just because I write about drag kings and dildos and transgender children. I mean, what’s the big deal? I’m writing about my world just like Garry Trudeau writes about his, and no one calls him a heterosexual cartoonist." I read from a bitter cartoon essay I wrote for The Stranger a couple years ago,"Oppressed Minority Cartoonist," to punctuate my premise. Afterward, I was somewhat chastened but delighted to learn that James Sturm was in the audience. He is a.) one of the founders of The Stranger, b.) a great graphic novelist, c.) not a lesbian, and d.) the director of the Center for Cartooning Studies, an absolutely amazing 2 –year cartooning program that will be starting in the fall of 2005. Also in the audience was Ana Merino, an academic and poet who does a lot of theoretical writing about comics. She included some of my work in an exhibit that she curated last year called Comic Release. And she’s on the board of directors of the Center for Cartooning Studies. So the presence of these comics luminaries kind of shut me up about the “oppressed minority cartoonist” shtick. I've decided that the secret to being plain and generic is to just act like you're plain and generic.

Alert readers may have noticed that the DTWOF website hasn't been updated in a while. Rest assured, new items are coming soon. In the meantime, you can read the latest strip on Planet Out. Or you might actually go off-line and read it in a newspaper, like they used to do in the olden days.