Papercutter #2 featuring Becca Taylor,Paul Tobin, Colleen Coover & Liz Prince
Tugboat Press: 2006
Papercutter is a quarterly publication put out by Tugboat Press with the intention of showcasing the talents of "emerging and underexposed
comic artists from every corner of the cartooning world" (www.tugboatpress.com).
The cover is from the longest comic in the anthology, "Cherchez la Femme" by Becca Taylor. Like all the best short stories, it manages to convey much with only a few pages. The comic depicts the parallel stories of 2 women who are recognisable to the reader as
Aileen Wuornos and Charlize Theron, but the author uses different names.
But Chercez la Femme isn't just a parody of how Hollywood likes nothing better than ripping off the life of a troubled person. Becca's use of fractured conversations from movie-goers, movie critics, the police, lawyers and judges involved with Aileen's case, and of course the women themselves (often quotes taken from news articles etc) builds up a nuanced portrait of society's ambivalence and biases over who and what a woman can be, and what authenticates her story.
The page I love the most is obviously the result of the author typing "Aileen Wuornos" into Google - she has illustrated a
Google-esque page with all the images of Aileen that appeared for her. If you Google the name yourself, you will come up with something similar. This comic blurs the boundaries between reality and fantasy and parody and critique.
The other comics in this anthology are "Criminal Intent", which is a collaboration between Colleen Coover and Paul Tobin about a beautiful
Cat Burglar who wins the heart of everyone she robs, and "Ghost Buddies" by Liz Prince which is a short comic about 2 people who go to a gig dressed as ghosts, it's got that cute, tongue-in-cheek kind of humour, which kinda reminded me of Cat and Girl.
MS 02/05/06