i loved comics as a kid (the archies, little lulu, etc.) but "re-discovering" underground comics (especially those drawn by women) in the early 90s helped me get through a bad time in my life, inspired me and most of all, brought me laughter and a sense of community. i picked up my first julie doucet work --"leve ta jambe mon poisson est mort!"-- probably because i was drawn to french (she's canadian) and was instantly hooked. completely. couldn't get enough. i frantically searched for any stuff i could find (rare copies, signed copies), faithfully loyal to each issue of dirty plotte, and to her, writing fan letters and believing that she understood my inner thoughts. her work is, to say the least, intense, detailed, painful and filled with anxieties of womanhood. over the years, she abandoned comics and focused more on her artwork... i missed her comics terribly and wondered what the switch meant to us and her. julie doucet certainly busted wide open the door for future women cartoonists in a different way than her peers and predecessors (phoebe gloeckner, ariel bordeaux--deep girl, aline
kominsky-crumb, carol tyler and many others). so what next? having abandoned my comics obsession briefly to pursue regular life and then re-igniting it because of my partner, i recently stumbled across her reason for slipping away from her role as underground queen bee... and now i feel at peace. my heroine to the end... "I quit comics because I got completely sick of it. I was drawing comics all the time and didn't have the time or energy to do anything else. That got to me in the end. I never made enough money from comics to be able to take a break and do something else. Now I just can't stand comics... I wish my work would be recognized by a larger crowd of people as more art than be stuck with the cartoonist label for the rest of my life. That's what's killing me about a lot of those comics guys. Dan Clowes is mostly a writer, a great artist, and has tried different things, But a lot of those guys, their drawing style never changes—the content neither—and it seems it never will. I just don't understand that, how you can spend 50 years of your artist life doing the same thing over and over again."
Reference: "A Good Life: The Julie Doucet Interview" by Dan Nadel, published in The Drama, issue No 7 (2006).
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