#wimmens comix

This is an announcement I’ve been hoping to be able to make for a few years now: You can now pre-order the complete Wimmen’s Comix slipcase hardcover collection, coming in September from Fantagraphics! Includes all 17 issues of Wimmen’s Comix and its one-shot predecessor It Ain’t Me Babe.

Wimmen’s Comix ran on-and-off for 20 years, from 1972 to 1992. Launched in reaction to the misogyny and boys’ club atmosphere that pervaded the underground comix scene, it provided women cartoonists (many of them early in their careers) a platform to tell their stories, from the very personal (such as Lora Fountain’s “A Teenage Abortion”) to the fantastic (like Sharon Rudahl’s science-fiction “Tale of Satvia”).

Literally all of my favorite women cartoonists from this era appear in these comics, including Dori Seda, Phoebe Gloeckner, and Shary Flenniken, and it is indeed where I discovered most of them. Later issues featured some of the defining voices on independent comics in the 1990s and beyond, including Lynda Barry, Alison Bechdel, Jennifer Camper, and Julie Doucet.

Now if only someone would pick up Action Girl Comics for reprint…