Comix #2: Phoebe Gloeckner

I'm following up the first, more mainstream comix artist profile up with one that's a little more underground. A literal living hero of mine is Phoebe Gloeckner (b. 1960)  and her past cannot be summarized adequately with texts and photos of her work. Her book 'Diary of a Teenage Girl' is an absolutely quintessential read for all women and anyone interested in 60s/underground/SF history. She's currently a professor at University of Michigan and I would absolutely love to be in one of her classes (where they draw Crumb panels and MAD magazine pages). Her father was an artist too although she grew up with her dysfunctional mother and younger sister. Her adolescence and young adulthood in SF, while vividly unreal and insane, set her up for a successful comix career. When she was a teenager, Crumb would come to her house and look at her sketchbooks and write comments in them. She's a freaking amazing comic artist and story teller. As a young artists, her DIRECT influences were The Bunch (Aline Kominsky Crumb) and Diane Noomin etc and she has been published in Wimmin's Comix and Weirdo among tons of other underground mags. She has a medical college background in medical illustration and does amazing anatomical drawings. All of these elements together: artistic influences as a child, her immersion in underground 60s Comix culture, her unbelievable personal experiences and her professional medical education as an artist, make her an incredible influence and her honesty makes her a powerful and real hero.

Early Work, 1976

Later work, 1994  Her semi-autobiographical character Minnie

Untitled, 1990

I seriously suggest checking out her books 'Diary of a Teenage Girl' (Which I hear they're making into a play) and 'A Childs Life'... the latter has a lot of full color medical drawings and some rock posters and that sort of thing. Also the aforementioned Weirdos, Wimmin's Comix, as well as Twisted Sisters, Young Lust and I HIGHLY recommend the Comic's Journal #261 (2004) interview by Gary Groth with her is really great. She was also on PBS' P.O.V. (2006) in response to Hergé's work.