Last year in Canada, there were two nation-wide campaigns to fight mental health stigma.
The first focused on the financial cost of mental health. It was launched by one of our major banks, and had a slick advertising campaign full of dark colors and statistics. There were multi-page discussions in the national newspapers, as well as multiple bus shelter advertisements driving home the point: Mental illness is a cost to the Canadian economy.
The other, Stand Up For Mental Health, was launched by actual people with mental health conditions. The program is open to people with a variety of diagnoses, and trains them to become stand-up comics, making jokes and wise-cracks about the experience of being mentally ill, as well as other aspects of the lives of the comics. Last year, Stand Up for Mental Health did a cross-country tour to university campuses in the hopes of raising enough awareness to get a Pepsi Refresh Grant so they could get more funding for their work.
I encountered both of these programs at university.
Today I'm sharing the second part of my interview with the delightful Christine Smith, the very talented artist behind webcomics Eve's Apple and The Princess. Check out the first part here, and then read our conversation about The Princess, flipping the script, and feminism after the jump!
Christine Smith is the author of two webcomics, Eve's Apple and The Princess. Today I'm interviewing her about Eve's Apple (EA), a three-year-old webcomic about the titular Eve and her friends, love interests, enemies, and everything in between. Read our conversation about newspaper comics, fat bodies, and Betty and Veronica below!
Rooster Tails is a year-old comic by Sam Orchard in which he "explores [his life as] a simple transguy transitioning in the lower half of the South Island of New Zealand." Sam and his boyfriend Joe are both joyful and thoughtful as narrators, discussing their relationship, their masculinity, and their community. It's a colorful, funny, and optimistic weekly journal comic that I found through his guest strip on previous BTP interviewee RJ Edwards' Riot Nrrd. Find out more about him and Rooster Tails after the jump!
This week, I had the pleasure of interviewing a cartoonist whose transition to webcomics has been rather recent: Gabrielle Bell. She started out self-publishing zines, and eventually made the leap to Alternative and later Canadian comic book publisher Drawn and Quarterly. Her print collections include When I'm Old and Other Stories, two volumes of Lucky,Cecil and Jordan in New York, and Kuruma Tohrimasu. She's also been in several editions of Best American Comics, which is how I first became acquainted with her work.
Sophie Goldstein and Jenn Jordan are the creators of the mythological and mundane webcomic Darwin Carmichael is Going To Hell. According to Jenn: "Darwin Carmichael lives in mythical Williamsburg, the coolest of burroughs, populated by hipsters, minor deities and a host of preposterous creatures. The day-to-day of Darwin's world is much like ours, concerned with making ends meet, dating, and the like." DC is a very fun strip with a fantastic visual sense. Learn more about it after the jump!
We were big fans of Jenny Hagel's last video series Feminist Rapper, so you can imagine our delight when she tipped us off to her latest work, the short film Tech Support, directed by Erik Gernand. If you've got nine minutes to spare this afternoon, why not spend them watching a lesbian comedy about women finding love over a tech support hotline? (Warning: This video may be considered mildly NSFW, especially around the time that one of the women starts tapping out "In Your Eyes" in Morse Code on her stapler. Seriously.) Check it out:
If you care about oppression and social justice and you aren't reading Riot Nrrd yet, you are in for a delicious feminist treat. The relatively new webcomic by RJ Edwards chronicles the nerdy adventures of Wren, Maria, and Sam. The tone of the comic is light and humorous, and the strong character-driven plots make for an addictive archive experience, much like Jeph Jacques' Questionable Content or last week's interviewee Danielle Corsetto's Girls With Slingshots. But the humor is tempered by a constant awareness of the kyriarchal forces that seek to oppress the cast of characters through racism, sexism, sizism, ableism, and cissexism.
This is the second time I've had the pleasure of interviewing the delightful RJ—you can check out my two-part 2010 interview with them here and here. After the jump, you can read their thoughts on the present and future of Riot Nrrd.
Danielle Corsetto is the artist behind the hilarious daily strip Girls With Slingshots (GWS). GWS focuses on the lives of twentysomethings Jamie and Hazel and their social circle. The strip is a lot of lighthearted fun served up daily, much like Jeph Jacques' Questionable Content, with a wide and charming cast and a slightly skewed universe. Though the strip isn't political and isn't perfect, its focus on female friendships places the strip high on what I call the Bechdel spectrum, and makes it popular in the webcomics world.
Danielle lives in West Virginia and works full-time as a cartoonist and illustrator. She's a really friendly and lovely lady, and I had a great time chatting with her. Read what she had to say after the jump!
Hello, and welcome to Bitch's new weekly series on webcomics, Beyond the Panel! I'm Rachel McCarthy James, sometimes known as RMJ. You may remember me from my previous guest-blogging stint here last summer, TelevIsm, or my blog, Deeply Problematic. This time, I'm here to write about webcomics and the people who create them by interviewing cartoonists and comic creators who occupy a marginalized position in society, and reviewing comics through a feminist lens. I'm kicking it off with an interview with Dorothy Gambrell, the writer and artist behind Cat and Girl.
This week, I had the pleasure of interviewing a cartoonist whose transition to webcomics has been rather recent: 
If you care about oppression and social justice and you aren't reading 
