…and a busy one. But first, what did I do for Christmas? I danced! At ODC, the Oberlin Dance Commons, to be exact. My tap class and my hula class performed there in December, mainly for an audience of friends and relatives (We’re not yet ready for
Broadway) and here we are. In the tap photo, the guy in the middle is our teacher, Bruce, and the guy in the middle of the hula girls is not our teacher: he’s Robert, the only guy in the class, so of course he gets to be in the center. I love tap and hula and will never stop dancing!
FEAR OF BLOGGING IS HAPPY BECAUSE…
Back in 1974, underground comix editor and publisher Denis Kitchen and Stan Lee (Yes, THAT Stan Lee) collaborated to publish a series of underground comix anthologies in magazine format, funded by Marvel Comics (Yes, THAT Marvel Comics). The series lasted 5 issues before going under, and now Denis’ Kitchen Sink books has reprinted the best of the collection. Last month the Best of Comix Book collection was selected as one of “Amazon’s Best Books.” Here’s the Amazon link:

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I was a contributor to that series with my Panthea stories, which are included in the book, along with the first comic I sent in for publication, which was rejected. I was a strong feminist (Still am, duh!) and a struggling single mother, so that story, “Wonder Person Gets Knocked Up,” was inspired by my life at the time. Trouble is, I was so naive at the time that I had not realized that most of the characters I was satirising — Wonder Woman, Batman, Plastic Man — were part of the DC universe, and Stan Lee did not want to get sued. My originals hung around the Marvel offices for quite a few years when somebody (not naming names!) “found” the pages, took them home, amd offered them up for sale. I found out and got in touch with Jim Shooter, who got them back for me. Now you can read my previously unpublished, rejected (with good cause!) comic, “Wonder Person Gets Knocked Up,” in the Best of Comix book, and it still holds up. Reading it after all those years, I really like it! AND THIS MONTH…
You can find me at the San Francisco Writers Conference,(https://sfwriters.org/) over President’s Day weekend (February 13th to 16th), at the Mark Hopkins Hotel. I’ll be speaking about graphic novels for teens and tweens on Friday at 4:30, and about research on Saturday, 4 pm. I love these conferences! There are always so many panels I want to take in that my chief frustration is when 3 panels I want to see are all scheduled at the same time – or worse, at the same time as my presentation. Aargh! Plus, the Mark Hopkins is a glorious historic hotel and a grand place for a conference. If you come to my presentations or run into me on the floor, please stop and say hello; I am always up for a coffee break at the conference’s Cafe Ferlinghetti.
AS FOR PRETTY IN INK…
I presented a talk about the book in December at the Cartoon Art Museum, and will be talking about it some more in March: first at Toonseum, the world’s cutest comics museum, in Pittsburgh, (http://www.toonseum.org/exhibits.html) on March 20th, and at
PIX, the Pittsburgh Indie Comic Expo, on Saturday March 22nd:

http://pixcomics.blogspot.com/p/pix-guests.html

then on March 27, at the main branch of the San Francisco public library from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. If you’re in the area of Pittsburgh or San Francisco, come see me and learn stuff you probably didn’t know about early 20th century women cartoonists.
Many of you know that I possess the world’s largest collection of original comic art by early 20th century women cartoonists, and in March you’ll be able to see selections from my collection (many not included in “Pretty in Ink”) at Toonseum ( it’s already there — opened on January 4th!) and at the SF public library. From April 27 through August, a large chunk of my collection will be at the San Francisco Cartoon Art Museum. But more on that later.
Ooh, ooh, wait, one more thing! And on March 1st at 2pm, I’ll be on a panel at the Marin Theater in Mill Valley, where they’ll be performing a new play, “Lasso of Truth,” all about the creation of my favorite superheroine, Wonder Woman, from February 20th
through March 16th. And here’s the link: http://marintheatre.org/productions/lasso/