The collections focused on feminism, sex, and sexuality, and many well-known women cartoonists started their careers with their contributions to Wimmen’s Comix. (You can still get original issues for less than $2 from publisher Last Gasp - though if you’re not in the States shipping charges are steep.) Wimmen’s Comix was an important milestone in the history of women cartoonists. The memoir’s gritty seriousness and attention to the most mundane details of caring for aging parents is quite a shift from Farmer’s edgy, explicit early work.įarmer was a contributor to Wimmen’s Comix, the first ever ongoing collection of comics by women, which ran from 1972 to 1992. I wish I’d been more familiar with it myself before I read S pecial Exits, because then I would have been even more blown away by the book. I’ll get back to Special Exits in a minute, but first I want to make sure to tell you about her work from the 70s. Special Exits is Farmer’s first book-length comic, famously praised by Robert Crumb, but Farmer has been an important figure in comics since the 1970s. Outside the world of underground comix enthusiasts, Joyce Farmer is probably best known for her latest work, Special Exits (Fantagraphics 2010), a memoir (though the names are changed) of her experience caring for her parents during the last few years of their lives. Joyce Farmer in Laguna Beach in November 2010.

Special exits by joyce farmer