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Bitchy Bitch

Roberta Gregory creates comics about real women.

By Margarita Rossi

When I was a young girl I read typically “girly” comics: Ritchie Rich, Lil’ Dot, and, of course, the plethora of Archie Comics. But one day, as the cashier was ringing up a bunch of old Betty and Veronica Double Digests and Katie Keens, I looked up and saw a comic featuring an angry woman with wild hair and long pointy teeth. I was 12 at the time, and I had never seen anything like it. Since my mom was with me I asked her if I could buy that too, and without looking up she said yes. What I found inside this weird looking comic would change me forever.

The comic was about a sourpuss called Bitchy Bitch, a bitter woman who liked to complain about the horror that is modern life. I saw something I had never seen before: a woman and her normal every day issues documented in graphic detail. It was also my first glimpse of truly feminist media that made me laugh. This comic taught me that being political doesn’t have to be a chore; it can be a fun expression of who you are.

Years later, I finally got to interview the author of this life-changing comic, Roberta Gregory, at the 2003 Alternative Press Expo (APE) in San Francisco.

Youth Radio: Yours was the first “alternative” comic I read, as a tender seventh grader, and after reading your comic, Bitchy Bitch, I was surprised to find that most alternative comics are really quite misogynistic sometimes, and not very women friendly. The first [Bitchy Bitch] I read was so empowering! So I wanna know if you think your comic is a refuge. What do you think about that?

Roberta Gregory: Well, I basically have just always done the comics that I want to read. I wanted to do a comic that was “in your face” and kinda had a lot to say but kinda said it with a punch, maybe in a slightly amplified way. It pretty much just reflects me, it reflects the way I see things. It’s not like mannered or anything; I’m not like trying to do a genre. I think to answer, that’s just ME in comics.

YR: Do you consider comics a form of activism for you?

RG: Well, it’s a form of expression for me. And I think especially with the political climate the way it is, you almost cannot be an artist and not be political. I think there was just a little item on the news a few days ago about [how] the White House wanted to have a poetry summit or something and once they got poems that were critical of what they’re doing, and anti war, they had to call it off.

People say, “Oh, well, you’re trying to say something” or “You’re trying to change the world, you’re trying to make a statement.” It’s like, well, if you don’t you’re dead. Otherwise you’re just doing Hollywood crap or derivative crap or trying to do yet another hard-boiled detective story with a beautiful blonde. What’s the point of that?

YR: What made you want to express yourself through the medium of comics?

RG: Well, I just always kinda liked comics. I was always drawing and I was always writing — and actually I think of myself as more of a writer who draws. There’re a lot of comic artists who seem to be artists who are trying to tell stories, and then there are people who really seem to blend it really well. I think Donna Barr, who’s sitting right next to me, I think she’s one of the people who really best blends art and writing, she’s a really good writer and also she’s a really fine artist and it works together and everything kind of meshes on her page. I feel that except for some of the more extreme Bitchy stuff that’s kind of very pictorial, I think I’m more of a writer than an artist.

Comics are always cool, I read them a lot as a kid. Some of the first underground comics I saw were Wimmen’s Comics [an underground feminist comic book of the 60s and 70s]… they were women doing stories about their lives, things that were neither just escapist or like superhero stuff, it wasn’t adventure stuff. It wasn’t… a lot of the undergrounds were like, “Boy, I’d just like to get stoned and boff women.” The sort of idealized bad ass life.

And a lot of the women are doing stories of like, getting pregnant and having to get an illegal abortion, or having a friend who’s a lesbian…So I just thought that was really neat. Plus they had all different kinds of styles of drawing. They weren’t all trying to draw like Jack Kirby [an artist who drew Spiderman]. That was really interesting too. I think Wimmen’s Comics inspired Howard Cruz when he was the editor of Gay Commix because he liked what women were doing.

YR: Bitchy Bitch is your most famous character. I’d like to know, what reactions have you gotten? It was probably overwhelmingly good, but can you tell me the reactions you got to Bitchy Bitch?

RG: I’ve gotten all kinds of reactions. Some people just see Bitchy and they laugh and they think it’s wonderful, and some people see Bitchy and they’re horrified. They think it’s all gonna be horrible stories about women doing horrible things to men, or women who hate the world, and all [the characters] do is complain.

Bitchy has a lot of depth, in many ways. Visually and emotionally, she’s actually got a lot to her. Of course a lot of men feel kinda threatened by it [because] she’s an angry woman… I got a lot of letters from men who felt a little uncomfortable because she actually has desires and acts on them. I guess that really blows their minds, it’s amazing. I have trouble realizing that there are still things that upset people out there. Because there are a few things that upset me, but they have to be really extreme.

YR: Do you think that the comic book industry is opening up for women artists? Is it worse, or is there no difference from, say ten or 15 years ago?

RG: I think I definitely see more women here, producing comics and writing comics, especially the small press things. I guess it depends on what you mean by “the industry.” If you mean the really commercial industry like Marvel Comics, I think there are actually more women doing a wider variety [of comics], like fantasy and vampire stories.

I think especially in independent comics (although I wouldn’t really call that an industry, it’s more like an art form, like a paying hobby) it’s so hard to think of what we are doing as an industry, because we are working for the amounts of money we are working for…

At APE right now I seem to see a lot of women that are sitting behind their creative projects and working for other companies. I tend to see more women’s names on the glossy Marvel books, so I think this is a good time for women to get involved.

YR: What about for queer artists? Do you see more queer stories, stories that are out of the mainstream?

RG: I think so. Every so often I will pick up something… I think there was one I picked up out of the blue in a comic shop last night and it was a story about this blonde high school girl and she had a lesbian girlfriend… and that seemed really cool. I was [surprised] because I wasn’t looking in “the gay comics section” or anything. I think there is a lot more opportunity. I think people are a lot more open minded to anything that might not be their particular niche. I think people are much more open to different types of storytelling.

YR: You use part of your comic to have biographies of extraordinary women. They are really interesting to me, I always enjoy that part very much. Why did you decide to do that? And what were your hopes when you decided to devote some of your comic to giving those women a new voice?

RG: I guess Mary Walker inspired me just because I always thought she was a really interesting person. I’d actually read about her because I was trying to illustrate a story for Dark Hearts a few years ago for the Congressional Medal of Honor, she was the woman who won the Congressional Medal of Honor. And I could only find one book about her… it was really interesting. I guess it was [also] ‘cause I had written some autobiographical stories and then I thought, “Why don’t I do some biographical stories about people that are really interesting?” Mary Walker kind of lived life on her own terms, and she was successful in many ways and kind of unsuccessful in other ways.

— Margarita Rossi is a Youth Radio intern. She is a student at City College of San Francisco.