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Jackie Ormes wasn't just the first black syndicated newspaper cartoonist. She was the only black female cartoonist of her time and for decades after that.

Girl Comics Issue #1, a collection of comics written, stenciled, and illustrated completely by women, hit stores yesterday. It's one of three anthologies to be released this year by Marvel Comics. It's actually part of a year-long project of "Marvel Women," celebrating female characters and creators alike of one of the top comics publishers. It's also been wracked with controversy since its December announcement.

Eve Ning of Octopus Pie Independent webcomics are, generally speaking, a lot more interesting than the comics you can read in the newspaper – they have the space and the freedom to experiment artistically and tackle controversial or niche subjects, and women aren’t as underrepresented. After the jump, a few current comics written and drawn by women that are worth checking out.

It’s the well-worn, short-yet-storied line that’s become nearly cliché: “I’m not a feminist, but…”—one that’s now some kind of standard midpoint in our culture’s endless wrangling about the F word. Now “I’m not a feminist, but…” is being re-examined via comics in the forthcoming anthology The Big Feminist BUT, edited by Suzanne Kleid, Joan Reilly, and Shannon O’Leary. The anthology, which has a website, features comic artists’ takes on what the editors call the “contradictory ‘post-feminist’ playing field” we’re (apparently) living in today.

Page Turner interviewed O’Leary to learn just what it is about that big but that irks her and her co-editors, whether she thinks we really are living in a “post-feminist” playground, her picks of the best comics for comic-obsessed feminists, and (yes, it exists) sexism in the comics world. Read on for more!

You don’t have to look further than “Girl Fuck: An introduction to girl-on-girl lovin’” to see that Erika Moen is all about sex, and completely unafraid to talk about it. The 16-page zine is a starter course for those clueless in non-hetero girl sex, and includes some guidelines from Gender Bending 101. Her work is in the Best Erotic Comics of 2008 and her comic “Silver Bullet” was in the second True Porn Anthology, another erotic comics collection.
But her work isn't all tits and wiggles (rhymes with shits and giggles? No? Okay). Her 2004 self-published “I like Girls” is Moen’s intensely personal story on falling in love with a girl for the first time and the intimidating task of telling her family. Read on for cunts, cartoons, and controversy...NSFW what!