“The way I draw is how I express myself. . . . Friends asked if I should have collaborated on these biographies with someone who draws realistically. . . . But then I wouldn’t have wanted to read it!”
–Pete Bagge
First Pete Bagge rejoins the show for a live Spotlight session at CXC – Cartoon Crossroads Columbus. We talk about Fire!!: The Zora Neale Hurston Story, his shift from fiction to nonfiction comics, his interest in feminist icons who didn’t ask for permission, dealing with cultural/gender appropriation issues in writing about women of color, expressing serious moments in his funnybones cartooning style, going through male menopause, making a living, and why he hasn’t made any Buddy Bradley stories in a long time. Then, we get a few segments from my CXC spotlight session with Mimi Pond, where we talk about her creative process, sexism in comics, and what she misses about the ’70s. Give it a listen! And go buy Fire!! and The Customer is Always Wrong!
“As long as you’re in your chair in front of your drawing board, there’s more of a chance that you’re gonna make a mark on a piece of paper at some point.”
— Mimi Pond
Alternative comic creator Pete Bagge is best known for the 90s comic series, Hate, featuring the semi-autobiographical antihero Buddy Bradley, whose adventures have been collected in two volumes: Buddy Does Seattle and Buddy Does Jersey, both from Fantagraphics. Bagge has also created three graphic novels: Reset, Apocalypse Nerd, and Other Lives. The journalistic strips Bagge has done for Reason have also been collected into a book entitled Everybody Is Stupid Except For Me. More recently, Bagge has written and drawn a full-length biographical comic, Woman Rebel: The Margaret Sanger Story, from Drawn & Quarterly, and a collection of short biographical strips, Founding Fathers Funnies, from Dark Horse. His newest book is Fire!!: The Zora Neale Hurston Story, from Drawn & Quarterly. Peter Bagge lives in Tacoma, WA with his wife Joanne and two darn cats.
Mimi Pond is a cartoonist, illustrator, humorist and writer. Her graphic memoir, The Customer is Always Wrong, was recently published by Drawn and Quarterly. It is the long-awaited 400 pages+ sequel to 2014’s Over Easy, which detailed her post-art school waitressing career in the late 1970s in Oakland, CA. Over Easy garnered a tremendous critical response, a place on the New York Times Best Seller List, the PEN Center USA award for Graphic Literature Outstanding Body of Work, and an Inkpot Award from Comic Con International in San Diego.
Pond has created comics for the Los Angeles Times, Seventeen Magazine, National Lampoon, The New Yorker, and many other publications too numerous to mention, along with five humor books. She has also written for television: her credits include the first full-length episode of the Simpsons in 1989, and episodes for the television shows “Designing Women” and “Pee Wee’s Playhouse”. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, the painter Wayne White.
First Pete Bagge rejoins the show for a live Spotlight session at CXC – Cartoon Crossroads Columbus. We talk about Fire!!: The Zora Neale Hurston Story
Mimi Pond is a cartoonist, illustrator, humorist and writer. Her graphic memoir, The Customer is Always Wrong
