[SPEAKER_01]: what is up everybody welcome to comic book club on the now x and we've got another bonus episode for you here with a legendary creator i'm very excited to talk to her about her new phantom graphics collection bitchie the exasperating existence of mid jack at its coming out to lie twenty first finally it is a big adorbis over five hundred page collection ladies and gentlemen Roberta Gregory Roberta welcome to the podcast
[SPEAKER_00]: Hello.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for inviting me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am very excited to talk about this now.
[SPEAKER_01]: I said finally, and this isn't just because this is a collection of comics that came out.
[SPEAKER_01]: What was the period?
[SPEAKER_01]: It was like 20 years, but 40 years ago, if I would be getting by.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, in 1991, I think I wrote the very last story for a collection to 2004, I think.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's mostly that mostly the 90s.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it has been a while and the strip bitty bitch in various formats came out over the course of many many years.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll talk about the book specifically.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the reason I said finally, and this is one of the crazier comic book stories I heard recently, your book got stuck in the strainer for booze, is that correct?
[SPEAKER_00]: Actually it didn't, like, yeah, that was that it turned out to be false news.
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, for a quarter from, I think it was money matters for NPR, which is why I support them.
[SPEAKER_00]: I actually talked to somebody at fan of graphics and did some research and it turned out the books weren't on that ship after all.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were, you know, in their port of origin all along.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just a crazy rumor.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, they were in central to the U.S. Iran conflict or anything like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't calling it out.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, no.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, sorry.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, believe me, on my Facebook page, I was, did everything I could to say, look, this didn't happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: Please stop spreading interesting stories.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there'll be enough interesting stories.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure when it's actually published.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, but regardless, it sounds like maybe I got to lay it a little bit by general shopping, you can use.
[SPEAKER_01]: But like I said, it is finally coming out next month in July.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, also as we mentioned earlier, this is a huge span of comics that you wrote over a huge span of time many years ago.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, broadly speaking, what was it like?
[SPEAKER_01]: going back and looking at these again.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how frequently you pull out your old books or anything like that, but to put it together.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I look at them all the time, to be honest, you know, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, what was it then putting it together?
[SPEAKER_01]: What was it like putting it together for the book?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it was interesting because, um,
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, like, fan of graphics, I thought this was going to be a one-shot comic and it turned out to go for 40 issues and fan of graphics doesn't do that lightly.
[SPEAKER_00]: So apparently it had helped people's attention for at least 40 issues.
[SPEAKER_00]: I probably could have gone more.
[SPEAKER_00]: But, um,
[SPEAKER_00]: Like at the beginning, I just kind of had these throw away stories and it's like, okay, I'm not going to ever do a bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: She bit story ever, then oops, another issue.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, let me deal with her.
[SPEAKER_00]: What was her childhood like?
[SPEAKER_00]: So she kind of ended up having a life story that came out here and there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And um,
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I was actually working on other projects like I was a production artist at fan graphics like putting together books during the earliest issues.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I had other projects I was working on.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had this like massive graphic novel I'd started writing and drawing in the 1980s.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was trying to finish winging it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean that's a strange thing in itself.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I was
[SPEAKER_00]: Starhead comics, artistic licences, and as they didn't publish it after the first issue.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I finished and self-published the last two issues.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those are all out of print, but I mean, I was working on bigger projects and it was more like oh hell time for another issue of naughty bits and the, um,
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's see, the story is just kind of, you know, they were in all kinds of orders at a childhood story.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had our teenage story, then I came back to the present, then I did a story about college.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was just kind of turning out these stories, honest at random, okay, let's put her on vacation because fan graphics had to solicit three months ahead for the direct market, which is how, I'm not sure if that's still the case, but that's how comics were sold back then.
[SPEAKER_00]: right anyway so finally I was thinking okay I mean this is not all the bitchy stories I mean there are many more that just kind of either didn't fit or I mean there's a great one where she lives in the I think it's the 14th century and people think she's a witch I mean that's
[SPEAKER_00]: I've got to have those other stories published at some point because that one's funny too.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I decided, okay, let me put see how these fit together telling her life story from her childhood to, I think, the last story ends with menopause, the menopause.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, and the, in some weird way, everything kind of fits together.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, oh, here's this character again.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was, um, it was really interesting to see the stories in this context of, okay, do they tell a kind of cohesive narrative and my golly they kind of did?
[SPEAKER_00]: So that was, that was the, that was the big, that was the big surprise.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it is really interesting reading those in order because it does paint a picture of a life and for those who haven't read it yet and please correct me on any of the details that I get wrong.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not biographical comics.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's very exaggerated.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not autobiographical comics necessarily.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's very exaggerated over the top.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's comedic.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's very dark at certain points.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you really do.
[SPEAKER_01]: find as you're reading, or I found as I was reading over the course of the book that those additional stories of her as a young girl really start to inform everything that happens later as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, I could see it's surprising.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was surprising to me to find out that you didn't write them in chronological order because they very much work that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it was just odd.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'd be working on something else.
[SPEAKER_00]: And okay, the May 19,
[SPEAKER_00]: nineteen ninety eight issue is about to come out so i've got a like dry it and um i'd have these little notes um that i'd collect a kind of over the months while i was working on something else and um
[SPEAKER_01]: kind of throw it together.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it, you know, in a mad dash of writing over maybe 24 hours, I'd have a story.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, OK, cool, you know, and then start drawing it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, it was almost more of a product than the other projects I was working on, like, OK, it's my fan of graphics comic.
[SPEAKER_00]: And
[SPEAKER_00]: I've got loose sloppy art, thank goodness, so I can crank it out, but actually it's it's become, I think it's prefer it to some of my other projects that I really dredged over and worked too hard on and such.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, the moral is take things lightly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I mean, on that note, when you weren't looking back through here, this is certainly a capsule of time in your life, whether it is capturing things that you're writing about personally from your life, or God knows you kidding.
[SPEAKER_00]: My life is I mean it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had crap jobs all through college, I mean, you know, I could be eight years to get a art degree.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, never, never got pregnant, never had an abortion out of, you know, I didn't have sex as a teenager and I don't think I smoked dope until I was like 30 or whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: So my life is coming, my parents were a lot nicer than that she's parents thank God, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would have turned out like her, yeah, but do you get that a lot when it was coming out where people are like Oh my gosh, there was like, oh gosh, I think I threw it away, but it was actually a text book written by somebody in the Midwest or whatever and they actually said, you know, describe naughty bits and said, oh Roberta's family and it's like what the, you know
[SPEAKER_00]: like they just kind of assume like I can't write a character.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean to me honest I think of my some more self-mores a writer than an artist.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean you know I've just, I mean I've found old stories I wrote in like high school that I never finished like crazy stories and such you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I know people, I think there is such a wave of autobiocomics.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think people just think of something sounds kind of real.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's somebody reporting on their life and exercising their ghosts from the past or whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, no, I mean, I'm about a character that I didn't like at first, and I'm putting her through bloody hell.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's see what happens to her.
[SPEAKER_01]: What I was trying to get up before, though, is less about like these big auto bioconics than it's something that you wrote a couple of decades ago, looking back, do you feel like there's things for you that still resonate, have things changed, things that maybe you were getting up your goat a little bit about through this character?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I know she like really hates, I mean, she was complaining about like, George, don't be a mushroom event, you know, I mean, it's like we thought things were bad back then, but I don't know, not really.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, like I say, don't really feel that.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I mean, like I've never worked in an office.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the office scenes.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm just pulling that out of my friend.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, like the closest I came to working in an office was I used to work for trade magazine publishers in the art department.
[SPEAKER_00]: And most of the time was in a dark room shooting half tones of, like, you know, emergency, medical products or whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, and then I worked at fan of graphics.
[SPEAKER_00]: put in captions in their eros comics and such, you know, so, um, yeah, I mean, the, all the office stuff is pure BS as far as I'm concerned, but I'm hopefully it resonates with some people, but, um, yeah, well, it was, um, the main thing is I looked at those pages and went cut, you know, when that's a lot of drawing.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a lot of, I mean, that's not even all of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I was,
[SPEAKER_00]: think I was mostly stunned just by the amount of work.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, plus, I mean, the comic books, I mean, they weren't just bitchy stories.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had like pages and pages of auto biostories that were in there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you know, so the it's interesting to see the bitchy story in that.
[SPEAKER_00]: in this capacity as a volume instead of all these little stories that appeared every three, three to five months in the comic shop down the street.
[SPEAKER_00]: And hopefully somebody got it before it sold out in such.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's, yeah, that's that's the main thing that really struck me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Other than, obviously, back in the day, like you were saying, working more regularly with fan-to-graphics now, you are back with them publishing this collection, what have you seen about changes in the company?
[SPEAKER_01]: What is, I mean, obviously, like the whole business is different now, but like, what is different do you think?
[SPEAKER_01]: And what is, what's kept fan-to-graphics around because it's an institution by this point?
[SPEAKER_00]: It is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well, I think it's I think it's just the sheer volume and variety of what they publish.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, they publish, I mean,
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, all the, I mean, all the carbohydrates, stories, those are awesome.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I grew up with those.
[SPEAKER_00]: My dad was a duck artist, so we had comic books all for the house when I was a kid.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, they like peanuts and all these historical comics.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, foreign reprints, comics by people I never heard of.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, most of them are by young people I've never heard of.
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, they've got massive impressive bodies of work.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, um, I think it's just their variety plus I mean, they have gone through some tough times, I guess, in the past, but, um, less their hearts, they're, you know, they seem to be seem to be, I mean, it looks to me like they're doing pretty well.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sorry, just quick clarification.
[SPEAKER_01]: Would you say your dad is a duck's was a duck's artist or a duck's artist yet actual ducks or Disney ducks Disney ducks Disney.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: He had Bob Gregory.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: He Oh, let's see.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was back in like the late 1950s.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was I mean, he worked at a
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was Douglas, I think it was one of these big aerospace companies and then he'd come home and he had a little studio out and this is when I was a very small child He had a studio out in the garage and he'd write stories and he wrote some stories that Karl Barks illustrated and Let's see I was
[SPEAKER_00]: actually found a lot of his stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: I found a lot of his invoices because there's back then people didn't get credit.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge or whatever and people figured out Karl Marx was the really good artist, but nobody else really got credit.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I say I found a bunch of his invoices like which your stories he actually wrote long after he passed away.
[SPEAKER_00]: It sent that off to the comic database.
[SPEAKER_00]: But oh yeah, I mean, they're always comic books around the
[SPEAKER_00]: He started drawing them in the 60s.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think through the 70s, he was basically the writer and artist for Daisy and Donald.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I've got boxes of those.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, nobody in my family throws anything but wait.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah, so I mean, he didn't, it didn't really,
[SPEAKER_00]: didn't give me any doors into open doors into the comic industry.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, actually, once I started doing my comics, I mean, he was nice guy, but very politically conservative.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he didn't like any of the topics I was writing about.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he didn't really do anything to help advance my career.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of people think that they think, oh, wow, you know, you
[SPEAKER_00]: you probably started working and I didn't start working.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I guess it was actually your curious about the inspiration knowing that your dad was in comics.
[SPEAKER_01]: Did that make you more eager to join comics or did it make you hesitant about making that career career?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I was drawing comics from the beginning.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, from the time I could like start.
[SPEAKER_00]: writing the alphabet.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was drawing comic books.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'd do little stories with word balloons and staple them together and I'd sell them to my dad for 10 cents.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I was always like a little entrepreneur at like eight years old or whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, oh yeah, I mean, I hit the ground writing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I wrote little short stories and illustrated them and I've still got some of them floating around.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, like I say, never throw anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: Never throw anything away.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I've been doing writing since forever.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been writing since I could write.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wanted to ask you another broad question, maybe a broader than the phantographics one, but you, of course, were very heavily involved in the Indian comics scene in the 90s before that after that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Things are very different now in publishing.
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you see that is changed?
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess I don't know how involved you are necessarily now in terms of a view on 90s versus today,
[SPEAKER_00]: the ethos, you mean the DIY indie, so publishing?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it seems like you can publish yourself a lot easier with all the techie tools.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like the most zero techie person in the world, but I'm very impressed by what other people do.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you can create a comic book and ready for a publication on your laptop.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm amazed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh gosh, I mean, it's, I mean, I can't keep up.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I remember years ago, when we were like contributing to women's comics and gay comics, they're like a handful of artists that everybody knew.
[SPEAKER_00]: And all of a sudden, I mean, here's people with massive bodies of work.
[SPEAKER_00]: I, you know, that they've created over the last 20 years who I've never heard of.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm just like, in awe.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm in awe of everything these days to be honest.
[SPEAKER_01]: This might be another way to broadwood, but like you were touching on a bitchy was certainly part of a big push in the feminist comics movement.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you see any forward moment to there have things changed?
[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously not everything is sudden roses, but do you feel like female cartoonists, comment creators are in a better place now than perhaps they were at the beginning of that movement?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, uh, now you mean the movement, um, the 1990s or the 1970s, the underground comics, or the indie Riot Girl comics, I think, 90s.
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess I was more asking about the indie Riot Girl comics, but if you know, sure, if you have a broad strokes, 70s to 90s to today, I'm happy to hear it as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I mean, like, um,
[SPEAKER_00]: And when I left home, I did all these little comics on my own, but women didn't do comic books.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, women were not comic book artists.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, trainer would beg to differ because she's found historically found a lot of evidence to the contrary.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I had no clue that anybody would ever want to read this.
[SPEAKER_00]: crummy stuff I was writing and drawing and then all of a sudden they were like all these on the early 1970s there were women's comics and tits and clips and comics that were published that women had written and drawn so that really inspired me to oh maybe maybe somebody else wants to read my stuff besides me so that was kind of a boost and then in the 1990s I remember
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, a lot of things came out.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was twisted sisters, phantographics had real girl.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I'm potential Bacasha.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think was the editor of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, there was a little flurry of,
[SPEAKER_00]: comics with girl or sister or something in the title.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm not sure how bitchy inspired any of that was, but it was definitely a thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now I think I think women are kind of just more assimilated.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I mean, like I was a guest at the San Diego comic convention and I, I was it was 2024 and the Eisner Awards, I think like almost half of the winners were women, and definitely a lot of the contestants are whatever were.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that was that was really impressive because I remember
[SPEAKER_00]: years ago, I remember back in the 90s we'd get the ballots at Santa Graphics and it's like, oh, wait, here's Linda Medley.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a woman on it, you know, thank goodness.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I'm I'm in awe.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that's about all like, and that is fair.
[SPEAKER_01]: To get back to the book for a second, it is once again, I'll just let people know coming out on July 21st.
[SPEAKER_01]: These comics have been out there, but like we've been talking about, they're presented in a very different format.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is there anything in particular you're excited for people to see in the book?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, um, excited.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think the stories are kind of interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there's a lot of, again, a personal conflict.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a bunch of stories from her coworker, Marcy's point of view.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, let's see, I'm kind of wondering how people are going to get excited people are going to get about some of the graphic sex that I've drawn in it because I mean it was like an under I mean I saw it as an underground comic it was like my fan of graphics underground comic.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, now these days everybody can grab a panel and put it on social media and say, look what this horrible person drew and then, you know, by 20 minutes, I'm getting death threats, whatever, it's like a different world.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so.
[SPEAKER_01]: Who knows?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I hope that doesn't happen for me too, and I don't think it will.
[SPEAKER_01]: I, you know, I, reading this, I didn't get to heavily into the all-comic scene at the time, but it definitely reminded me very fondly of like reading issues of raw that I thought back up for a bit in plaid ed or things like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'll give that context to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It worked for me, I guess, is my point.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to be protesting any, uh,
[SPEAKER_01]: Roberta, thank you so much for coming on.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for chatting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, I'll mention Bicci, the exasperating existence of Mitch McCracken is coming out from Phantom graphics until I 24s to get in your orders before it does not get stuck in the street of horror movies again, because it doesn't happen.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not true.
[SPEAKER_01]: Roberta, thank you so much for your time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you very much.
[SPEAKER_00]: I appreciate this.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll let's just turn back to nobody There is even I get I get I want to be That no don't mind with their promises And it's okay now I'll let it go I don't let it go It's okay now I'll let it go
[SPEAKER_02]: They sit on crappy couches and they let us see the moon And he's just a monkey, they're like fast, special guests meet So grab your ring, hammer, don't be late for it, don't spare