sarah gordon – Bad Reputation A feminist pop culture adventure Tue, 14 Feb 2012 09:00:22 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.6 37601771 Another Illustration Interlude /2012/02/14/another-illustration-interlude/ /2012/02/14/another-illustration-interlude/#comments Tue, 14 Feb 2012 09:00:22 +0000 http://www.badreputation.org.uk/?p=9710 I thought I’d continue where I left off from this post of awesome artists that (as I put it) “get my feminist braincogs turning”.

Emily Carroll

Illustration by Emily Carroll. A blonde white woman kneels by a large black wolf, smiling playfully in a red pin-up style dress. Copyright Emily Carroll, reproduced under Fair Use guidelines.

She’s pretty well known, but deserves a mention anyway. I love the glimpse into (predominantly female) costume history I get from Draw This Dress – a shared project with award-winning fellow illustrator Vera Brosgol. Her Valentine’s day comic last year, Anu-Anulan and Yir’s Daughter, featured a lovely romance between two women (well, one’s a goddess, but anyway). Folklore-influenced The Hare’s Bride has a beautiful Carteresque simplicity to it. I love her work, and you should too.

Sarah Gordon

Illustration of a tall white woman in pink Edwardian attire with a large hat, leaning on her parasol with a sour expression. Copyright Sarah Gordon, reproduced under Fair Use guidelines.

I mentioned Sarah in the last post – working as colourist, she’s one third of The Peckham Invalids team along with Howard Hardiman and Julia Scheele. Her blog is a great read and her art is beautiful. The above wonderfully snooty lady is her own take on one of the characters from the comic. She says: “I’d like 2012 to be a year where I stop hiding all my personal/story work in my head, notebooks and sketchbooks and get it out onto… the internet”. That really struck a chord with me, because my own situation is very similar.1 So I wanted to cheer Sarah on. Hope that’s not too weird. Uh. Yeah! Go Sarah, from a total stranger! And now, dear reader, you must go and Do Similarly.

Patrice Aggs

Watercolour by Patrice Aggs. A cat sits on a pink armchair, staring at a cup of tea. Behind the cat, the cat's shadow adopts a humanoid stance and drinks the tea delicately. Copyright Patrice Aggs, 2002. Reproduced under Fair Use guidelines.

Thought I’d go a bit more longstanding – Patrice is pretty established, but she is also awesome, so if you aren’t familiar, here she is. Her work is soft-edged and has a kind of instant, gentle appeal – she’s done a lot of popular children’s books and resources for schools, but has a lifelong passion for comics. She’s worked with Philip Pullman and Horrible Histories and on The Snowman (CHILDHOOD NOSTALGIA WIBBLY ALERT) and has signed up to draw a story for new children’s weekly comic The Phoenix. Hurrah for getting children into comics! (TANGENT: Check out this sword-wielding art for one of the other stories. I’d have loved that as a kid. I hope the story’s as good as Neill Cameron’s art makes it look.) The other reason I want her on this post is she’s apparently quoted here2 over on Ladies Making Comics as follows: “Do-it-yourself is far duller than do-it-together. We need to champion each other. Drag the male-dominated blinkered attitude into the dustbin.”

Wise words indeed.

Marc Ellerby

Cover art by Marc Ellerby. A young white woman with ginger hair and glasses slurps a drink and looks suspicious. Behind her, large green monster hands loom. Copyright Marc Ellerby, reproduced under Fair Use guidelines.
“Chloe Noonan is a monster hunter, but she doesn’t have any powers. She can’t beat up bad guys, she can’t run without getting a stitch. She’s kinda flakey and really not bothered about saving the world. Plus she has to get the bus everywhere. I know, right?!”

I love Marc Ellerby’s clean lines and eye for detail. His monsters are bloody excellent – you can feel how much fun he’s had dreaming them up. Also, no one draws an unimpressed glare (a favoured expression of mine, naturally, as a Strident Feminist Blog Editor) quite like him. So of course, I’m now madly in love with Chloe Noonan, his wonderfully indignant teen monster hunter heroine. She’s amazing. She hurls bombs at monsters and plays in a band whilst loudly cursing both vocations and her schoool-friend sidekick is pretty cool too (also, female: BOOM BOOM BECHDEL BUST). Check her out. Buy the comics. DO IT NOW. That is all.

You know, I still don’t think I’m done. There is so much visual awesome out there. There’s a huge stream of female creators and artists and a rich seam of great heroines, characters, and attempts at inclusive projects out there. They need shouting about as much as possible. While we’re here, though not all my choices on this list are female creators, the women who work in comics, for example (and I know I’ve I’ve not really differentiated ‘illustration’ from ‘comics’ here, but anyway) give the lie to defensive statements on why women are so frequently left off panels at events, and so on. They’re around. You just have to look around you.

For further inspiration for the budding artists out there, I leave you with this photo of Patrice Aggs in action.3

Patrice Aggs, a black woman with short wavy hair and a pale blue shirt on, works at a drawing board. Photo reproduced under Fair Use guidelines.

More soon.

  1. I’ll get around to talking about the team and what we’ve been drawing at some point. I want to talk about these awesome people first, but if you’re curious, trumpet-blowing will happen. I’m, er, shy.
  2. At least, I think this is a quote? I wasn’t completely clear, if I’m honest. But it’s great advice, either from her, or inspired by her work. So there you go.
  3. If you took it, I hope you do not mind. I haven’t tracked down the image rights, but if it was you and you can let me know, I will credit you or remove it if you’re not digging my use of it, and so on.
]]> /2012/02/14/another-illustration-interlude/feed/ 2 9710 Illustration Interlude /2012/02/02/illustration-interlude/ /2012/02/02/illustration-interlude/#respond Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:00:33 +0000 http://www.badreputation.org.uk/?p=9650 Hello, I’m Miranda and I am into illustration.

Illustration – or, as Wikipedia rather charmingly defines it, art created to elucidate or dictate sensual information – is really important to me. It’s basically what I would do all the time if I had my way. And I’m not the only arty person on Team BadRep, either, as you may know. One of the things I’ve enjoyed most about being part of this site, in fact, is the opportunities it has raised for me to discover new illustrators from around the world, including feminist Gond tribal art and east Indian Mithili art. As I write this, I’m awaiting my copy of Sita’s Ramayana from Tara Books, so I’ll be talking about that on here soon.

This, though, is a quick post about illustrators I’m especially digging this minute. Each of them has done some work that I found interesting and beautiful with the added dimension that it also got my feminist braincogs turning, or straight up made me smile.

I’ll probably come back to this topic every so often, but to start with here’s some people you should check out.

Tiitu Takalo

Cover art for Keha, in red and grey. A blonde young woman sits in the corner of a boxing ring, reflecting.Based in Finland, and mainly working in Finnish, but her art is powerful enough that you don’t need to be fluent in Finnish to love it. I interviewed her last year about her work and her feminism – read it here. I am fangirlishly proud that this site is on her links page, I can tell you! My favourite thing she’s done is probably Keha (The Ring) which is about growing up, falling in love, and boxing, but her zines are also beautiful.

Howard Hardiman

What Lengths would you be prepared to go to?
So I met Howard at a small press art fair Markgraf and I had a stall at, and I picked up issues 1 and 2 of his comic The Lengths. It’s now on issue 5. In his own words (quoted here), “…it’s a comic based around a series of interviews I did with male escorts working in London a few years ago and tells the story of Eddie, one young escort… who’s struggling with trying to do the job while craving both the adventure it offers him and the prospect of a relationship with an old friend”.

It is also very good. It’s a thoughtful, introspective comic, meandering poignantly through ideas around sex work and attitudes to it, selfhood and masculinities. I really like his decision to portray all the characters as human/dog hybrids. It just works.

On another tack, Howard’s also writing The Peckham Invalids, talking of which, scroll down!

(Oh, and according to his site bio, he’s been described by Simply Knitting magazine as “suave”. This has really only made us dig him more.)

Julia Scheele


There’s a lot about Julia’s work I love – short mini-comics like this and this, for example. I’d recommend following her work generally, but I’d particularly recommend The Peckham Invalids. I have issue 1, and it’s off to a promising start. The entire premise is a Bechdel-busting pile of badass, and features women from a range of ages and backgrounds, y’know, having their stories told, and stuff.
In 1906, as Britain surges on a tide of industrialisation driven by the brave innovations of the boldest and the best, Ms York has opened the doors of her modest home in Peckham. A group of poor, young, ill-educated, disabled and abandoned girls found their way to her and under her auspices are learning about the power they have feared the most in the world of oppression and stark inequality: their own.
So, to recap: a comic about disabled teenage superheroines in 1906 Peckham. My interest is hugely piqued, my hopes are high, and the art is looking great.

Cat Mariner

“I’m pretty sure that tiny, irrationally furious, pompously indignant animals are the funniest things on the planet.”

And who are we to argue?

Cat’s just launched her Etsy store this week, which is great, because the image above is surely the greatest alt-Valentines card imaginable (although Snails In Love… Totally Gross is surely a contender). I am particularly jealous of her command of facial expressions, and particularly enamoured of this image of the rainbow creatures that live in puddles.

I am in the process of loudly petitioning her to produce a picture book or a comic. Pray add your voice to the clamour, and purchase a card on your way out.

I’m going to stop there because it’s late and I have to sleep but please do check these people out, gift them your money and tell your friends about them.

There are more people I want to tell you about, but I think I’ll style it out into a second post!

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