A History of Women Cartoonists

By Mira Falardeau

In this volume, Mira Falardeau looks at the work of great women artists and their experiences in the industry to reveal advice and positive encouragement for future cartoonists. Heavily illustrated with cartoons and artwork from many of the best in the field, the book also asks serious questions about why there have been so few women cartoonists in the field of visual humor and if the digital age is opening more opportunities for female humorists. Falardeau is uniquely positioned to ask these questions. She has spent decades as an art historian, a specialist in visual humor, and the author of several books and essays on cartoonists and their history. She was also a former cartoonist herself—among the first generation of women in her field during the 1970s and 1980s. A History of Women Cartoonists is the first book to offer a truly global survey and analysis of the great women cartoonists of the last three decades—and a welcome addition to the history of comics and cartoons.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mosaic Press
• Release date: Aug 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781771613521

Book preview

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INTRODUCTION

Laughter belongs to men, and smiling belongs to women.

—Judith Stora-Sandor

Where did the idea for this book come from? It arose from a question that is often raised at roundtables on caricature, comics and on many other occasions: Why are there so few women cartoonists? Eventually, the question turned into an obsession. Since the situation is almost identical in animation film, a related medium, we can broaden the question to include three areas: political cartoons, comics and animated films. Why are there so few women in these areas?

What could be so wrong about the combination of cartooning and women? How is there is such a discrepancy between the laughter of girls and women in private and their laughter in the public sphere? Every girl and woman have an extensive memory of laughter as a getaway or diversion at all stages of life: jokes, stories, crying, laughing about everything and about nothing. What prevents transmitting this feminine way of laughing to the general public in the form of drawings or images? Many researchers and research groups have already paid a lot of attention to women’s humorous speech in literature, song, theatre and the art of monologue, but very few seems to have looked at the question in the light of cartooning in general.

Does part of the problem lie in the well-known stereotypes that surround the image of women and attitudes that persist in spite of the advances of feminism? An overview of the most prevalent ones can be informative, especially in the light of remarks made by key stakeholders, namely the women cartoonists and animators themselves. The testimony of the artists themselves is fundamental to our understanding. Does the same discomfort continue to exist in the minds of women with regard to the cartoon as with regard to politics? How can the tide be turned? Data is given² on the presence of women in the fields of visual humour. It shows that they now account for only 4% to 7% of all cartoonists and directors of animated films. These low numbers are clearly sufficient to justify our research.

The choice of associating caricature and animation film with comics comes from Gérard Blanchard,³ author of the famous La bande dessinée (Comics) (1968), the first real history of comics in French, who had constantly insisted on the links between these three forms of art, explaining how their languages are neighbours.

First of all, the heart of this book consists of fifty portraits of women cartoonists in the United States, Canada and French-speaking Europe. We consider the two major cultural empires in cartooning: on the one hand, the United States and on the other hand, the Franco-Belgian world. We will also discuss Canada, which is a good example of the mix of these two cultures, with a special section on French Canada or Quebec. The choice of speaking specifically about Quebec is guided by the fact that it is a francophone province whose culture exists mostly through European culture⁴.

The selection of the women authors were made because we believe they are the most iconic by the extent of their work, the recognition associated with it, the originality of style and the strength of their work. Two-thirds of the creative women discussed in this book are part of the baby boomer generation that benefited from the second wave of feminism in the 1970s in their early days, who has persistently continued against all odds until now. The last third presents portraits of younger women who seem to be rising stars. Some drawers from the Middle East and North Africa are completing the picture. It seemed essential to us to lift the veil on certain forms of censorship and give voice to the women cartoonists of those countries, with a common French or English comic culture, that are currently in full Cultural Revolution and where the Web plays a predominant role.

We do not touch on manga or Japanese comics because it is a world in itself, fascinating, but very different from the others. Artists whose work is only for children and youth are not included either. It is not our intention to draw an overall picture of the situation or to give a complete list of the main women creators in North America and Francophone Europe. If that were the case, we would have to talk about hundreds and hundreds of women artists throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries. This book is therefore not an anthology, but rather an ode to fifty women whose careers can serve as examples. The portrait of each of them based both on her artistic approach and quotations of her own words, giving us an insight into her creative journey.

Women artists are grouped by country because the dynamics change according to the context of creation. In fact, it is the first research conducted about both French and American women cartoonists. Three American authors paved the road. First, Trina Robbins with her six essays⁵ on the subject of American women cartoonists. Secondly, Liza Donnelly with her two books about women cartoonists in The New Yorker magazine. And recently, Hillary L. Chute, published Graphic Women, an essay about five women cartoonists with a consistent theoretical introduction.

Each section of this book opens with an history that has a dual purpose: to present the general approach by which women cartoonists have found their place in history and to put into perspective the behavior of both U.S. and European empires in blocking the entry of women cartoonists. As well as the typical approaches taken by small countries in the wake of major cultural movements. It is essential to identify critical moments and see how women have benefited from or been excluded from major cultural movements and find out how they have surfed the highs and lows of attitudes about their presence.

Experiences of positive reinforcement have given conclusive results. So, we give three examples that have encouraged creative women from three different cultural backgrounds: the cartoon world of the American magazine The New Yorker, political cartoon world for the international association Cartooning for Peace and finally animation films produced by the National Film Board of Canada.

Visual humour is understood here in the sense of creating humorous images on paper or web pages (political cartoon or editorial cartoon of a figure or a political situation, cartoon on a general theme, comic books, comic strips) or moving images (cartoons, animated films, using various techniques, and web animation). Visual humour forms a group of expressive arts that were born and have evolved together. The word cartoon comes from the French word carton, which refers specifically to the cardboard on which the drawings are drawn. The idiom of humour in English and French is similar; both languages use the same vocabulary, have a common history and constantly exchange words and meanings. The Web does not stop this osmosis; it magnifies it. For example, you can now watch animated cartoons on newspaper sites, on blogs and on the websites of artists. The corollary is that artists often work in two of these neighbouring arts during their careers, and a lot of combinations exist.

Before embarking on our journey through the world of women and cartooning, a fundamental point must be emphasized. When we asked for permission to reproduce works, several artists questioned the relevance of including works which are not amusing. The artist who chooses any form of expression chooses it in relation to the message, but also, sometimes unconsciously, in relation to his or her own sensitivities. For example, an artist who chooses to expose incest through comics or animation film does not want to provoke laughter in the literal sense. Rather, the purpose is to denounce the problem, by using an approach whose inherent lightness makes it possible to confront a situation that would otherwise be too odious to discuss by using another expressive idiom. Besides, elliptic language for showing drama or hard messages subtly engages the reader. The apparent lightness of the words and of the lines of the comics process remove some hidden boundaries in the readers’ minds. Cartooning gives the opportunity to touch the imagination and transform attitudes. This is precisely the function of committed humour, and that is the kind of women’s works that will be studied in this book.

One cannot help but see cartooning as a supreme form of freedom that is still not allowed in some countries. It is certainly not a coincidence that the cartoon as we know it today was born during the appearance and expansion of democracy in parliamentary governments, in the late 18th century and throughout the 19th century. It is not a coincidence either that some countries or religions still maintain very aggressive attitudes about caricature and cartoon humour, as evidenced by the recent case of the Muhammad cartoons and Charlie’s attack. What about the intransigent attitude of the leaders of some countries in relation to the presence of women cartoonists? In the mirror of these women’s courageous experiences, Western cartoonists see a disturbing reflection that sends an important message to them: freedom of speech must never be taken for granted.

2 See annexe 1: Data at the end.

3 Gérard Blanchard has been our intellectual guide since our first meeting in 1975 until his death in 1998, following us in our research, commenting on each of our manuscrits, we have a deep esteem for that predecessor. Our first course in Laval University in 1975-1977 called Humour visuel, caricature, bande dessinée et dessin animé, was in that vein.

4 In addition, another reason is that the author is resident of Quebec.

5 Complete references are provided in the bibliography.

AMERICAN

WOMEN

CARTOONISTS

HISTORY

At the dawn of the 20th century, the United States was a kind of laboratory for ideas and innovations that shook the entire planet. Women’s place in this vast maelstrom was fundamental: in half a century, they passed the state of halfpersons, unable to manage their own lives, to full persons, self-sufficient with same rights as men.

The history of American women cartoonists is representative of the avantgarde social movement that shook the Western world in the 20th century. This movement, like any big change, had its ups and downs. These steps forward and backward punctuated the progress and setbacks in the place of women in the Western world as cartoonists and directors of animated films. This trend of ups and downs is not unique to the United States of America, it is found in most of the countries studied.

It is not a coincidence that Americans were the first to welcome women cartoonists in their newspapers: they were at the vanguard of illustrated daily newspapers. Indeed, at a time when people were still quite illiterate and when much of the potential readership came from immigration, popular cartoons had an undeniable appeal as they were understood by all. Cartoon films often linked to famous comics also attracted huge crowds and played an important role in the homogenization of the population.

Early in their history, Americans developed a pronounced taste for daily newspapers richly illustrated by editorial cartoons, humour drawings and comics. In addition, women’s pages appeared at the same time in most newspapers, peppered with enticing advertisements suggesting women adopt the new modern lifestyle that all embraced at the beginning of the 20th century. It was, therefore, a great chance for women cartoonists to be recruited with pleasure by newspaper owners, who saw them as a clever way to reach female readership.

But, according to gender bias that still survives today, editors had biased points of view regarding the presence of women cartoonists in the press. For a long time, they believed that a drawing made by a woman was more interesting to women or should involve only women. They also believed that women were supposed to be the only ones who should draw for kids. Inevitably, women’s drawings found themselves in women’s pages or in youth-dedicated pages in major newspapers.

That new language of comics, with boxes for different stages of action and bubbles for words, was gradually settling into American newspapers: the first comic strip was Outcault’s Yellow Kid in 1896 and between 1900 and 1910,everyone began to publish comic strips. As women cartoonists adopted that language, they were strongly encouraged to depict babies and children in their drawings. The family strip was becoming one of the major instruments used by newspapers to reach a wider public.

Comics

Beginnings

Galloping progress in the world of printing allowed newspapers to put together photographs, drawings and texts on the same pages. Major newspapers deployed their imagination and competed to attract readers. Drawers gradually took an important place in this boiling context and women cartoonists were seen as an advantage by major newspapers as they attracted a readership largely composed of women and youth.

Kate Carew, Autoportrait, 1910. All rights reserved

According to our current knowledge, Kate Carew (Mary Reed Chambers Williams) (1869-1961) was one of the first women to publish cartoons in the United States. She started very young, at the age of twenty, in 1889 in the San Francisco Examiner, then from 1890 to 1901 in the New York World. In 1900, she drew caricatures of personalities from cultural life, such as Mark Twain and Sarah Bernard. She was called the only woman caricaturist. Later on, she was best known for her comic The Angel Child (1902), the story of a little girl going through much bad luck. Subsequently, she turned to arts’ journalism and to painting.

Edwina Dumm (1893-1990) was the first American woman holding an editorial cartoonist’s position at the Columbus Daily Monitor in 1916. For her part, the American Rose Cecil O’Neill (1874-1944) was the first woman cartoonist to achieve fame in North America with a comic strip, thanks to her famous Kewpies (1905), chubby little cherubs depicted in all forms and ancestors of derivatives. From them, the comics style with babies or very young children swept over the entire cartoonists’ production during the decades of the 1910s and 1920s. My mother told me she was reading them in Ottawa during her childhood. These babies with pink cheeks precluded Campbell Soup babies, designed by one of these women cartoonists, Grace Drayton (1877-1936). The Kewpies launched a movement, and nothing stopped it.

Between the two World Wars of 1914-1918 and 1939-1945, it was the beginning of a kind of golden age for women drawers. As the century progressed, we saw more women cartoonists in the women’s or youth’s pages in the multitude of dailies blooming everywhere in North America. Styles were repeated under different signatures. Most of these women were feminists and supported or participated personally, like O’Neill, in the 1910s movement for the promotion of women’s suffrage, which was called the suffragette movement. Following this protest movement, women gained the right to vote in 1920, in the United States, well before most other Western countries, except Canada (in 1918, but only at the federal level). Women in the province of Quebec won the right to vote in 1940 at the provincial level; in France: 1944, Switzerland: 1959, and Belgium: 1920 (the municipal vote) and in 1948 (full voting rights).

American women then tasted the fruits of their victory. They were able to vote, but they also learned the taste of freedom. Liberated American women started to work; they were earning money, wearing short dresses, coming out of the shadows, dancing and having short hair. Liberated women were called flappers and girls rushed to this trend with enthusiasm.

Ethel Hays (1892-1989) was known for a strip, probably the first autobiographical comic strip. It was the story of a modern girl named Ethel, the style was art deco and well-rounded, with solid blacks and strength scrolls. Then, in 1924, she created a second series, Flapper Fanny, another girl mocking conventions and having a different look. Then, from 1930 to 1940, Hays worked on children’s books.

Grace Drayton, Dimples, 1914. All rights reserved

These early female comics were intended for a readership of girls moving away from old conventions and embracing modernity. These were marked by backward-looking glances: long robes, Raphael-ite faces and hair, children dressed in past-century clothing. Later, new works by interwar cartoonists showed women smoking, going out alone, and debating. We could easily guess how these creations affected contemporary women.

Gladys Parker (1910-1966) took over Ethel Hays’ series Flapper when Hays stopped working to start a family. This pattern was the same for every woman at work. Most women cartoonists were leaving the profession after getting married in order to follow a well-established social convention which continued into the 1960s, as I had noticed in my own entourage. As a consequence, women cartoonists did not constitute a formal group, but a succession of girls replacing each other once they had acquired art techniques. This point seems trivial, but it is actually important to understand why professional women cartoonists were rare in this area throughout the first half of the 20th century. That trend was probably one of the reasons why no particular group of women cartoonists had grown up during these times. Groups in artistic fields are often sources of solidarity and mutual assistance in art creation. We will see later that male groups were very useful in the creation of the first comics magazines.

Parker already started Gay and her gang (1928-1929) in the same tones. What is fascinating with Parker is that her heroine, Mopsy (1939), was her image and looked like her physically. Female characters’ fashions spread, and several cartoonists depicted their alter ego dressed in the latest fashion, following the same scheme as pioneers: black and white solid areas and scrolls in the style of decorative arts at the service of new ideas about the place of women, but still with stereotypical gestures.

Nell Brinkley, Blue-Ribbon Winners, 1915. All rights reserved

In this line, Nell Brinkley (1886-1944) launched a style of illustrations whose voluminous wavy hair and endless curls influenced an entire generation of women cartoonists.

World War II brought more social concerns into comic themes, after the Great Depression (1929-1933) years where comics’ trend of poor working children and street urchins flourished. Finally, a famous heroine germinated under the brush of a woman: Lulu (1935), born from the pen of Marge (Marjorie Henderson Buell, 1904-1993). In 1950, Lulu became a daily strip, but was no longer drawn by Henderson at that time. Indeed, we must not forget that in the United States, because of the syndicates, the characters belonged and still belong to newspapers and not, like in French-speaking countries, to the artists. Thus, many artists may take turns in the development of the adventures of a hero or heroine during their careers, and a hero may himself often under several signatures during his existence.

In comics’ world, at the early days, around 1930, women held the roles of colourists and sometimes inkers. In the other industry of visual humour, animation film, the situation was the same for women, who also had an essential, but subordinate role, as will be outlined below. When the United States entered the war in 1941, comics were involved in the war effort through various patriotic themes and heroic adventures situated in the thick of battle. Male artists’ departure to war from 1942 onwards pushed companies to hire women to replace them. Creative women moved into this world with their heroines. Several women artists shined during this period. Thus, Gladys Parker arrived with her Mopsy that had an amazing appearance in the rather harsh world with her comic trademark. Mopsy joined the Armed Forces in 1944. Another great artist, Dale Messick (1906-2005) created Brenda Starr, reporter (1940), opening the way for active women heroines in comic books’ adventures, with their distinctive style and own ideas on all fashionable subjects. This trend inspired artists in other countries and active heroines appeared in the ‘50s in comics’ magazines for girls, for instance in France, Bernadette, Line, and in Quebec, Claire. In April 1941, Tarpe Mills, born June Mills, was the first woman to sign a costumed major action heroine, Miss Fury. She had to change her name because It would have been a major letdown to the kids if they found that the author of such virile and awesome characters was a gal.⁶ The next year, in 1942, Miss Fury had her own comic book at Timely Comics (later Marvel Comics).

One cannot fail to mention the arrival of the first black woman in the world of newspaper cartoons and American comics. Jackie Ormes (1911-1985) drew from 1937 to 1956 and made herself known with Torchy Brown, Candy and Patty-Jo’n’Ginger that she published in the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender.

Backlash

Once the war ended, women were suddenly disillusioned. In all spheres of activities where they had valiantly replaced men, they were simply thanked and asked to return to their kitchens to give way for the men returning from war. To make the pill easier to swallow, but also because it needed an economic boom, the industry invented a new stereotype, the housewife. This movement was visible throughout the Western world. The United States once again was the figurehead of women’s return back home. For women of that period, a golden world was built, with all the new electronic machines, washing machines, vacuum cleaners and television sets used as bait. The consumer society was born. The American way of life became the entire world’s dream. American comics that swarmed around the world played a significant role in this evangelization (Robbins, 2001; Donnelly, 2005).

The emergence of new women artists was sparse in the world of comic strips and comic books world during the 1950s and 1960s. This slow trend was also seen in the cartoon world (Donnelly, 2005). As Robbins (2001; 76) pointed out, the end of the war changed the status of women artists in comics: In the world of comics, where women have been working since 1901, the back to the kitchen movement took a different form. Although women continued to draw lighter strips through the ’50s, the men took back action comics. (...) The women had stopped drawing action strips.

After the heroic period of early comics, where each woman drawer who invented a style or a character deserved a mention, a second era started which their gains should have been the foundation for a more solid structure. But that was not the case. Women found themselves in the minority, confined mostly to a realistic comic romantic style, drawing without much personality, or simply not signing their own works. As we have seen, the dispersion of skilled artists as they got married, coupled with a stiffening of mentalities, did not favour female expression. Consequently, there are no big names remaining from this period.

But the world of comics after the war was expanding, and women cartoonists did not remain passive. The breaking point was reached when one of the great woman cartoonists of the 1940-1950s, Hilda Terry (1914-2006), author of the comic Teena, a sassy teenager, was denied admission to the National Cartoonists Society because of her sex. In 1949, she sent them an explosive letter in which she wrote:

Following this outcry, she became the first female member of the Society together with Edwina Dumm and Barbara Shermund. Terry later turned to the world of animation where she was in the forefront of computer animation. But the world of animation is even more reluctant to the presence of women artists than the world of comics, as we will see later.

The Wimmen’s Comix

During their return home, housewives were not inactive: it was the post-war baby boom. The beat generation movement, born in the 1950s on the west coast of the United States, was followed during the 1970s by a whole generation of baby boomers questioning their parents’ values. The contraceptive pill, an influx of girls in university, initiatory or tourist trips’ fashions: the Western world was undergoing a cultural revolution and the situation of women was rapidly changing towards gender equality.

As the protest movement spread on campuses, the new watchword was freedom: sexual first, and then in attitudes, helped by the use of soft and hard drugs. Music and comix erupted under these new values—nothing was taboo or controlled. Major humorous magazines like Mad (1952-) set the tone of unbridled satire and Help (1960-1965) with the crazy cartoonist Robert Crumb (1943-) created a new excessive genre. These magazines were quickly exported in Europe as well as in the rest of America causing quite a stir. With Zap Comix in 1967, Crumb and his friends launched a comix trend: often published by the author, without any control of censorship, these small underground