Intrepid artist Erika Moen tries out a different sex toy each week for Oh Joy Sex Toy and illustrates the result. This week: the shocking Intensity vibrator.
Check out more Oh Joy Sex Toy comics, including a review of an adorable vibrator and the best lube ever.
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Intrepid artist Erika Moen reports on a different aspect of sex each week in Oh Joy Sex Toy. This week gets a little sweet as she details going home for the holidays.
Read more Oh Joy Sex Toy comics on topics like a copper IUD and an electro-shock vibrator.
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This year, comics fans have talked a lot about the persistent problems in the industry. People who create and love comics have taken on sexual harassment at conventions, policing of who’s allowed to call themselves a geek, lack of queer characters in comics, publishers’ tendencies to publish few books by women creators, and badly drawn, sexy depictions of female characters, among many other issues.
The best way to talk about comics is through comics. That’s why we’re so excited to announce that we’re partnering with comics collective Ladydrawers to publish online a series of six comics about easy steps the comics industry could take to embrace a more diverse fan base.
The title of the series is simple: Don’t Be A Dick.
Starting in January, six different comics artists will each create a strip with writers Janelle Asselin and Anne Elizabeth Moore about an aspect of the comics industry. Bitch last collaborated with Ladydrawers for the winter 2010 Confidential issue, when they put together a six-page spread about gender politics among people working in the comics. Here's one page:
Anne Elizabeth Moore spells out what to look forward to in Don’t Be a Dick:
Our January strip will be an introduction to the wild world of comics terminology and all its various interpretations. Comic books vs. Graphic Novels, corporate vs. independent vs. creator-owned, direct market vs. bookstores—we discuss how all these terms apply to comics with our requisite amount of sass. This first strip will be drawn by comics superstar Katie Cook, perhaps best known for her webcomic Gronk and her work on My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.
In February we’ll tackle the entire history of comics! This will include creatorship, content, marketing, and demographic information from early comics until now, particularly as it applies to women and girls. It’s drawn by webcomics artist and co-writer of Image’s Alex + Ada, Sarah Vaughn who has an encyclopedic knowledge of romance comics in addition to mad art skillz!
March will bring everyone’s favorite discussion—content issues in comics! We’ll include looks at publishers both large and small, plus tips on what folks who aren’t men might want to read (hint: they like a lot of different kinds of things!). Genderqueer comics and fine artist Rachel N. Swanson will be adding their unique touch to this strip — more of their work can be found here and in other Ladydrawers projects including Hand Job and Unladylike.
April’s big at Ladydrawers HQ: Writer Janelle Asselin and Anne Elizabeth Moore celebrate birthdays, which means everyone must celebrate all month long. Including you! So we’ll present a how-to guide for keeping comics free of women, trans, and non-binary gender fans! In case that’s helpful to you. Comics crappiest marketing gaffes will be thoroughly examined and mocked with the assistance of artist Sarah Benkin whose “bawdy, body-positive comic” Star Power is currently available on Etsy.
Our May strip will focus on the art of buying comics. We’ll include tips for retailers on attracting that elusive non-18-35 year old straight white male, plus explain comics distribution to the lay-person. We’ll also be taking a look at how marketing and distribution work together to help or hurt comics. Ladydrawer fave Melissa Mendes will be adding her awesomeness to this strip—more of her work can be purchased here, but if you haven’t read her most recent addition to “Our Fashion Year” on Truthout you’re actually missing out on an Internet sensation.
Our final strip, in June of 2014, will look at how to sell to women and trans-folk—marketing tips and ways to not be a dick while expanding your consumer base. This super-important strip will offer real actions people in all areas of comics can take to make the industry a more welcoming place for everyone. Tess Fowler will be drawing this one — you can check out her gorgeous work here.
Keep an eye out for these six nonfiction comics starting next week.
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Welcome to Don't Be a Dick, The Ladydrawers' in-depth look at the comics community and gender diversity, presented in partnership with Bitch Media. Over the next six months, we'll publish a series of six Don't Be a Dick comics about the comics industry, all written by Janelle Asselin, edited by Anne Elizabeth Moore, and drawn by six great artists.
The Ladydrawers Comics Collective (AKA “The Ladydrawers”) is an unofficially affiliated group of women, men, transgender, and non-binary gender folk who research, perform, and publish comics and texts about how economics, race, sexuality, and gender impact the comics industry, other media, and our culture at large.
We're in the middle of a year-long a series at Truthout called "Our Fashion Year" that looks at the international garment and sex trades, and we've toured the UK and Southeast Asia—with plans for heading to Northern Europe next month—talking about our work. You can keep up with us, find out how to get involved, our look over the upcoming Don't Be a Dick artist's roster here.
Artist Katie Cook is best known for her work on IDW's "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" series. She's also done licensed work for DC, Marvel, and Lord of the Rings, and is behind the popular webcomic Gronk. And she has a new baby!
From little houses on the prairies of Nebraska and Iowa to the posh Chicago suburbs to the mean (gentrified) streets of Brooklyn to sunny Glendale, California, Janelle Asselin has carried her nerdity everywhere with her. Janelle has been a video gamer for at least 26 years, a comics fan for 20 years, and an editor of comic-type things for seven years. She's worked at comic shops, comics news sites, and comics publishers like Fangoria Comics, DC Comics, and Disney. She's written a book about selling comics to women and has a weekly column at ComicsAlliance.com featuring female creators on the rise.
Born in Winner, South Dakota, cultural critic Anne Elizabeth Moore founded the Best American Comics series for Houghton Mifflin and edited The Comics Journal before fostering the insanity that is The Ladydrawers. She's also a prolific writer of word-books including Unmarketable (The New Press), Cambodian Grrrl, and New Girl Law (Cantankerous Titles). Her work has appeared in The Baffler, Jacobin, Al Jazeera, and Salon, and she is the comics editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books.
And now! Here is the first comic in the Don't Be a Dick series:
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Each week on Oh Joy Sex Toy, intrepid artist Erika Moen delves into a different aspect of sex and reports back with a hilarious comic. The week she takes on the DeLight vibrator.
Check out more Oh Joy Sex Toy comics, including one about the copper IUD.
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Artist Erika Moen tests out sex toys and illustrates the hilariously NSFW result. This week on her Oh Joy Sex Toy column: a futuristic sonic vibrator.
Check out more Oh Joy Sex Toy comics, including a super cute vibrator that could double as a desk toy.
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Each week, artist Erika Moen explores some aspect of sex and reports back on the result for Oh Joy Sex Toy. This week: The internal condom!
Read more sex-positive comics by Erika Moen, including one about a Star Trek-worthy vibrator.
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Welcome back to Don't Be a Dick, The Ladydrawers Comics Collective's in-depth look at comics and gender diversity, presented in partnership with Bitch Media.
This is the second in a series of six Don't Be a Dick comics about the comics industry, all written by Janelle Asselin, edited by Anne Elizabeth Moore, and drawn by six great artists. Today's strip will take a look at the history of comics (spoiler alert—it wasn’t always a male-dominated industry!)—and if you missed our first installment, do check it out here!
About the creators:
The Ladydrawers Comics Collective (AKA “The Ladydrawers”) is an unofficially affiliated group of women, men, transgender, and non-binary gender folk who research, perform, and publish comics and texts about how economics, race, sexuality, and gender impact the comics industry, other media, and our culture at large. We're doing another series at Truthout called "Our Fashion Year," finishing up our documentary Comics Undressed, and travelling the world talking about gender and race diversity in comics. You can send us samples of your work or look over the Don't Be a Dick artist's roster here.
Sarah Vaughn has moved around so much in her life that it's shortest just to say she's from America. Her love for vintage romance comics began in Fort Wayne, IN when she spent more time at her local comic shop reading than working, and her entire collection is due to searching for the one issue that slipped through her fingers. The former artist for the webcomic Sparkshooter, Sarah is the co-creator and co-writer of the Image series Alex + Ada.
From little houses on the prairies of Nebraska and Iowa to the posh Chicago suburbs to the mean (gentrified) streets of Brooklyn to sunny Glendale, California, Janelle Asselin has carried her nerdity everywhere with her. Janelle has been a video gamer for at least 26 years, a comics fan for 20 years, and an editor of comic-type things for seven years. She's worked at comic shops, comics news sites, and comics publishers like Fangoria Comics, DC Comics, and Disney. She's written a book about selling comics to women and has a weekly column at ComicsAlliance.com featuring female creators on the rise.
Born in Winner, South Dakota, cultural critic Anne Elizabeth Moore founded the Best American Comics series for Houghton Mifflin and edited The Comics Journal before fostering the insanity that is The Ladydrawers. She's also a prolific writer of word-books including Unmarketable (The New Press), Cambodian Grrrl, and New Girl Law (Cantankerous Titles). Her work has appeared in The Baffler, Jacobin, Al Jazeera, and Salon, and she is the comics editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books.
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Each week, artist Erika Moen explores some aspect of sex and reports back on the result for Oh Joy Sex Toy. This week: Erika and her partner Matt discuss long-distance relationships and the ins-and-outs of sexting.
Read more sex-positive comics by Erika Moen, including one about the internal condom.
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Today is Galentine's Day! This fictional-turned-actual holiday from NBC's Parks & Recreation is a day for ladyfriends to celebrate one another's awesomeness. Last year, Bitch asked talented artist Natalie Nourigat to create original Galentine's cards featuring Parks and Rec characters. She drew them for you to share with your friends—so get sharing!
Also by Natalie Nourigat: A comic about Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook.
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I made this comic about the cultural appropriation of food—the tendency of people to easily co-opt “ethnic” cuisine as their own, while simultaneously obsessing over the “authenticity” of food.
I’m writing from the viewpoint of a cranky immigrant, but also as someone who considers bell hooks’ essay “Eating the Other" and Edward Said’s book Orientalism as major touchstones that have informed a lot of my work (and viewpoint). How does this comic read to someone that doesn’t share that same viewpoint? Or background? I think even a lot of my white liberal friends would feel annoyed at me commenting on how they consume something they love (“ethnic” food). I think a lot of my Asian friends would tell me I’m over-thinking it.
It rambles, I know that. But I wrote it, and I want to share it. It’s directly informed by Soleil Ho’s article "Craving the Other" from the Food issue of Bitch—I’d started this comic before I read it, but once I did, it was several moments of “YES. THIS. EXACTLY THIS” It is a much more focused essay than my comic, and I really recommend you read it.
Shing Yin Khor is a cranky Hufflepuff; you can find her on Twitter @sawdustbear.
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Each week, artist Erika Moen explores some aspect of sex and reports back on the result for her illustrated column, Oh Joy Sex Toy. This week: Erika dishes with genderqueer porn star Jiz Lee.
Read more sex-positive comics by Erika Moen, including one about the internal condom.
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Today's new Ladydrawers' strip, drawn by non-binary Chicago-based queer art maker Rachel Swanson, is the third in our Don't Be A Dick series of comics about the feminist issue in the comics industry. These comics are all written by Janelle Asselin, edited by Anne Elizabeth Moore, and drawn by six great artists. Our first two comics in the series were a rundown of how to talk about comics and the history of lady-centric comics.
Today's strip looks at how content issues can limit female or trans readership. It features a cat named Snips!
The Ladydrawers Comics Collective (AKA “The Ladydrawers”) is an unofficially affiliated group of women, men, transgender, and non-binary gender folk who research, perform, and publish comics and texts about how economics, race, sexuality, and gender impact the comics industry, other media, and our culture at large. We're doing another series at Truthout called "Our Fashion Year," finishing up our documentary Comics Undressed, and travelling the world talking about gender and race diversity in comics. You can send us samples of your work or look over the Don't Be a Dick artist's roster.
Related Reading: Three New Comics Featuring Great Female Characters.
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Each week, artist Erika Moen explores some aspect of sex and reports back on the result for her illustrated column, Oh Joy Sex Toy. This week, Erika dives deep into a topic that has gotten not nearly enough discussion: how to eat someone out.
Read more sex-positive comics by Erika Moen, including an interview with genderqueer porn star Jiz Lee.
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Welcome back to Don't Be a Dick, The Ladydrawers Comics Collective's in-depth look at comics and gender diversity, presented in partnership with Bitch Media.
This is the fourth in a series of six original Don't Be a Dick comics about the comics industry, all written by Janelle Asselin, edited by Anne Elizabeth Moore, and drawn by six great artists. Sarah Benkin drew this month's strip, which is a look at comic book marketing.
About the creators:
Sarah Benkin is a Chicago-based comic artist. Her first major work was Star Power: A Bawdy, Body-Positive Comic. She is currently editing Then It Was Dark, a comic anthology of paranormal stories.
From little houses on the prairies of Nebraska and Iowa to the posh Chicago suburbs to the mean (gentrified) streets of Brooklyn to sunny Glendale, California, Janelle Asselin has carried her nerdity everywhere with her. Janelle has been a video gamer for at least 26 years, a comics fan for 20 years, and an editor of comic-type things for seven years. She's worked at comic shops, comics news sites, and comics publishers like Fangoria Comics, DC Comics, and Disney. She's written a book about selling comics to women and has a weekly column at ComicsAlliance.com featuring female creators on the rise.
Born in Winner, South Dakota, cultural critic Anne Elizabeth Moore founded the Best American Comics series for Houghton Mifflin and edited The Comics Journal before fostering the insanity that is The Ladydrawers. She's also a prolific writer of word-books including Unmarketable (The New Press), Cambodian Grrrl, and New Girl Law (Cantankerous Titles). Her work has appeared in The Baffler, Jacobin, Al Jazeera, and Salon, and she is the comics editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books.
The Ladydrawers Comics Collective (AKA “The Ladydrawers”) is an unofficially affiliated group of women, men, transgender, and non-binary gender folk who research, perform, and publish comics and texts about how economics, race, sexuality, and gender impact the comics industry, other media, and our culture at large. We're doing another series at Truthout called "Our Fashion Year," finishing up our documentary Comics Undressed, and travelling the world talking about gender and race diversity in comics. You can send us samples of your work or look over the Don't Be a Dick artist's roster here.
Read more installments of Don't Be a Dick comics here.
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The pile of great new comics next to my bed has gotten dangerously high. It’s seriously teetering and about to collapse on the cereal bowl that I should have moved days ago. The problem is that artists and small publishing houses have put out a bunch of excellent comics in the past few months—here are seven of my recent favorites that focus on female protagonists or deal with queer and feminist themes.
Diane Obomsawin
Drawn and Quarterly (February 2014)
What a beautiful comic. I wasn’t familiar with Diane Obomsawin’s work before picking up this book—she is a filmmaker and illustrator whose work is primarily in French—so devouring this collection of comics about profound sexual experiences in the lives of women who love women was a surprise and a delight. Obomsawin based each chapter on interviews with real-life friends, but depicts her characters as adorable critters that look vaguely like elk, deer, and bunnies. The stories vary in their tenor, ranging from an engaging romp involving sex and LSD in Greece to the moving recollections of a woman whose mother made her change schools when she fell in love with a girl. In the sweetest story of the book, two girls hold hands all night in their nun-run Catholic school dorm. “It hit me like a thunderbolt,” recalls the narrator. “There were big windows and they were wide open. It was late June. We sat on the radiator and looked outside. We held hands and talked until the sun came up.”
Mimi Pond
Drawn and Quarterly (April 2014)
Mimi Pond is one of the most influential cartoonists who people under 30 have never heard of. Pond wrote for Peewee’s Playhouse, penned the pilot of The Simpsons, and published comics in the Village Voice, then stepped back from public life to raise her kids. People who discover her immense humor and insight for the first time (as I did) in her new graphic novel memoir Over Easy are in for a jolt. Pond dishes up a memoir that’s light on the nostalgia and heavy on the humor as she chronicles her time as an awkward art-student-turned-diner-waitress in 1970s Oakland. The book feels like an honest time capsule from a city and era that don’t exist anymore. Pond starts off idolizing the glamorous waitresses at her local diner, but she’s very clear that this is not American Hustle: these are the kids who made art, made their own clothes, made lots of omelets for hung-over club-goers, and never got rich. Her illustrated anecdotes about sexually liberated wait-staff mingling with pretentious punks serve as a sincere ode to the maligned city and decade. I wolfed it down and wished for a second course.
A.K. Summers
Soft Skull Press (March 2014)
Pregnant Butch is a refreshing counterpoint to the pregnancy tales that glamorize the experience of giving birth. From beginning to end, A.K. Summers’ graphic memoir is full of the nasty stuff: the sweat, the self-doubt, the unexpected bodily fluids. When Summers’ main character finally gives birth after what she feels is an eternity of hauling her unfamiliar, growing load all over town, she doesn’t greet the painful birth with rainbows and jubilation. Instead, she has a hilariously honest thought: “I’d like to die. But I don’t see how I could arrange it.” In the introduction, Summers addresses the question of why the comic’s tone is so negative: “I knew other butches were [getting pregnant], but I wasn’t hearing their stories—at least not in the raw, personal argot that I was hankering for. Come on! I want to hear the negative! The dirt! The account you hear over a beer at the end of the night!” Summers’ sharp, lo-fi style is a good match for her nitty-gritty storytelling and she’s right—the dirt is exactly what makes this comic compelling.
Ed. Charles “Zan” Christensen (the page featured above is by Lena Chandhok)
Northwest Press (2013)
This collection of “comics beyond ‘gay’ and ‘straight’” feels like a charming best-of–Tumblr anthology of 36 artists. The mostly nonfiction stories run a few pages each and though they run the gamut of illustration styles, the comics are high-quality, professional work and each approaches tricky issues of sexuality with a chatty and personable perspective. It’s an upbeat book, through and through, as it winds from Kate Leth’s educational lessons on bisexuality to lusty personal ads illustrated by Ellen Forney to Leia Weathington’s saucy tale of an adventuring queer heroine named Bold Riley. Because of its empowering bent, approachable styles, and focus on self-exploration beyond well-known labels, Anything that Loves is a collection that I’d be excited to hand off to a teenager who’s hungry for media that reflects how confusing gender and sexual identity can be.
Liz Prince
Top Shelf (February 2014)
Here are stories for anyone who is miserably single. Liz Prince’s Alone Forever is a small collection of self-deprecating jokes that almost all end with a punch line zinging with suppressed rage or awkward rejection. Prince’s simple portraits and distinctive zinester style capture the conflicting realities of dating as she alternately undermines her attempts to flirt with cute bearded punks and gets disgusted with her desire for attention from OKCupid matches that she doesn’t even really like. If there are any heroes here, they’re Prince’s cats: lovingly drawn furballs who reliably show up to keep the artist company during her loneliest hours.
The Encyclopedia of Early Earth
Isabel Greenberg
Little, Brown and Company (December 2013)
Isabel Greenberg’s first graphic novel is a gorgeous epic that has rightly received piles of praise. The novel centers on a young storyteller from the frozen land of Nord who loses part of his soul and has to kayak around the world to find it, stopping in at increasingly fantastical seaports and engaging in all sorts of adventures. The Encyclopedia of Early Earth is a triumph of imagination and illustration, but it’s also just very funny, with the story taking unexpected turns that build around whimsical heroes and villains who feel like complex Hayao Miyazaki characters. I cracked open the book while wedged into a center seat on a plane trip, lingering over the beautiful ink-and-wash frames filled with foxes, whales, and foreign cities. Before long, I noticed that my seatmates on either side of me were reading over my shoulder. I wound up passing the book back-and-forth with the strangers—it received rave reviews all around.
Julia Gfrörer
Fantagraphics (December 2013)
This comic is unlike all the others. With her spare, spooky pen-and-inks, Julia Gfrörer tells a darkly funny story of a sailor abandoned at sea who becomes entwined with a gaggle of snarky mermaids. The mermaids are an apathetic bunch, rolling their eyes at the ongoing misery of men and bobbing in the waves to watch a horrific shipwreck as if it were a sappy made-for-TV movie. Black is the Color is a surreal tale, but the details of the grand ship and the characters’ raggedy clothes are clean and precise—Gfrörer’s meticulous linework builds a highly intentional fairy tale that pulls you deeper and deeper into its morbid clutches.
Related Reading — Midwestern, Genderqueer, and Proud: Exploring Gender in a Middle-America Comics Project.
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Oh Joy Sex Toy is a weekly comics series that graphically explores sex and sexuality. This week, guest artist Emi Gennis regales us with the history of vibrators.
Read a bunch more Oh Joy Sex Toy comics, including one about how to navigate long-distance relationships.
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Artist Sara Lautman attended the giant MOCCA Arts Fest in New York earlier this month to check out the show's queer content. Sara turned her experience into this original comic for Bitch.
Sara Lautman is a cartoonist living in Baltimore.
Related Reading: Get to Know Queer Zine Machine Edie Fake.
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Each week, artist Erika Moen explores some aspect of sex and reports back on the result for her illustrated column, Oh Joy Sex Toy. This week, Erika gets handed an interesting task: a set of vibrators you wear on your fingers.
Read more sex-positive comics by Erika Moen, including a guide to eating someone out.
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Last week, I came across a very strange comic book: in 1976, Planned Parenthood teamed up with Marvel to publish a one-off comic in which Spider-Man defends America's youth from misleading sex education. In the comic, Spider-Man stumbles upon a scheme by a slimy demon from the planet Intellectia to indoctrinate the nation’s youth with inaccurate sex-ed, creating a plague of unintentional pregnancies. The comic was apparently available nationwide at Planned Parenthood clinics for 25 cents a copy. I love both comics and sex education, but I'd never seen anything like this before.
While bad sex-ed is the villain in this tale and the comic busts the myth about how women can’t get pregnant the first time they have sex, the content of the comic differs from the messages Planned Parenthood promotes today. As you’ll notice, the comic doesn’t discuss the specifics of how to prevent pregnancy or STIs beyond just not having sex and using "some stuff you can buy at drug stores." It also heartily shames teen pregnancy, as Spider-Man notes that teens who get accidentally pregnant will be nothing more than “baby machines” stuck in dead-end jobs. It’s definitely a time capsule of a certain era of sex-ed.
Read the thrilling conclusion of this Spider-Man comic via Retronaut or the University of Nebraska-Lincoln comics archive.
This comic seems bizarre, but it fits into Planned Parenthood's long history of using mass media to discuss birth control, using movies in the 1920s and even recording radio soap operas about contraception in the 1930s.
The Spiderman comic wasn’t the first time Planned Parenthood had used comic books to discuss birth control: Rose Holz, the Associate Director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at University of Nebraska-Lincoln and author of The Birth Control Clinic in a Marketplace World(2012)pointed to a comic called Escape from Fear, which Planned Parenthood published in 1956 and then reprinted in 1962. While the Spider-Man comic is focused on unmarried teens, Escape from Fear follows the story of a desperate married couple that can’t bear the financial burden of having any more kids.
Read the rest of Escape from Fear at Comics With Problems.
“By the 1930s, the birth control movement had become more conservative from its radical roots. They tried to say that birth control is respectable and it’s only for married people,” says Holz. The Spider-Man comic shows a major change in Planned Parenthood’s target audience: “In the 1960s, they start to create educational pamphlets directly for teens. They’re pushing the boundaries on this, using a medium that’s known to be read by kids.”
The shift in target audience is interesting, but it’s also unusual to see that the comic was made in conjunction with Marvel. These days, it’s hard to imagine Marvel licensing one of their most popular characters for a comic about the evils of inaccurate sex education.
This Planned Parenthood collaboration is not entirely out of left field, though. In fact, says comics writer and critic Douglas Wolk, Marvel licenses characters for one-off comics like this all the time. “There is a division of Marvel that publishes custom comics for whatever clients want to hire them out,” says Wolk, who points out that the artists of this Planned Parenthood comic, Ross Andru and Mike Esposito, were also responsible for drawing and inking the actual Spider-Man series at this time. Wolk notes that there are hundreds and hundreds of Marvel and DC titles made for corporate clients, government agencies, and nonprofits, including even a series of proselytizing Christian Archie comics. “There are enough examples of licensed comics that it seems like Marvel is willing to work with just about anyone,” says Wolk, though he thinks Marvel might steer clear of “hot potato” political issues like birth control today. Many kids who grew up reading Marvel comics in the late ‘90s will recall the eight-page anti-marijuana comic Fastlane, a projectcommissioned by the federal Office of National Drug Control Policy that Marvel inserted into thousands of comics. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln actually maintains a growing archive of government-funded comics, including gems like 1990’s Captain America Goes to War Against Drugs and a 1998 comic in which Superman and Wonder Woman fight for land mine awareness. The basic fact here is that comics are great ways to engage readers in stories, so it’s no surprise that governments and nonprofits alike use them to promote their ideas to broad audiences.
For better or worse, Planned Parenthood has not kept up with comic book publishing—the national organization’s archivist says Planned Parenthood has not printed any comics in recent memory. However, educational sex positive comics have flourished online as other sex-ed organizations (and dozens of individual artists) have found comics to be a great medium for spreading information about sexual health in fun and personal ways. It’s no web-slinging Spider-Man, but online birth control support network Besider made a series of comics-inspired graphics for Thanks, Birth Control Day last year and sex-ed nonprofit Scarleteen recently hired comics artist Isabella Rotman as an “artist in residence” to create adorable sex-positive comics. These days, comics artists seem more in the habit of promoting healthy personal approaches to sex than combating the wily demons of distant planet Intellectia.
Related Reading: Check out Erika Moen's educational Oh Joy Sex Toy comics series.
Author Sarah Mirk is the online editor of Bitch and a lifelong comics fan.
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