Drawn Out Adventures
Two generations of lesbian cartoonists are "Dykes to Watch Out For."

Author Dorothy Alison once remarked that if the media's portrait could be believed, there existed a disproportionate percentage of talented musicians and athletes among the lesbian population. She forgot to mention comediennes and cartoonists. Until the 1980s, however, lesbians -- like feminists -- were not noted for a sense of humor.

Cartoonist Alison Bechdel has been a wry commentator on the lesbian lifestyle for the past fifteen years with her popular, syndicated strip, Dykes to Watch Out For. In these panels, her tightly rendered heroines, Mo, Lois and their P.C. gal pals, have hurtled through the rapids of politics, Doc Martens, artificial insemination, anti-depressants and relationships, creating an uncannily accurate chronology of modern gay society. In "The Indelible Alison Bechdel," her eighth collection of cartoons from Firebrand books, Bechdel combines a retrospective of her work with some short essays on the genesis of the strip, its characters and her successes (making a living as an "out" cartoonist) and failures (trying to market T-shirts and mugs at the Michigan Women's Music Festival).

Most of this truly humorous material is culled from previous books and calendars. Perhaps the most amusing chapter of the book is a visual time line of characters and events spanning the past 10 years. For readers unfamiliar with her work, this graphic history is a sort of Dykes to Watch Out For Cliff notes. While for long-time fans, it serves as a somewhat embarrassing refresher course on what they've been doing for the past decade.

If Bechdel is the perceptive watchdog for her generation of lesbians -- the one that spawned TV's Emelda Marcos of loafers, Ellen De Genres, and rock mom Melissa Etheridge -- Ariel Shrag may well fill those same shoes for gay pubescents. A Berkeley, California high school student, Shrag has published two comic novels about her adventures as an out, lesbian teenager.

"Definition" is the autobiographical saga of her sophomore year and "Potential" follows her escapades as a junior. Shrag's eponymous main character who is obsessed with chemistry, the band No Doubt and particularly its singer, Gwen, struggles with adolescent angst, sexual encounters with both genders, what to wear, and the ever important obsession of youth: where to get booze.

The drawings in these books are as whimsical and sophisticated as the stories themselves. Whenever Shrag's characters are drunk, for instance, they are drawn in a distorted manner, suggesting their state. While dream sequences are depicted in an ultra-realistic style, distinct from her normal cartoony mode. Within the context of high school and all its confines, Shrag's self-revelation is extraordinary -- living in Berkeley notwithstanding. Judged outside this milieu, the work still stands on its own. This is a girl with a lot of "Potential" who's body of work could very well deserve its own retrospective in ten years

Appeared in "Santa Fe Reporter" April 15, 1998 © Suzanne Rush 2001

A Girl's Guide To Taking Over The World
Writings From the Girl Zine Revolution
Edited by
Tristan Taormino and Karen Green
St. Martin's Griffin

"When I think of how much benefit my teenage self could have gained from the multitudes of zines that have proliferated over the past decade, I weep for all the lost potential. Except for Joan of Arc and Anne Frank, the thoughts of teenage girls have rarely been taken seriously."

So begins, performance artist Ann Magnuson's, introduction to "A Girl's Guide to Taking Over the World, Writings From the Girl Zine Revolution." Edited by Karen Green and Tristan Taormino -- zine publishers themselves -- this compilation of articles, artwork and interviews from "girls'" zines across the country is a showcase of previously self-published works by a variety of mostly young, American women.
With excerpts from Xeroxed-and-stapled publications with titles like "Rollerderby," "Diabolical Clits," "Pasty," "I [heart] Amy Carter" and "youtalkingtame?," "Girl's Guide's" diverse collection of unedited writings on women, by women, shows that the energy of the punk revolution lives on in zines.

The works culled vary in length, content and quality, from well-written short stories like "Jesus Kick," to half-baked fan rantings like, "I just met Tori Amos..." Consistently amusing are the zine covers the editors have chosen to reproduce.

This is the second anthology of zines released in the past month by a major publisher. The fact that they have "discovered" the zine phenomenon probably signals the end of these homemade magazines in much the same way that the record industry's interest in punk music turned subversion into big- budget, assimilationist new wave.

"Knowing that someone is listening makes all the difference," says Magnuson, about being a writer and woman. However if you're truly interested in supporting raw, undiscovered female voices, pass up this book (for which none of the authors were paid) and instead buy a real zine, like Santa Fe's own, woman-published "Are We There Yet?".

Appeared in "Santa Fe Reporter" September 3, 1997 © Suzanne Rush 2001

In the Spirit of the Ancestors
The Kappmeyer Collection of Native American Art
John Krena with Allison Bird-Romero
Photography by Marcy Holquist
Four Winds Publishing Company

"In the Spirit of the Ancestors," is a tribute to Keith Kappmeyer's life-long love affair with Native American art. It is also a visual chronicle of the best Indian art of the twentieth century.

Over the past 25 years Kappmeyer has amassed an inimitable collection of 450 Indian artifacts. This handsome book, divided into chapters on pottery, kachinas, painting, weaving, photography, metalwork, basketry and sculpture, catalogs his collection while providing a succinct running narrative about the artists, history and culture behind the individual objects.

The collection on these pages never fails to delight as each piece is of a quality seldom found in one assemblage. Unerringly refined taste characterizes this vast treasure trove, from the turn-of-the-century Navajo pottery of Nampeyo to the brilliantly beaded Pomo gift baskets to the abstract paintings of Tewa/Santa Clara artist, Helen Hardin. The sculpture portion, while not as broadly representative as other parts of the collection, is of particular depth. Here, Kappmeyer has gathered many pieces from relatively few sculptors including: the polychrome clay figures of Virgil Ortiz, Michael Naranjo's bronze works, and the highly individualistic, multi-media work of Haozous.

The photography and design of this book are as stunning as the collected objects themselves. Clean expanses of white on the oversized pages highlight individual works in the reverent manner of a museum presentation. Though the lack of photo captions makes identifying the pieces a hunt-and-peck affair of reading through text on adjacent pages, this does allow the book to retain its simple flawless lines.

Published in conjunction with an exhibition of the Kappmeyer collection being held at the Erie Art Museum, June 28-Sept 29, 1997, "In the Spirit of the Ancestors," is a beautiful memento of the show and the artists it honors.

Appeared in "Indian Artist" Fall 1997 © Suzanne Rush 2001

Sun Dancer
by David London
Simon & Schuster

From the first page of "Sun Dancer," to the end, author David London holds the reader rapt with his suspenseful tale of modern Sioux on the Pine Ridge reservation.

Protagonist, Joey Moves Camp, is a Vietnam war veteran. He is plagued by the imaginary voices of schizophrenia and the realities of alcoholism and hopelessness on the reservation. As the book opens Joey, his brother and friends, are stealing a cow to prepare a feast for his mother's funeral.

The funeral is to be a traditional one where the body is wrapped and left on a platform for the elements to decompose. This sacred rite is thwarted by a military invasion of FBI agents and reservation pastors who end up desecrating the grave and sparking a rebellion - not unlike the way the Rodney King beating sparked African Americans to riot a few years ago.

The Indians, led by a revelation Joey's brother Clement Blue Chest receives during the ritual sun dance, and encouraged by an excommunicated white priest, Quinn Bacon, plan a hunger strike. They stake themselves, literally, to Mt. Rushmore, in the heart of the Black Hills -- "Paha Sapa," their most sacred religious site -- in a non-violent attempt to get a message to Congress and reclaim their land.

Joey is a somewhat unwilling participant in this action. In love with a white woman, he's unsure of his place in either society - and he doesn't see the point in possibly martyring his brother. Bacon, however, is convinced Blue Chest is is a modern appearance of the Jesus spirit.

"As long as men have been oppressed, they've longed for messiahs to arise. But the deliverance is never total, never global - it would put an end to history - so you have the eternal recurrence instead."
Once on the mountain, things go about as well for Blue Chest as they did for the prophet from Galilee. The Indians' plans unravel through poor planning, fate and the virulence of the FBI.

London serves up history in this novel like medicine crushed up and mixed with jam. It becomes palatable but still leaves a bitter aftertaste. The history of the U.S. aggression, genocide and broken treaties with the native Americans is only now beginning to be fully revealed 100 years after the Wounded Knee massacre. But like the tragic legacy of slavery in the U.S., recognition of culpability has been slow and remedies remain sorely inadequate. Sadly, London shows us that the Native Americans in "Sun Dancer" -- living in poverty on arid reservations -- are no better off now than when General George Custer helped to finish off their traditional way of life in 1876.

Appeared in "Cowboys and Indians" September 1997 © Suzanne Rush 2001

Flaming Iguanas
Simon & Schuster
$18.50
and
Lap Dancing for Mommy
Seal Press
$14.00
by Erika Lopez

Truly Righteous Babes

The new Batman and Robin movie, which opened nationwide last week, finally introduced a female role model into the anatomically correct, rubber-clad super clan: Batgirl. Though Batgirl rides a motorcycle like a butch Banshee, delivers vehement speeches about why Poison Ivy, the seductive bat nemesis, is giving women a bad name with her 1950s vamping, and finally saves Gotham City with her computer expertise, she only gets to kick some righteous butt at the end of the film for a few minutes. Even then, the filmmakers have her beating up Ivy, the only other significant female in the movie.

Hollywood will probably never make a movie about Tomato Rodriguez, Erika Lopez's half-German-half-Puerto Rican-Quaker-bisexual-artist-biker, but she'd be a more inspiring paradigm for the millennial girl than most we've seen thus far. Lopez's hilarious illustrated novel, "Flaming Iguanas," follows Tomato's adventures as she travels cross-county on a motorcycle from Pennsylvania to California on an old Yamaha.

When she and her traveling buddy, Magdalena can't concur on what to name their biker gang - the Flaming Iguanas or the Snowballs - they compromise and decide to each represent their own gang of one. It's better than facing the idea of going alone. As Tomato admits, "Getting someone else to do something with you makes it seem more real/legitimate. This is especially true for masturbation. You don't brag about how much sex you're having by yourself and how frisky you get with yourself once you get your period. No. You keep it to yourself as if somehow it doesn't really matter because you were alone."

Tomato buys a used motorcycle jacket and begins to embroider her moniker on it only to discover, "you're supposed to embroider on something soft first.

"I only got the letters F-L-A-M on my jacket before I got something like carpal tunnel syndrome and the skin on the tips of my fingers was like ground beef."

With FLAM emblazoned on her back and fear pounding in her heart, she and Magdalena take off to conquer America astride. Of course, things don't go as planned, and Tomato is left on her own to face the relentless freedom of the open road.

"Ever since I was a kid I'd tried to live vicariously through the hocker-in-the-wind adventures of Kerouac, Hunter Thompson and Henry Miller. But I could never finish any of the books. Maybe because I just couldn't identify with the fact that they were guys who had women around to make the coffee and wash the skid marks out of their shorts while they complained, called themselves angry young men, and screwed each other with their existential penises."

Like the other Erica before her, Lopez, with biting humor and casual insights, takes on modern psychology and sexual roles in what amounts to a "Fear of Flying" for the '90s.

"I've been in therapy half my life," claims Tomato, "and you know what? I found the more you are aware of anything, the worse off you are in the long run because you have to live with yourself. As far as I can tell, there are no prizes for having your shit together. At its best, you can talk about how fucked up other people are with an air of authority and you can scare the shit out of yourself at night with the thought of growing old alone and right."

"Flaming Iguanas" is written in a conversational style regularly punctuated with everyday profanities (including sight gags like a picture of two melons on the page opposite a description of her "huge Latin-American breasts"). Unlike too much modern fiction which relies on brand name-dropping and television references to evoke contemporary America - like a series of literary commercial soundbytes - 26-year-old Lopez molds the cliches of her generation to her own ear.

In the end, as in all good stories of personal transformation on the road, Tomato survives the highway system, a one-night stand with two Canadians named John, and 2,000-miles-long of howling loneliness. Stronger and smarter, though insect-splattered, Tomato arrives in San Francisco transformed and ready to begin her new life - designing a line of artistic dildos.


Artistic dildos seem to be one of Erika Lopez's preoccupations. A cartoonist with a weekly strip in the "San Francisco Bay Times," Lopez treats the reader to a series of her artistic penis renderings in "Lap Dancing for Mommy, Tender Stories of Disgust, Blame and Inspiration." In this, her second book to be published this month, the multi-talented Lopez presents the Exorcist penis (with spinning head), the painted macaroni and yarn penis and the JFK penis (assassination scene), to name a few. Her kooky feminist drawings and swirly insights allow Lopez to remove the inherent nastiness from sex toys, by pointing out their innate absurdity.

"Lap Dancing for Mommy" is a showcase for Lopez's cartoon work. In these graphic essays the words and images appear in inverse proportion to those in "Flaming Iguanas." Lopez takes on men, women, feminine hygiene, 12-step groups, co-dependence, "the other woman," bi-sexuality, pornography and, of course, sex toys. The last story in her book, "Camaro Joe and Tina," tells the tale of a man who falls in love with a blow-up sex doll - until she develops some "needs of her own." "Lap Dancing for Mommy" is angrier and more idiosyncratic than "Flaming Iguanas," but it covers much of the same ground and works as a visual companion piece to the novel.

If the diluted women of "Batman and Robin" are any gauge, 21st century Hollywood is not quite ready for smart-kinky-exuberant-female-righteous-babe, '90s archetypes like Erika Lopez's. But there is a place for Lopez while she awaits her development deal. Can't you just picture that Batgirl dildo with the the detachable cape and ears (motorcycle sold separately)? And what about the Thelma and Louise dildos (shooting into Grand Canyon). Oh and how about a Marilyn Monroe dildo (dead on her bed with an autographed picture of RFK)? There's plenty to do while we wait, eh girls?

Appeared in "Santa Fe Reporter" July 2, 1997 © Suzanne Rush 2001

Saddlemaker to the Stars
The Leather and Silver Art of Edward H. Bohlin
James H. Nottage
Gene Autry Museum of Western Heritage and
the University of Washington Press

Edward Bohlin's Western craftwork is legendary. For sixty years he designed and produced some of the most beautiful and revered cowboy gear in the world. His hand tooled saddles, spurs, clothing and accessories have been worn by every major cowboy actor and stylish ranch hand since he opened his first shop in Cody Wyoming in 1920. Saddlemaker to the Stars is an opulent visual tribute to this Western artisan.

A Swedish immigrant, influenced by the Buffalo Bill Cody Show, Bohin came to America in 1912 to become a cowboy. After several years as a hand on Montana and Wyoming trail drives, Bohlin's real talent for craftsmanship began to assert itself.

In 1922 he came to Los Angeles. As legend would have it, when cowboy star Tom Mix saw Bohlin's calfskin jacket, tooled bag and silver-mounted alligator boots, he bought them off Bohlin on the spot. The barefooted but solvent Bohlin had found the first really lucrative market for his extraordinary work.

He opened a shop in Hollywood that year, and prospered at various neighborhood locations until his death in 1980. His talent for self-promotion was as great as his talent for design and a growing group of Hollywood friends ensured that his great sliver-mounted saddles and gear would set the fashion for cowboys in films, and later television, for several decades.

Saddlemaker to the Stars, mainly a pictorial remembrance, gives us a hint of the man behind the showy facade. Reputedly a perfectionist with a bad temper, he paid his workers low wages -- at one point even busting their attempts at unionization for a ten-cent-an-hour raise. In his Cody days he was arrested for assault, and later in Los Angeles, during some lean business years, he tried to defraud the IRS. This taste of the unseen history makes one wish for a more comprehensive biography.

The heart of this salute, however, is the lush color photography of Bohlin's life work. Like with Picasso, this art will be revered long after any revelations about the character of the artist.

Appeared in "Cowboys and Indians" July 1997 © Suzanne Rush 2001

Gut Symmetries
Jeanette Winterson
Alfred A. Knopf, $22

Years ago a friend described Jeanette Winterson's writing to me. Reading her books, she said, was like walking into a dark cave with only a flashlight, and every place you pointed the beam illuminated another hidden jewel buried in the rock. I promptly fell in love with my friend for this lyrical description, and a week later -- after I'd read "The Passion" -- with Jeanette Winterson.

In "Gut Symmetries," her fifth novel, Winterson revisits the frailties of the heart with her characteristic intensity and gifted mastery of language. Under her steady gaze, the banal become beautiful and the weakly human rise to the heights of the humane. Her writing has often been called magical-realism, but more precisely it is simply magic.

Appeared in "Santa Fe Reporter" June 1997 © Suzanne Rush 2001

True Women
by Janice Woods Windle
G. P. Putnam's Sons, $22.95

In 1984, when Janice Woods Windle began researching her genealogy to include in a family cook book, she had no idea she would instead, end up with a novel. "True Women," Windle's debut tracing 160 years of Texas history, is the result of this labor of love. It's a job she claims she would never have undertaken if she'd known it would take a decade to complete. If Windle's ancestors - her characters in "True Women" had fully understood the harsh realities of the Texas frontier, they may never have left their civilized homelands either.

"True Women" is divided into three main sections tracing the lives of Euphemia Texas Ashby King, Georgia Lawshee Woods and Bettie Moss King (Windle's great, great grandmother and both great grandmothers respectively). The first section about Euphemia and her gun-toting sister Sarah Ashby McClure, is by far the most interesting. Windle's ancestors keep the farms, feed and bury their children, fight the Indians and Yankees and start the philanthropic organizations. Survivors of death and suffering themselves, these Southern women develop a surprisingly modern spirit of equality, respecting both Native and African Americans, and standing against the Ku Klux Klan.

As the book progresses, Windle's characters are decreasingly well-drawn. This is most apparent in her flat descriptions of men, who are always riding off to war after impregnating their wives, "like badly written characters in a play." However,"True Women" as a chronicle of Texas women and their place in that state's history is a competent, if not stylish page-turner.

The Windle matriarchy and women like them truly tamed and won the west in epic fashion. Its no surprise then, that Hollywood has jumped on the wagon train with a "True Women" TV-movie, the kind of adaptation for which this book is immenently suited. Windle has also completed the cookbook she began so long ago, which is now available illustrated with photographs from the CBS mini-series.

Appeared in "Cowboys and Indians" May 1997 © Suzanne Rush 2001

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