The following is an interview with cartoonist Roberta Gregory regarding the upcoming release of Bitchy!: The Exasperating Existence of Midge McCracken through Fantagraphics. In this interview, Fanbase Press Editor-in-Chief Barbra Dillon chats with Gregory about her experience in revisiting the 40-issue series in anticipation of the collection, how Midge’s story may connect with today’s readers, and more!
Barbra Dillon, Fanbase Press Editor-in-Chief: Congratulations on the upcoming release of Bitchy!: The Exasperating Existence of Midge McCracken, collecting your 40-issue series in chronological order! As you look ahead to the combined collection, what has been your experience in revisiting Midge and your body of work?
Roberta Gregory: Thank you! It’s interesting to remember that this Bitchy saga began 35 years ago with the first issue of Naughty Bits, and what an utterly different world that was. Some of the stories wouldn’t even make sense nowadays when almost everyone carries a phone, camera, and instantaneous link to the internet. And the sheer amount of artwork I churned out still stuns me. At nearly 500 pages, this collection still leaves out several Bitchy stories, as well as all the extra pages that I drew for most of these 40 Naughty Bits issues, such as autobio stories, commentary, biographies of interesting women, and so on. I’d love to republish a lot of these pieces, as well. It feels as if I have an enormous body of work that few people have even seen.
BD: In revisiting the series, was there anything new or intriguing that you took away from Midge’s narrative that you hadn’t anticipated when originally creating it?
RG: The Bitchy stories trickled out in print between 1991 and 2005, roughly every three to five months between work on other big projects such as my Artistic Licentiousness mini-series, my Winging It graphic novel, and my Mother Mountain prose novel, to say nothing of various random day jobs, skipping about from one era to the next in Midge’s personal timeline as I thought up various premises for a new story every issue. However, arranged for the first time in chronological order from her childhood to middle-age, it seems to be a remarkably cohesive narrative. I didn’t expect that!
BD: What can you tell us about your shared creative process in working with Fantagraphics for the collected edition?
RG: Fantagraphics was very easy to work with. I appreciated Eric’s suggestions, Kayla’s design skills, and their choice of Helen Chazan for the Afterword. After a lifetime of paperbacks it’s exciting to have a hardbound of my very own!
BD: At Fanbase Press, our #StoriesMatter initiative endeavors to highlight the impact that stories can have on audiences of various mediums. How do you feel that Midge’s story may connect with and impact today’s readers, and what, if any, conversations do you hope that it may inspire?
RG: I’m hoping readers who are much younger than I am might enjoy my visits to Midge’s school and university days, in which I really attempted to portray my less-than-positive take on the mindset of the 1970s, the cluelessness, exploitation and sexism (for starters), through Midge’s experiences in that era, which were so very different from my own. I hope readers who aren’t familiar with the underground comix of the same era aren’t too terribly offended by my portrayal of graphic sex and ugly language and behavior. I grew up with comic books in the home since my father, Bob Gregory, was a writer and artist for Dell Comics but although I read them (and wrote and drew plenty attempts on my own through the 1960s), since it was all such a “man’s world” back then it never occurred to me that anyone would ever want to read my weird creations until I found undergrounds in the early 1970s like Wimmen’s Comix (to which I’d soon contribute), featuring all sorts of eye-opening stories drawn in all sorts of ways, and all by women creators. I suppose one had to be there to realize how liberating that was!
BD: Are there any other projects – past or current – that you would like to highlight for our readers?
RG: I have just begun talking with Fantagraphics about another book: a reprint of my Bitchy Butch: World’s Angriest Dyke collection published by them in 1997 and now out of print. She’s the angry lesbian version of Midge, though her world is somewhat different: She has a supportive community of women and even the occasional goddess materializes to nudge her in the right direction (although none of them are appreciated or even acknowledged by her). Some of her stories ran in Naughty Bits and others in the Gay Comix anthology which began publication in 1980. People can find my ancient underground comics from the 1970s and later in Fantagraphics’ huge Wimmen’s Comix and Tits and Clits collections, but this new book would also contain my many Gay Comix contributions, as well. And perhaps even more. From the mid-1970s on I consistently created lots of LGBTQ themed comics stories at a time when very few others were, and hardly anyone seems to know about them. However, 2026 happens to be the 50th anniversary of my very first self-published comic book, my “Feminist Funnies” spin-off Dynamite Damsels. (And copies are still available.) As for new projects, I have been researching and putting together a comics biography of the 19th century composer and musician Clara Schumann, and what I think is her very interesting world and the memorable people in her life, but I’m just eight pages in with a long way to go. I’m trying to get going on the fourth book of a four-volume words-only epic, Mother Mountain, a rather strange tale (which I love very much) that grew out of my even stranger 1980s graphic novel Winging It and has been three decades (and counting) in the making. I hope to finish it in my lifetime so those who may enjoy it can read it. It’s my first and possibly only venture into the world of hundreds of thousands of words. I seem to tackle one art form and then move on to another. Sheila and the Unicorn from 1987 was my version of a comic strip, for example, before unicorn comic strips were a thing. I have notebooks filled with scripts and ideas I would like to do something with in my time remaining. Isn’t that the way of the world, though?
BD: Lastly, what is the best way for readers to learn more about Bitchy!: The Exasperating Existence of Midge McCracken and your work?
RG: I do have an ancient web page (robertagregory.com), which hasn’t been update-able for years, though people can apparently contact me and order books (though I would suggest contacting me first). I need to find someone to replace it with something less dysfunctional. I’m all over social media in the usual places (except X) as some form of Roberta Gregory along with a cartoon of myself or a photo of a tuxedo cat.
