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Last Updated: Aug 23, 2008 - 8:18:08 PM

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Roberta Gregory's Life's a Bitch By Leroy Douresseaux Jul 19, 2005 - 1:03:00 PM Fantagraphics Books

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LIFE’S A BITCH

FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS
CARTOONIST: Roberta Gregory
ISBN: 156097656-X; TBP; 6”x9”
272 pp., B&W, $16.95

Once upon a time, I actually bought every issue of Roberta Gregory Naughty Bits and the trade collections of the series that I have from a comic book shop. That’s much less likely to happen today, but the pathology of the current market can’t deny Naughty Bits its place in history. At 40 issues plus several trade collections, it was the longest running comic book series ever created by a woman cartoonist. Why did the series last so long, before ever-shrinking sales sank it? That questions has several answers, they all can be found in LIFE’S A BITCH (subtitled “The Complete Bitchy Bitch Stories Vol. 1”), the first in a new set of books collecting Ms. Gregory’s landmark Naughty Bits.

The most important thing about the strip, and which is evident in this book collection, is that Ms. Gregory put the reader literally inside her heroine, Bitchy Bitch, a middle-aged office worker with ax to grind about everything – especially her coworkers and her “romantic” partners. The stories are visceral and engaging; to put it simply – Ms. Gregory makes you want to read her character. You might even like Bitchy in spite of yourself because the stories in Life’s a Bitch can be as fun to read as reading escapist entertainment.

To discuss Ms. Gregory’s work and also Life’s a Bitch from the perspective of art only would be to rob the work of its importance. The issue here is both one of historical perspective and one of storytelling. Gregory challenged the status quo in the comics industry (the creative and retail sides) and created comix from a woman’s perspective about women with a woman character, and she did that as well as women who work prose fiction and non-fiction did. She may labor in a ghetto, but this fabulous cartoonist is no less the artist or storyteller than women storytellers who work in a shower of attention and praise. A

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