I had the good luck to meet Liza Donnelly, cartoonist and Vassar professor, at the Omega Institute a few weeks ago and she had the generosity to send me a couple of her books: Funny Ladies: The New Yorker's Greatest Women Cartoonists and Their Cartoons and Sex and Sensibility: Ten Women Examine the Lunacy of Modern Love...in 200 Cartoons.

Funny Ladies is literally an illustrated history. If you're a New Yorker fan, you'll love it. If you think the New Yorker is elitist and stodgy, you might prefer Donnelly's Sex and Sensibility. In any case, I loved what she wrote about women and humor in the introduction:

Some theorists believe that women humorists are more often storytellers than joke tellers, more interested in communication than in presenting cleverness. This has perhaps been true because of the marginal position of women's humor. However, as humor from women has become more acceptable in society, as it is today, such statements of difference no loner ring true. Huguette Martel believes all cartoonists are "moralists," and Alice Harvey sought "to be true."

Nothing says it better than the medium itself. Check out these goodies:

"Just a warning: I'll leave you if you ever take up wearing suspenders."

"I hope my meteoric rise in the company isn't just because I am a man."

1 Comments

October 9, 2008 4:21 PM

[0+]  Misspelled said:

One of the things I've always liked about cartoons is that you usually can't tell from that little scribbled signature whether the artist is a man or a woman. It makes some of the ones about gender, sex, dating, etc., a lot more interesting. Especially so since the format has its unique little place under the umbrella of comedy and there's such a hangup in the comedy world over "male" vs. "female" humor.

So thanks for this post. At least one of those is definitely going on my Christmas list.

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