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Autobiographical
Comics

FIGURE 0.1 “Autobio Panel Autobio” from Dustin Harbin’s Diary

Comics (2015), #178. © Dustin Harbin. Used with permission.
 BLOOMSBURY COMICS STUDIES

Covering major genres, creators and themes, the Bloomsbury

Comics Studies series are accessible, authoritative and
comprehensive introductions to key topics in Comics Studies.
Providing historical overviews, guides to key texts, and important
critical approaches, books in the series include annotated guides
to further reading and online resources, discussion questions,
and glossaries of key terms to help students and fans navigate the
diverse world of comic books today.

Series Editor
Derek Parker Royal

Forthcoming Titles
Children’s and Young Adult Comics, Gwen Tarbox
Webcomics, Sean Kleefeld
Superhero Comics, Christopher Gavaler
Autobiographical
Comics
Andrew J. Kunka

Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
 Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway
London New York
WC1B 3DP NY 10018
UK USA
www.bloomsbury.com
BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury
Publishing Plc
First published 2018
© Andrew J. Kunka, 2018
Andrew J. Kunka has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior
permission in writing from the publishers.
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on
or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be
accepted by Bloomsbury or the author.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: HB: 978-1-4742-2785-8

PB: 978-1-4742-2784-1
ePDF: 978-1-4742-2787-2
eBook: 978-1-4742-2786-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Kunka, Andrew, 1969- author.
Title: Autobiographical comics / Andrew J. Kunka.
Description: New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. | Series: Bloomsbury
comics studies | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017005671| ISBN 9781474227858 (hardback) | ISBN
9781474227841 (pb)
Subjects: LCSH: Comic books, strips, etc.--History and criticism. |
Autobiographical comics--History and criticism. | Biography as a literary
form. | Autobiography in literature. | Graphic novels—History and
criticism. | BISAC: LITERARY CRITICISM / Comics & Graphic Novels. | SOCIAL
SCIENCE / Popular Culture.
Classification: LCC PN6714 .K86 2017 | DDC 741.5/9--dc23 LC record available at
https://lccn.loc.gov/2017005671
Series: Bloomsbury Comics Studies
Cover design by Eleanor Rose
Cover image © Laura Perez
Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN

To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com. Here
you will find extracts, author interviews, details of forthcoming events and the
option to sign up for our newsletters.
 CONTENTS

Series Editor’s Preface vii

List of Figures viii
Acknowledgments ix

1 Introduction: What are Autobiographical Comics? 1

The centrality of autobiography 1
The study of autobiography 5
What is an autobiographical comic? 10
This book and how to use it 15

2 The History of Autobiographical Comics 21

Early examples: Proto-autobiographical comics 22
Underground comix 32
Post-underground and the rise of Pekar and Spiegelman 42
Alternative comics and second wave autobiography 46
Twenty-first-century autobiography 52

3 Critical Questions 59
Autobiographical comics and autobiographical theory 59
The autobiographical pact and the problem of first-person
narration 61
Violating the autobiographical pact 66
The problem of authenticity 70
Photography in autobiographical comics 72
The mise en abyme 75
Teaching autobiographical comics 79
vi Contents

4 Social and Cultural Impact 83

Trauma 83
Adolescence 93
The quotidian and the confessional 99
Gender and sexuality 105
Race and ethnicity 114
Graphic medicine 121
Censorship and controversy 130
Self-publishing and web comics 133

5 Key Texts 151

Justin Green’s Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary 151
Robert Crumb and Aline Kominsky-Crumb 157
Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor 163
Keiji Nakazawa’s Barefoot Gen: A Cartoon Story of
Hiroshima 170
Art Spiegelman’s Maus: A Survivor’s Tale and In the Shadow
of No Towers 174
Phoebe Gloeckner’s A Child’s Life and The Diary of a
Teenage Girl 182
Joe Matt, Chester Brown, and Seth 187
Lynda Barry’s One Hundred Demons 194
Craig Thompson’s Blankets 197
Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis 201
Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home 205

Appendix 1: Panel Discussion—Comics and

Autobiography 217
Appendix 2: Interview with Jennifer Hayden 229
Appendix 3: “Everybody Gets It Wrong!”—David
Chelsea 245
Appendix 4: Autobiographical Conversations—Ryan
Claytor 249

Glossary 255
Resources 261
Index 279
 SERIES EDITOR’S
PREFACE

The Bloomsbury Comics Studies Series reflects both the increasing

use of comics within the university classroom and the emergence of
the medium as a respected narrative and artistic form. It is a unique
line of texts, one that has yet to be addressed within the publishing
community. While there is no shortage of scholarly studies devoted
to comics and graphic novels, most assume a specialized audience
with an often-rarefied rhetoric. While such texts may advance
the scholarly discourse, they nonetheless run the risk of alien-
ating students and representing problematic distinctions between
“popular” and “literary.” The current series is intended as a more
democratic approach to comics studies. It reflects the need for more
programmatic classroom textbooks devoted to the medium, studies
that are not only accessible to general readers, but whose depth of
knowledge will resonate with specialists in the field. As such, each
volume within the Bloomsbury Comics Studies Series will serve as
a comprehensive introduction to a specific theme, genre, author, or
key text.
While the organizational arrangement among the various
volumes may differ slightly, each of the books within the series is
structured to include an historical overview of its subject matter,
a survey of its key texts, a discussion of the topic’s social and
cultural impact, recommendations for critical and classroom uses,
a list of resources for further study, and a glossary reflecting the
text’s specific focus. In all, the Bloomsbury Comics Studies Series is
intended as an exploratory bridge between specialist and student.
Its content is informed by the growing body of comics scholarship
available, and its presentation is both pragmatic and interdisci-
plinary. The goal of this series, as ideal as it may be, is to satisfy
the needs of novices and experts alike, in addition to the many fans
and aficionados upon whom the medium popularly rests.

Derek Parker Royal

 LIST OF FIGURES

FIGURE 0.1: “Autobio Panel Autobio” from Dustin Harbin’s Diary

Comics (2015), #178. © Dustin Harbin. Used with permission. i
FIGURE 1.1: The frontispiece to Justin Green’s Binky Brown Meets the
Holy Virgin Mary. © Justin Green. Used with permission of the artist. 12
FIGURE 2.1: Bud Fisher’s Mutt and Jeff strip from February 12, 1919.
Printed from the original art from the collection of Craig Yoe. 23
FIGURE 2.2: “Gettin’ Up in th’ World” from Scribbly by Sheldon
Mayer. Originally appeared in The Funnies 8 (May 1937). 26
FIGURE 2.3: Sheldon Mayer’s Scribbly and the Red Tornado (December
1942). From All-American Comics 45. © DC Comics. Used with
permission. 28
FIGURE 2.4: Inkie from Crack Comics 34 (Autumn 1944). Published
by Quality Comics. 30
FIGURE 4.1: From Tom Hart’s Rosalie Lightning (2015), page 20.
© Tom Hart. Used with permission of the artist. 88
FIGURE 4.2: From Tom Hart’s Rosalie Lightning (2015), page 21.
© Tom Hart. Used with permission of the artist. 89
FIGURE 4.3: “Q&A @ SPX” from Julia Wertz’s Drinking at the Movies
(2015). © Julia Wertz. Used with permission. 137
FIGURE 4.4: Frames from Stuart Campbell’s These Memories Won’t
Last (2015). © Stuart Campbell. Used with permission of the artist. 143
FIGURE A.2: The cover to Jennifer Hayden’s The Story of My Tits
(2015). © Jennifer Hayden. Used with permission. 230
FIGURE A.3: Pages from David Chelsea’s “Everybody Gets It Wrong!”
(2008). © David Chelsea. Used with permission. 246–7
FIGURE A.4: Pages from Ryan Claytor and Henry Polkinhorn’s
Autobiographical Conversations (2013). © Ryan Claytor. Used with
permission. 250–3
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I first want to thank series editor and podcasting partner-in-crime

Derek Parker Royal for having faith in me to do this project in
the first place. The University of South Carolina Provost’s Office
provided a Humanities Grant that allowed me to conduct research
and complete an enormous chunk of this book. My colleagues
at the University of South Carolina Sumter—including Hayes
Hampton, Mary Ellen Bellanca, Ray McManus, Park Bucker, and
Michele Reese, as well as Academic Dean Eric Reisenauer and
Dean Michael Sonntag—were indulgent and supportive during the
composition of this book. I’m also incredibly appreciative of the
enormous assistance I received from Aidan Sullivan, who really
stepped up in the clutch on several occasions, including some ace
transcribing, and without whom this project would have taken
a lot longer to complete. At the very least, my stress level would
have been exponentially greater without her help. And speaking
of clutch performances, John DiBello came through with some
research assistance that I thought might be impossible, and Mike
Sterling pointed me toward some sources in underground and
alternative comics that became important additions to this book.
I’m also grateful to Craig Yoe and Clizia Gussoni for generously
providing images from old public domain comics, including the
original art for the Mutt and Jeff strip that came from their personal
collection. In addition, I appreciate the generosity of creators who
personally gave me permission to use their work in this book and
even provided high-resolution images, including Justin Green, Tom
Hart, Ryan Claytor, Stu Campbell, and David Chelsea. Special
thanks also to Ed Kanerva at Koyama Press for his enthusiastic
assistance in getting some image permissions worked out.
I feel incredibly lucky to be working in the field of Comics
Studies at this moment in its development, not least because of
the generous and supportive colleagues and friends who work
x Acknowledgments

in the field. Qiana Whitted, Brannon Costello, Charles Hatfield

(who also provided a last-minute image assist), Craig Fischer,
Corey Creekmur, Brian Cremins, Marc Singer, Carol Tilley, Jared
Gardner, Ian Gordon, Frederik Byrn Køhlert, Michael Chaney,
Aaron Kashtan, and others may not be aware of the help and
support they provided, even if it was just to listen to me kvetch over
beers at a conference.
Comics Studies is also lucky to have two amazing libraries
with extraordinary resources for conducting research: Ohio State
University’s Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum, and
Michigan State University Library’s Special Collections. My total
gratitude goes out to everyone at the Billy Ireland Cartoon
Library and Museum, including Jenny Robb, Caitlin McGurk,
and especially Susan Liberator, who regularly checked on me
during my research visits and offered very helpful suggestions.
They also gave me access to the Jay Kennedy Collection of under-
ground and independent comics, which at that point had been
only partially cataloged. This help fell well outside my expecta-
tions, and everyone there turned my research trip into a genuine
nerd vacation. Also, Tom Spurgeon took me out for beers when I
was in Columbus, which was really nice of him. Randy Scott is a
national treasure whose generosity, kindness, and knowledge made
the week I spent at Michigan State University Library’s Special
Collections a pleasure.
Finally, and most important, my undying love and gratitude
goes out to Jennifer Liethen Kunka. Your love and support during
this process went beyond anything I could expect or ask for. This
book is dedicated to you.
And I promise that I will never ever make an autobiographical
comic about our marriage.
 1
Introduction: What are
Autobiographical Comics?

The centrality of autobiography

In recent years, autobiographical comics have drawn an enormous
amount of critical attention. Many comics scholars identify auto­
biography as a central genre in contemporary comics. In Alternative
Comics, Charles Hatfield (2005) summarizes both the centrality of
autobiographical comics and the critical issues the genre raises:

Autobiography, especially, has been central to alternative

comics—whether in picaresque shaggy-dog stories or in
disarmingly, sometimes harrowingly, frank uprootings of the
psyche—and this has raised knotty questions about truth and
fictiveness, realism and fantasy, and the relationship between
author and audience. (x)

Elisabeth El Refaie (2012a) reiterates Hatfield’s point:

“Autobiography has become the genre that most defines the
alternative, small-press comics production in North America and
Western Europe today” (36). Thierry Groensteen (2007) also
comments that “the proliferation of autobiographical comics is a
remarkable phenomenon of recent years, stemming from America,
where the works of Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman, and Harvey
Pekar, notably, have opened the door” (19). Comics scholars have
directed much of their critical attention at three key works: Art
2 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS

Spiegelman’s Maus (1986, 1991), Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis

(2004, 2005), and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home (2006). The
autobiographical comics that get the most critical and scholarly
attention often deal with trauma (the Holocaust, the Iran–Iraq
War, a father’s suicide), so scholars have theorized how comics can
be an effective medium for communicating traumatic experiences.
As Hillary Chute (2010) states of the works discussed in Graphic
Women, though applicable to a wide range of autobiographical
comics in general,

each … insists on the importance of innovative textual practice

offered by the rich visual-verbal form of comics to be able to
represent trauma productively and ethically. For this reason,
graphic narrative, invested in the ethics of testimony, assumes
what I think of as the risk of representation. (3)

Whereas much of the critical discussion of trauma narratives has

traditionally focused on the unspeakable or unrepresentable nature
of the traumatic experience, the combination of visual and verbal
elements of comics can make such experiences visible to the reader.
Thus, for Chute, comics offers new ways of talking about trauma.
However, many autobiographical comics also address the
mundane, quotidian, often humorous experiences of daily life.
While it is difficult to quantify how different media measure
up in a direct comparison (is comics better than other media in
addressing trauma or the quotidian?), comics does seem well
suited to capture the charms of everyday experiences, much in the
way that comics can be an effective communicator of traumatic
experiences. The interactive nature of comics, as described by
Scott McCloud (1993) in Understanding Comics, can help develop
a sympathetic connection between reader and subject, enhancing
the intense experience of trauma or the humor of the mundane. As
McCloud explains, the borders or “gutters” between panels require
readers to perform an act of “closure” to fill in the narrative
gap—an act that requires significant active participation on the
reader’s part (68–9). In addition, McCloud argues that the style
of figural drawing, which he lays out in a “picture plane” that
covers realistic, abstract, and iconic styles, can impact a reader’s
engagement with the narrative (51–3). The more abstract a figure,
the more the reader is “pulled in” to the narrative to sympathize
 Introduction: What are Autobiographical Comics? 3

with characters’ experiences (29–31). This sense of connection

has been controversial, as one could argue a variety of exceptions
(racial caricatures that fall on the abstract side of the spectrum
but don’t pull the reader in; realistic art styles that still allow
for reader sympathy and engagement, etc.). However, autobio-
graphical comics can exercise a power to universalize the creator’s
individual experience, whether it’s through art style, panel layouts,
or other narrative techniques. Comics can be unflinching in the
fact of historical trauma, as Chute (2008a, 2016) argues, but they
can also be unflinching in the face of overwhelming cuteness, like
a quirky date or the common experiences shared by new parents,
as we see in comics by Liz Prince, Jeffrey Brown, and others. In
fact, quotidian, slice-of-life stories have served some of the most
popular autobiographical comics, including the work of Harvey
Pekar, Gabrielle Bell, Joe Matt, Julia Wertz, and a slew of diary
and web comics.
Both Hatfield (2005) and El Refaie (2012a) stress the centrality of
autobiography to “alternative” comics: that is, comics that followed
out of the underground comix movement of the 1960s and 1970s
through the small press and DIY (do-it-yourself) movements of the
1980s and 1990s to offer readers alternatives to the limited genres
(mainly superheroes and science fiction) offered by mainstream
comics publishers (mainly DC and Marvel). However, we are at a
point in comics history where the term “alternative” can be erased
from Hatfield’s and El Refaie’s quotes above: the autobiographical
genre is central to comics, full stop. Superheroes still dominate the
mainstream comics industry, especially the comics put out by DC
and Marvel and sold through specialty comic book shops, but that
genre’s stranglehold on the upper echelon of comics publishing
has been challenged in recent years by horror and science fiction,
especially series published by Image Comics (see, most notably,
Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, and Charles Adlard’s multimedia
juggernaut, The Walking Dead).
This focus on publishers like Marvel, DC, and Image, however,
is a rather myopic view of the comics industry, limited to the
marketplace established by comic book stores, where loyal fans
have followed the same genres, series, publishers, and creators
for decades. Step outside the comic book shop and look into the
worlds of book stores, libraries, and classrooms, and a different
story comes to light. The aforementioned Maus, Persepolis,
4 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS

and Fun Home appear frequently in K-12 standards (including

Common Core) and on college syllabi. Young adult sections of
book stores are dominated by displays of Raina Telgemeier’s
enormously successful graphic autobiographies, Smile (2010) and
Sisters (2014), each of which has sold hundreds of thousands of
copies. Telgemeier’s works have spent years occupying what looked
to be permanent spots on the New York Times’s bestsellers list for
graphic novels, until the Times discontinued the graphic novels
list in early 2017. Major trade publishers such as Random House,
Holtzbrinck, and others offer graphic novel imprints that include
many of the most successful autobiographical comics. While
graphic novels may have their own unique section in book stores,
the major book store chains regularly include autobiographical
comics in their “Biography” and other nonfiction genre sections.
These academic and commercial moves in recent years demonstrate
a clear, mainstream acceptance of autobiographical comics, even if
that acceptance is not reflected in most comic book stores.
The centrality of autobiography becomes even more apparent
when we take into consideration the world of web comics, where
many creators have sought out and found wide audiences for
their diary comics and other personal projects, with the benefit of
being able to reach their readers directly and with an immediacy
unavailable in traditional print publication. The democratic
potential of web comics is most visible in the enormously popular
phenomenon of the “rage comics” meme, which began in 2008.
These crudely drawn comics by anonymous creators follow
a similar style and formula, where the subject often experi-
ences a common indignity that concludes with a close-up of a
face in a paroxysm of rage (known as “rageguy”) screaming
“FFFFFFFUUUUUUUU.” Amateur creators have been able to
easily produce their own works through “rage comics generators”
(also known as “rage makers”) that virtually automate the
creation process. These comics have been produced by countless
anonymous creators and viewed by millions of readers through
platforms such as 4chan and reddit, making them, inarguably,
the most popular comics produced in decades. As the meme
progressed, more common images and faces were produced that
allowed creators to expand the types of stories they told in this
style. With rage comics and rage makers, anyone can become an
autobiographical cartoonist.
 Introduction: What are Autobiographical Comics? 5

Of course, with all of this new attention and wider dissemination

comes additional public scrutiny. Underground and alternative
comics in previous decades could often (though not always) escape
such scrutiny because their marginalized status allowed them
to fly under the radar. Now, autobiographical comics in schools
and libraries regularly face calls for censorship and outright
banning. Public libraries have seen works by Phoebe Gloeckner,
Alison Bechdel, Marjane Satrapi, and others frequently challenged.
Bechdel’s Fun Home seems to be a particularly common target
of conservative crusaders who object to the book’s depiction of
homosexuality: colleges in South Carolina and North Carolina have
received national attention for the use of Fun Home in First-Year
Reading Experience programs. The South Carolina legislature even
threatened to cut the College of Charleston’s funding for using the
book in such a program.1 While autobiography does still dominate
the worlds of small press and self-published comics that define the
“alternative,” it is now firmly established as a mainstream genre,
with all of the attendant benefits and dangers that the status entails.

The study of autobiography

As is obvious from the genre’s name, the study of autobio-
graphical comics is informed by two areas: Autobiographical or
Life Writing Studies and Comics Studies. Comics Studies focuses
on the medium, a form of communication that encompasses
multiple modes and genres. Autobiographical Studies centers on a
genre without specifying a particular medium, though most schol-
arship has traditionally dealt with prose. A standard definition for
“autobiography” comes from Philip Lejeune’s On Autobiography
(1989): “Retrospective prose narrative written by a real person
concerning his own experience, where the focus is his individual
life, in particular the story of his personality” (4). Through
this definition comes Lejeune’s concept of the “autobiographical
pact”: an understanding on the part of the reader that the author,
narrator, and protagonist of an autobiography are all the same
person (22). As a part of this pact, the reader also understands
that the auto­biography references an external reality that can be
verified. This lends a kind of testimonial nature to autobiography,
6 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS

where such a text could be put “on trial” in order to verify its
truthfulness, or at least, it seems, find a consensus. When this pact
is violated, as was the case with James Frey’s 2003 prose memoir of
addiction and recovery, A Million Little Pieces, scandal can erupt
and literary reputations can be damaged.
Lejeune’s definition is also problematic for comics from the
outset because it’s meant to apply to prose narratives, which almost
always have a single author, or at least the sense of one, even if
the autobiographical subject is filtered through an invisible “ghost
writer.” Most autobiographical comics conform to this notion
of a single author or creator as well, with cartoonists who both
write and draw their experiences. However, comics is also often
a collaborative medium, much more so than prose, where various
duties in the creation of a text can be shared by multiple people.
What, then, do we do with collaborative autobiographical comics,
such as the works of Harvey Pekar and Dennis Eichhorn, who rely
on a slew of artists to tell their stories, or Percy Carey and Ronald
Wimberley’s Sentences and John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate
Powell’s March?
“Autobiographical comics,” therefore, affects our sense of both
terms and puts pressure on accepted definitions of them. These
works often offer innovative ways of using the comics medium
to tell stories, exploiting the potential of the medium’s inherent
characteristics of multimodality, sequentiality, and image–text
interactions. This is evident in the way that Rocco Versaci (2007)
compares prose memoirs to comics:

Like their prose counterparts, comic memoirs take a variety of

shapes and forms, but comics are capable of demonstrating a
broader and more flexible range of first-person narration than
is possible in prose … [T]he best prose memoirs complicate
the issue of truth-telling both implicitly and explicitly; for their
part, autobiographical comics undermine simplistic notions
of “truth,” and they do this through their unique formal
elements … (36)

Jared Gardner (2008) further addresses the main problems in

applying the kind of verifiability that Lejeune describes to comics,
which contrasts the ways in which text-based autobiography
operates:
 Introduction: What are Autobiographical Comics? 7

The comics form necessarily and inevitably calls attention

through its formal properties to its limitations as juridical
evidence—to the compression and gaps of its narrative (repre-
sented graphically by the gutterspace between panels) and to
iconic distillations of its art. The kinds of truth claims that
are fought over in the courts of law and public opinion with
text-based autobiography are never exactly at issue in graphic
autobiography. The losses and glosses of memory and subjec-
tivity are foregrounded in graphic memoir in a way they never
can be in traditional autobiography. (6)

For Gardner, both the artistic rendering of the events in the artist’s
individual style and the fragmentation of the narrative into panels
separated by gutters challenge the verifiability of events represented
in the comic.
Assessment of the genre/medium relationship leads to one of
the fundamental problems facing comic scholars in this area:
can an autobiographical comic tell the truth? Does the very
nature of comics as mediated texts that combine words and
drawings effectively undermine their truth-telling ability? Hatfield
(2005), Gardner (2008), and Chute (2010) have all argued that
many autobiographical comics creators foreground these very
questions in a variety of ways. Some creators, like Joe Matt, Seth,
Julie Doucet, Gabrielle Bell, and others, willingly and playfully
undermine the “truthfulness” of their work. Another comparison
between prose and comics is warranted here. A prose author
working in autobiography may use figurative language without it
challenging the veracity of the autobiography, as in “I felt like a
mouse in a trap” or “I was a mouse, caught in a trap.” Readers
remain aware that the subject is not literally a mouse because they
are familiar with the conventions of figurative language. However,
the visual aspect of comics can potentially render the figurative as
the literal. The Jews are not like mice in Spiegelman’s Maus; they
are mice, which we know is not a literal truth. The mental process
that the visual allegory requires for readers to decode the narrative
is different from and more complex than the tools available to the
prose autobiographer. The allegorical potential of comics as visual
texts provides a significant artistic tool for the comic autobio­
grapher, though it also challenges the delicate, fragile line between
truth and fiction. This tool helps creators access something more
8 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS

like an “emotional truth,” where “some graphic memoirists are

much more interested in reflecting their feelings toward their
own past in an authentic manner than in claiming to portray the
‘absolute truth’” (El Refaie 2012a: 44). Frederik Byrn Køhlert
(2015) goes even further than this:

[I]mpervious to truth claims [through the nature of the comics

form], comics autobiography allow the artist to structure the
narrative to correspond to a larger, emotional truth, and to
visually externalize subjectivity on the page in a way that is
constitutive of selfhood while remaining true to dominant ideas
of the self as fragmented and multiple. (127)

That is, the comics form allows creators to prioritize that

more significant “emotional truth” while also representing the
poststructuralist concept of the fragmented self (which is also a
challenge to Lejeune’s autobiographical pact).
As Gardner’s (2008) earlier point makes clear, an artist’s style
can get in the way of a comic’s referentiality in relation to an
external reality, especially if the style is not on the realistic end of
the spectrum. The New York of Julie Doucet’s New York Diary
(1999) is often a nightmarish world that bears little resemblance
to the reality of New York City or to any other comic represen-
tation of the place. An artist’s drawing style, especially in the
representation of characters, also affects this idea of referentiality
and verifiability: the more iconic, abstract, or nonrepresentational
the style may be, the more distant it may seem from the truth or
reality. In a sense, every artist’s style, no matter how photorealistic,
is divorced to some degree from reality, so we can conclude that
comics, by nature of being a hand-drawn visual medium, already
challenges the connection between an autobiographical text and an
ideal notion of reality.
Add to this the repetitive nature of the process of creating
comics: the artists must draw themselves over and over again,
perhaps hundreds or even thousands of times, as they create a
single work. Some creators address this by creating a consistent
avatar for themselves. For example, Seth usually draws himself
with the same or similar suit, hat, glasses, and accompanying
ubiquitous cigarette. Ditto for Robert Crumb, minus the cigarette.
On the other end of the spectrum, Aline Kominsky-Crumb rarely
 Introduction: What are Autobiographical Comics? 9

draws herself consistently from panel to panel, going so far as to

arbitrarily change outfits from one panel to the next. El Refaie
(2012a) describes this repetitive self-representation as “pictorial
embodiment,” and it has the advantage of offering creators “the
opportunity for them to engage explicitly with their own body
images and with sociocultural assumptions and values that render
bodies meaningful” (91). This is yet another type of “truth”
that autobiographical comics can offer. However, Gardner argues
that this visual representation of the self creates a profound split
between artist and subject: the drawn subject can be distinct from
the artist in significant ways:

With comics, the compressed, mediated, and iconic nature of

the testimony (both text and image) denies any collapse between
autobiography and autobiographical subject … and the stylized
comic art refuses any claims to the “having-been-there” truth,
even (or especially) on the part of those who really were. (12)

Such a claim resists the value of embodiment that El Refaie (2012a)

argues, as well as the testimonial nature of the representation of
traumatic experiences that Chute (2010) finds valuable in comics.
The multimodal nature of comics as (usually) image–text
combinations also has an impact on the ways in which autobio-
graphical comics can challenge truth claims. Formally, many
autobiographical comics rely heavily on caption boxes containing
the first-person narration of the autobiographical self. Often, illus-
trations duplicate or complement descriptions in the captions, as
is the case with many of the strips in Lynda Barry’s One Hundred
Demons (2002), where the caption box can take up half or more
of the panel. However, the relation between verbal narration and
image offers yet another place for playful experimentation. In
Fun Home, Alison’s grandmother tells a story of how three-year-
old Bruce Bechdel (Alison’s father) became stuck while walking
through a muddy field. The grandmother explains, through caption
boxes, how Mort Dehaas, the mailman, just happened to spot the
toddler in the field and came to his rescue. However, Bechdel’s
visual depiction of the story shows a milkman pulling Bruce from
the mud, not a mailman. A parenthetical aside, also in a caption
box, explains, “(I know Mort was a mailman, but I always pictured
him as a milkman, all in white—a reverse grim reaper.)” (41). This
10 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS

set of images and captions presents a complex interplay of words

and pictures: the pictures don’t match the “truth” of the grand-
mother’s story, but for Alison the narrator, the milkman in his
white outfit represents her own emotional truth of the story. So, an
additional caption box is necessary to further explain the contra-
dictory image–text relationship with the grandmother’s narration.
Therefore, the conclusion scholars arrive at so often is reduced
to this: the truth that autobiographical comics reveal is that
“truth” is always mediated and unreliable and can never be
absolute. As Charles Hatfield (2005) points out, autobiography in
general “inevitably mingles the factual and the fictive” (112), but
comics foreground this mingling, occasionally to the point that the
only “truth” remaining is the impossibility of total truthfulness
in comics autobiography, which Hatfield terms “ironic authenti-
cation” (125).
The slipperiness of truth and authenticity in autobiographical
comics calls into question a conventional understanding of “auto­
biography” and leads to some fundamental questions: What is
an autobiographical comic? And how do we know a comic we’re
reading is autobiographical?

What is an autobiographical comic?

El Refaie (2012a) offers a pretty straightforward definition of
“autobiographical comics” as “a loose category of life writing
through the use of sequential images and (usually) words” (48).
This combines standard definitions of each term: “autobiography”
as “life writing” and “comics” as both images in sequence and
word–picture combinations. Therefore, we should simply know
an autobiographical comic when we see one. But how does an
autobiographical comic identify itself as one?
The answer to this question seems obvious, but also tautological:
a work is autobiographical because it tells us, in some way, that
it is autobiographical. In other words, the text offers cues, either
within the text or in some paratextual form, that reveal its autobio-
graphical nature. With paratexts—text associated with the book
but not part of the actual narrative, like title and publication pages,
back cover summaries, author information, acknowledgments, and
 Introduction: What are Autobiographical Comics? 11

review blurbs—the book may be subtitled “A Memoir” or “A True

Story” on the cover or title page; the publisher may have catego-
rized the book as an autobiography; a blurb may give it away. In
the text of the narrative itself, the correspondence between the
author’s name and the main character’s name can also function as
a signal. Or the reader may combine paratextual and textual infor-
mation: the author’s photo on the back cover resembles the visual
depiction of the main character.
We could continue a list of obvious cues, all of which relate to a
commonly held understanding about the nature and definition of
autobiography that most readers bring to a text. However, many
autobiographical comics, including some of the most influential and
frequently studied, challenge that conventional understanding and
push the boundaries of the genre. For example, in the seminal
autobiographical comic, Justin Green’s Binky Brown Meets the
Holy Virgin Mary (1972), the protagonist does not share a name
with his creator. To complicate this further, Green does appear in
a framing sequence as a cartoonist, bound and suspended upside
down over his own drawing board, drawing pages with a brush
in his mouth while a sickle aims precariously between his legs
(see Fig. 1.1). In a direct address to the reader, the Justin avatar
explains how the following story is true. Here, Green relies on
and calls attention to a long tradition in comics, where artists
depict themselves in front of their drawing boards and serve as
narrators for their stories, autobiographical or otherwise. Those
artists usually engage the reader in a friendly chat before the story
begins. Green’s avatar, however, while friendly, is forced to create
his story, apparently against his will and at some risk. Green uses
this familiar convention to symbolically represent his own personal
sense that his story must be told—and must be told in comics form.
Other cartoonists use the convention of depicting themselves at the
drawing board as a means of creating a sense of autobiographical
authenticity, as we see in Lynda Barry’s One Hundred Demons,
Art Spiegelman’s Maus, Chester Brown’s “Showing Helder,” and
countless other examples. In fact, this convention may be so
common as to achieve the status of cliché.
The genre of autobiography has permeable, hazy boundaries,
yielding such terms as “semi-autobiographical” and “roman à clef”
to define those border cases between fiction and nonfiction. In the
medium of comics, these boundaries are even more indistinct and
12 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS

FIGURE 1.1 The frontispiece to Justin Green’s Binky Brown Meets the
Holy Virgin Mary. © Justin Green. Used with permission of the artist.
 Introduction: What are Autobiographical Comics? 13

permeable. We might think of the “autobiographical” in “autobio-

graphical comics” as always having an invisible, understood
prefix “(semi-)” attached to it. After all, Art Spiegelman’s parents
weren’t really mice; Aline Kominsky-Crumb probably didn’t swim
through a flood with her husband Robert on her back as depicted
in Dirty Laundry Comics (1993: 30); young Marjane Satrapi likely
didn’t meet God (2003: 13); and Justin Green’s fingers didn’t turn
into penises (1972: 26). At a most fundamental level, the artists’
depictions of themselves (sometimes referred to as “avatars” or,
to borrow Michael Chaney’s [2011a] term, “I-cons” [23]) only
partially resemble their physical appearance, and sometimes not at
all. These examples and many others discussed in this book raise
the important question: how far can genre conventions be bent
before a work ceases to be classifiable as autobiography?
Subtitles for many works evince the anxieties about the generic
classification of autobiographical comics: “an illustrated novel”
(Craig Thompson’s Blankets [2003]), “a comic-strip memoir”
(Chester Brown’s The Playboy [1992] and Paying for It [2013]),
“a comic-strip narrative” (Chester Brown’s I Never Liked You
[1994]), “a picture-novella” (Seth’s It’s a Good Life, If You Don’t
Weaken [2011]), “an account in words and pictures” (Phoebe
Gloeckner’s Diary of a Teenage Girl [2002]), “a family tragicomic”
(Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home [2006]), and “An Autobiographical
Novel, with Typographical Anomalies, in which the Author Does
Not Appear as Himself” (Eddie Campbell’s The Fate of the Artist
[2006]). Many of these examples challenge both the generic classi-
fication of “autobiography” and the medium-specifying “comics.”
These taxonomic anxieties have led both scholars and creators
to try out other terms that could more accurately capture the
nature of autobiographical comics. In their essay “Self-Regarding
Art” (2008), Gillian Whitlock and Anna Poletti use the term
“autographics,” which Whitlock had previously coined in a 2006
essay for Modern Fiction Studies. They define “autographics”
as “Life narrative fabricated in and through drawing and design
using various technologies, modes, and materials. A practice of
reading the signs, symbols and techniques of visual arts in life
narrative” (v). “Autography,” therefore, is not limited to comics,
but involves any medium in which visual or multimodal elements
are used in life writing, including fine arts, social networking pages,
graffiti, and so on. The tension between “auto” as “the self” and
14 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS

the traditional understanding of “graphics” as drawing or visual

design makes the term particularly appropriate for the type of
work done in autobiographical comics, and several scholars have
picked it up as well.
Creators also occasionally come up with their own terms for
the type of autobiographical work that they do. In his introduction
to Mary Fleener’s Life of the Party (1996), Ray Zone explains
that Fleener calls her work “autobiographix.” Zone applies this
term for the entire movement of autobiographical comics from the
immediate post-underground era in which Fleener began her work.
Zone connects the trend to the work of Justin Green and R. Crumb
as “forebears” and claims that this work “was a necessary byroad
for graphic narrative to explore in order for it to ‘mature’ into a
legitimate means of artistic expression” (9). Like “auto­graphy”
(as well as Leigh Gilmore’s [1994] phonetically similar “autobio-
graphics,” which did not originally apply to comics), Fleener’s term
emphasizes the “graphic” or visual nature of the comics. In addition,
the “x” in “autobiographix” shows the fluid connection between
Fleener’s work and that of her “forebears” in the underground.
Perhaps most notable, however, is Lynda Barry’s designation of
her memoir One Hundred Demons as “autobifictionalography,”
as indicated on the publication page of the book. On the table of
contents page, a note in Barry’s handwriting asks, “are these stories
true or false?” Boxes next to both options are checked. Then, the
first two panels of the introduction ask, “Is it autobiography if
parts of it are not true? // Is it fiction if parts of it are?” (7). Though
the term may be read as tongue-in-cheek, it demonstrates how
unstable categories of fiction and nonfiction are when it comes to
graphic autobiography.
Some creators completely dismiss the designation of “auto­
biography” altogether, which creates even more difficulty in setting
borders around the genre. Miriam Libicki, in her comics essay
“Jewish Memoir Goes Pow! Zap! Oy!” (2016), originates the
term “gonzo literary comics” to encapsulate autobiographical
comics and the type of comics journalism or reportage that she
and creators like Joe Sacco and Sarah Glidden produce, where the
creator is visually present in the work. The presence of the creator
in the work, she argues, resembles the gonzo journalism of Hunter
S. Thompson and others. “Gonzo literary comic,” then, is a hybrid
of autobiography and literature, or “autobiography disguised as
 Introduction: What are Autobiographical Comics? 15

literature,” as Libicki describes it (47). The “literary” component

allows the creator some flexibility in playing with the “truth” in
ways that strict autobiography normally cannot; in addition, the
reader’s relationship with the narrator in a literary text is much
different from the one in autobiography.
Phoebe Gloeckner (2011) famously challenges the designation
of her work as autobiographical, arguing that the generic desig-
nation devalues the story in significant ways. As she describes
her work, “This is not history or documentary or a confession,
and memories will be altered or sacrificed, for factual truth
has little significance in the pursuit of emotional truth” (179).
Again, we see how “emotional truth” is privileged over, and at
odds with, “factual truth.” Gloeckner is especially slippery when
describing the character Minnie Goetze in interviews, alterna-
tively using the pronouns “her” and “me.” Other creators may
deliberately undermine autobiographical readings of their work.
For example, in the semi-autobiographical Bumperhead (2014),
Gilbert Hernandez seems to set the story during his own teenage
years in the early 1970s, yet one character, Lalo, carries around
an anachronistic Internet-connected tablet device throughout. So,
“autobiography” as a genre can have porous boundaries through
which creators can find openings to challenge and play with generic
conventions.

This book and how to use it

While autobiographical comics have proliferated over the last thirty
years, the boundaries of the term are not easily delineated, and many
creators work to resist, undermine, or challenge the genre’s conven-
tions and to push or rupture those already perforated boundaries.
Many of the more genre-defying works are the ones that have
generated the most critical attention over the years, especially if
they point to unique ways in which the medium of comics intersects
with the genre. My job with this book is not necessarily to clarify
or throw a lasso around the concept of “autobiographical comics,”
but instead to embrace the genre’s instability because that, in my
mind, is what makes the topic so interesting. Much of this book,
then, will involve discussing such challenging works so that we can
16 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS

see why autobiographical comics has become such a worthy area

of study for scholars, students, and creators.
Also, readers can use this book in multiple ways. Moving
straight through the book from beginning to end will give readers
a broad understanding of the genre and its many facets. To
this end, the book is organized from the general to the specific,
beginning with a history of the genre and critical questions about
it to specific contexts and texts. However, readers may also pick
out individual sections to read as appropriate to their research
or areas of interest related to autobiographical comics. With this
in mind, the individual sections of the book are heavily cross-
referenced. For example, a reader interested in Art Spiegelman’s
Maus may start with the section devoted to the work in Chapter 5,
“Key texts,” but then that reader will be directed to relevant topics
related to the book, like “Trauma” and “Race and ethnicity” in
Chapter 4, “Social and cultural impact,” or to Maus’s role in
Chapter 2, “The history of autobiographical comics.”
After the introduction, Chapter 2 of this book offers a history
of autobiographical comics. While most such histories, like
Jared Gardner’s “Autography’s Biography” (2008) and relevant
chapters of Charles Hatfield’s Alternative Comics (2005), start
with Justin Green’s Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary
from 1972, I want to go back further into the early decades of the
twentieth century to trace autobiographical elements that have
been around almost from the beginning. Though Binky Brown is
undoubtedly the beginning point for the trend in autobiographical
comics that continues to this day, many of the conventions of
and approaches to autobiography have their origins even earlier
in the history of the medium. This history then highlights the key
developments in the genre that lead to its centrality in today’s
comics industry.
Chapter 3, “Critical questions,” will address some broad ideas
about the genre in relation to various critical, methodological, and
pedagogical approaches. Questions to be addressed here include
the following:
MM What critical questions seem to dominate the scholarship
on autobiographical comics?
MM Are there particular methodologies that seem well suited to
the analysis of autobiographical comics?
 Introduction: What are Autobiographical Comics? 17

MM How does the relationship between image and text function

in autobiographical comics?
MM
What characteristics of the comics medium lend themselves
to autobiographical and confessional expression?
MM What unique terminology do scholars use when discussing
autobiographical comics?
MM In what classes do the use of autobiographical comics seem
particularly appropriate?

Chapter 4, “Social and cultural impact,” offers individual attention

to various key topics and trends that have emerged from autobio-
graphical comics over the years. Some of these are areas that
have garnered significant critical attention as well. Issues covered
include trauma, graphic medicine, quotidian or mundane experi-
ences, gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity, adolescence, and
the censorship and controversies surrounding autobiographical
comics. In addition, the impact of the means of production related
to self-publishing and web comics will also be discussed.
Following these key topics, this book offers discussions of
various Key texts in the genre, which will be covered in chrono-
logical order. For the sections of Chapter 5, I have picked works
that have some significance in more than one of the following areas:
historical and/or cultural importance, influence, experimentation in
form and/or genre, scholarly attention, and educational value. The
number of works that fit within these criteria far exceeds the spatial
limitations of this book, so further narrowing was necessary. This
is by no means an attempt to argue for a canon of autobiographical
comics. However, for better or for worse, a small canon has
already formed, mostly based on critical attention, scholarship, and
pedagogical value. As mentioned earlier, Art Spiegelman’s Maus,
Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home have
risen to this position. One could argue that Justin Green’s Binky
Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary deserves a spot in this pantheon
primarily for its historical importance and profound influence on
generations of creators. I will admit that outside of these four
works, some subjectivity was involved in the decision about which
works to include as “key texts” in this chapter. Many works came
in and out of that section as this book progressed. I’m sure that
readers will have different choices that they would include there.
18 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS

Finally, the Appendices, Glossary, and Resources sections

offer readers supplementary information for further study of
auto­biographical comics, including extensive primary and secondary
source bibliographies and materials that expand on topics covered
in earlier sections of the book. The first appendix presents an edited
transcript of a panel discussion featuring pioneering autobio-
graphical comics creators Justin Green, Aline Kominsky-Crumb,
Carol Tyler, and Phoebe Gloeckner. This freewheeling conversation
gives readers a sense of how creators talk about their craft and
also how they see each others’ work. The second appendix digs
deeper into the creation of autobiographical comics through an
interview with Jennifer Hayden, creator of The Story of My Tits
(2015), a recent graphic memoir of her experience with breast
cancer. Finally, the appendices conclude with two comics excerpts
in dialog with one another. The first, from David Chelsea, explores
the choices that a creator makes involving perspective or point-of-
view. The second, by Ryan Claytor, challenges Chelsea’s argument
and considers these choices further. While most of the book focuses
on how the genre of autobiographical comics is discussed in
academic scholarship, these items in the appendices provide readers
with a sense of how the creators of such comics think about and
discuss their work.
In the end, my ultimate goal with this book is to provide readers
with a valuable resource that introduces them to the wide-ranging,
expanding, and exciting world of autobiographical comics. Readers
already familiar with the genre will also find new ways of thinking
about autobiographical comics and perhaps be able to make
connections to other works that they were not familiar with.
Writing a book like this comes with some inherent difficulties.
One is comprehensiveness. With the proliferation of autobio-
graphical comics as a worldwide, multimedia phenomenon, it would
be extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, to be completely
comprehensive in this discussion of the genre. In her study of
autobiographical comics, Elisabeth El Refaie (2012a) admirably
covers eighty-five different works, making it the most compre-
hensive study to date. That number only represents the tip of the
iceberg, and even more works appear on a monthly basis. A perusal
of any random issue of Previews, the monthly catalog of new comics
distributed to comic shops by Diamond, will reveal at least a half-
dozen or more new autobiographical works every month. This does
 Introduction: What are Autobiographical Comics? 19

not even account for the web comics, self-published mini-comics,

and non-Anglophone comics not covered by Diamond’s distri-
bution. This is a long way to say that some works are going to be
left out, perhaps even ones that have some significance to the genre.
I have striven for coverage of the diverse array of autobiographical
comics that we find today, but one significant and unfortunate gap
is that I have been limited largely to works published in English.
I have worked to fill this gap partially through secondary sources
that deal with non-Anglophone comics that have not been trans-
lated. Also, after much internal debate, I chose not to include a
discussion of comics journalism and reportage. Comics journalism
certainly overlaps in significant ways with autobiography—Joe
Sacco makes himself a visible, central component of his works, for
example—but, in the end, I felt that this growing and vibrant area
within the comics medium might be best dealt with in a separate
volume. In the end, I am sure that many readers will have a favorite
autobiographical comic that gets little or no attention in this book:
for that, I offer those readers my heartfelt apologies.
I want to alert readers to some conventions of writing about
autobiographical comics, or about comics in general. It often
becomes necessary to make clear distinctions between the author/
cartoonist and the autobiographical subject. When discussing the
specific cartoonists, their style, choices, and so on, I will use the
creator’s full name (Lynda Barry, Marjane Satrapi, Alison Bechdel)
or last name (Barry, Satrapi, Bechdel). When dealing with the
autobiographical subject or character within the text, I will use
the first name (Lynda, Marjane or Marji, Alison). Of course, those
cases where a creator uses a pseudonymous autobiographical
subject offer an exception to the rule (Phoebe Gloeckner’s Minnie
Goetz, Justin Green’s Binky Brown). (For mononyms like Seth or
Marinaomi, the reader is just going to have to figure it out.) This
is a convention I borrow from Hillary Chute (2010), who uses it
specifically in Graphic Women, though others have followed it
as well.
Quoting text from a comic can often be a challenge. Text can
appear in word balloons, thought bubbles, and caption boxes. A
single sentence may run through several word balloons within a
panel or even from one panel to another. These are all stylistic
choices a creator can make, but they can be difficult to duplicate
when describing in pure prose. For quotes that run through multiple
20 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS

balloons or captions, I will use a forward slash (“/”) to indicate a

transition from one balloon to the next within a single panel. If the
text runs over two or more panels, I will use two forward slashes
(“//”) when the quote crosses a panel border. Lettering styles prove
to be an even bigger challenge. Unless absolutely necessary to
convey the meaning of a passage, I will not indicate font or other
lexical changes to the text (such as bold, all caps, cursive, etc.).
In Comics Studies it has also become conventional to use
“comics” as a singular noun when referring to the medium, as in
“Comics is a medium.” In referring to the physical publications, I
will use “comic books” for the periodical pamphlets, and “graphic
novels” as the square-bound book form, either collections of previ-
ously published comic books or original publications. Perhaps
confusingly, “web comic” is the singular form used for electronic,
online comic series.

Note
1 As a faculty member at a state institution in South Carolina, I have
seen firsthand the chilling effect this controversy has had on higher
education administrators afraid of cuts to already paltry state
funding.
 2
The History of
Autobiographical Comics

When tracing the origins of autobiographical comics, scholars and

historians identify Justin Green’s 1972 comic, Binky Brown Meets
the Holy Virgin Mary, as the seminal work in the genre. Joseph
Witek (2011) asserts the revolutionary nature of this one comic:
“the influence of a single work on any art form can rarely be traced
so directly and so explicitly” (227). In fact, the genealogy of most
late twentieth-century autobiographical comics goes back to Binky
Brown. Many autobiographical comics creators cite Green’s comic
as a primary influence, including Art Spiegelman, Aline Kominsky-
Crumb, Robert Crumb, and Phoebe Gloeckner.1 While this chapter
will trace that influence in detail, I would also like to address the
strains of autobiography that existed in the comics medium earlier
than Green’s groundbreaking work. Such strains were indeed rare,
and some only vaguely connect to the autobiographical genre as
we know it today, though they are worth noting, as they indicate,
at the very least, that the potential for comics to serve as a venue
for autobiographical stories was apparent early on, and some
of the key conventions of the genre were established prior to
Green’s work.
22 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS

Early examples:
Proto-autobiographical comics
To some degree, readers can find elements of autobiography in
most comics, if not in most fiction altogether, whether it’s early
Superman stories reflecting Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s politics,
Walt Kelly using his Pogo strip to express his concerns for the
impact of human pollution on the environment, or Grant Morrison
entering the world of his comics as a character through his concept
of a “fiction suit.”2 Such instances would be too numerous to
mention, but early comics history did show some sparks for the
potential of the medium to tell deeply personal stories.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, some of the earliest of what we might
call “proto-autobiographical comics” dealt with the lives of
cartoonists. Most cases were instances of self-portraiture or even
self-parody rather than strictly autobiographical stories. Comic
strip creators occasionally appeared in their own comics, struggling
with creativity, chastising or being chastised by their creations, or
otherwise suffering for their art. In the anthology Comics about
Cartoonists (2013), editor Craig Yoe provides several examples of
such strips. For example, Winsor McCay often depicted the life of
a cartoonist in his earlier strips. This makes sense for a cartoonist
who foregrounded the act of creation through his vaudevillian
quick-draw performances and later experiments with animation
where he, as creator, interacted with his characters, like Gertie the
Dinosaur. In Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, under the nom de plume
“Silas,” McCay occasionally commented on the creative, profes-
sional, and personal demands placed on successful cartoonists
in strips where “Silas” would appear. Yoe also cites a February
12, 1919, Mutt and Jeff strip in which creator Bud Fisher depicts
himself constantly harangued by different competing groups
making contradictory demands on him (see Fig. 2.1). Republicans
criticize him for “boosting” President Wilson, while Democrats
complain that he isn’t featuring Wilson enough. Readers support
and reject “Bolsheviki” items in the strip. And an African-
American janitor expresses enjoyment of a “colored gen’leman” in
the strip, but the editor warns that such images will cause them to
lose their “colored circulation.” Fisher maintains the same expres-
sionless look through the first few panels. Finally, facing such
 The History of Autobiographical Comics 23

FIGURE 2.1 Bud Fisher’s Mutt and Jeff strip from February 12, 1919.
Printed from the original art from the collection of Craig Yoe.

irreconcilable, contradictory demands, Fisher runs a hose from the

office gas pipe to his mouth and gives up (18–19).
So early in the history of the comics medium, Fisher’s strip
already exhibited key tensions in the ways in which comics can
do autobiography: we know that this is not a “real” event in
Fisher’s life, but it does speak to a truth that Fisher experienced
as a cartoonist. The dark comedy of the final panel shows just
24 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS

how irresolvable these demands are for cartoonists. Later autobio-

graphical creators would also explore at length these tensions over
the “truths” that comics can tell.
Other creators regularly depicted themselves interacting with
their creations in notable ways. Will Eisner appeared in the
May 3, 1942, Spirit comic titled “Self Portrait,” where he is
beset by editors demanding late work from the cartoonist. Eisner,
however, is dependent on the Spirit to provide the “true” tale of his
latest adventure. The cartoonist, whose face never appears in the
story, laments his own adventureless life and wishes for a reversal
of roles: the Spirit would create the comic based on Eisner’s adven-
tures. The story ultimately lampoons the act of creating comics as
Eisner pokes fun at himself for having an inflated view of his own
talents. In a later strip (“Happy New Year,” December 31, 1950),
Eisner’s assistant, Jules Feiffer, murders the creator of the Spirit
and turns the strip into something more resembling Feiffer’s own
creation, Clifford.
In 1948, Collier’s magazine ran a series of one-page cartoonist
autobiographies, where each cartoonist told the story of his start
in the business and the creation of his famous characters. Such
luminaries as Ernie Bushmiller (Nancy), Ham Fisher (Joe Palooka),
Milton Caniff (Steve Canyon), and Chester Gould (Dick Tracy)
contributed to the series. These strips, with titles like “Dick
Tracy and Me,” often showed the cartoonists in humorous inter­
actions with their characters. However, they also dealt with more
straightforward autobiographical elements, such as documenting
key events in the lives of the cartoonists, than the more humorous
self-portraits that were common when creators appeared in their
comics.
Two sustained examples of “proto-autobiographical comics” or
at least semi-autobiography in comics are worthy of note: Sheldon
Mayer’s Scribbly series and Quality Comics’ Inkie feature. Both
demonstrate how the lives of cartoonists could be depicted in
comics, even if exaggerated for humorous purposes.
Scribbly was created by nineteen-year-old Sheldon Mayer and
first appeared as a one-page strip in issue 2 of Dell Comics’ The
Funnies (November 1936) and later in the series Popular Comics.
Mayer began working as a professional cartoonist in 1932 at the
age of fifteen, and four years later he would use this experience as
a “boy cartoonist” to create Scribbly. As Mayer recalled, “Scribbly
 The History of Autobiographical Comics 25

was a thing I dreamed up during my lunch hour one day in a noisy

cafeteria … I followed the old rule of writing only what you know
about. What was more natural than writing about the adventures of
a boy cartoonist?” (qtd in Goulart 1990: 322–3). Ron Goulart also
explains the relationship between the Scribbly strip and Mayer’s
own experiences: “Mayer has maintained that the strip was a blend
of autobiography and fantasy and that some of the elements that
seemed most true were the most unreal” (323). Scribbly Jibbet is
a young man with ambitions to become a famous cartoonist like
his hero, Ving Parker. Parker discovers Scribbly’s cartoon work
as graffiti on neighborhood walls and fences, something that the
young Mayer did as well. Soon, the young artist ends up staying
in Parker’s mansion, and Parker even introduces Scribbly to such
real-life cartoonists as Lank Leonard (Mickey Finn) and Milt Gross
(who also often included himself in his own strips) (see Fig. 2.2).
Scribbly then starts producing his own comic, “Why Big Brothers
Leave Home,” which we see as a strip running at the bottom of
each Scribbly page. That strip is based on Scribbly’s own experi-
ences with a pestering little brother and even features a boy named
Scribbly as the main character. Therefore, though the strip Scribbly
is only loosely based on Mayer’s experiences as a young cartoonist,
the diegetic strip that Scribbly creates is purely autobiographical
and demonstrates an early awareness of the potential for comics
as a vehicle for autobiographical stories. Later, the “Why Big
Brothers Leave Home” strip was turned into a kind of “reader
participation” feature, where young readers could earn money by
sending in their horrifying or amusing experiences with younger
siblings for Scribbly to draw.
Once the character Scribbly was established as a celebrity boy
cartoonist, the series addressed the challenges of balancing school
life with cartooning work. He also runs into problems drawing
source material from real life. When he caricatures his teacher in a
strip, she sends him to the principal for disciplining. The principal,
however, has cartooning ambitions of his own. Rather than
disciplining Scribbly, the principal taps him for drawing lessons.
Ultimately, the principal creates his own autobiographical strip,
“Scene in P.S. 83 as Seen by the Principal.”3 With this storyline,
Scribbly addresses the personal dangers of mining one’s life for
source material—a danger that many autobiographical comics
creators would address later.
26 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS

FIGURE 2.2 “Gettin’ Up in th’ World” from Scribbly by Sheldon Mayer.

Originally appeared in The Funnies 8 (May 1937).
 The History of Autobiographical Comics 27

When Mayer began working for Max Gaines at All-American

Comics (which would merge with National Periodical Publications
and eventually become DC Comics), he took Scribbly with him.
The Scribbly feature ran in All-American Comics 1–59 (1939–
44), though the boy cartoonist ended up as second fiddle to the
popular supporting character “Ma” Hunkel, a.k.a. the original
Red Tornado, who would also eventually share the feature’s title.
Goulart (1990) explains that “There really was a Ma Hunkel,
and in real life Mayer had a room in her house, which he used
as a studio” (323). Ma Hunkel first appeared in the third issue of
All-American and became the Red Tornado in issue 20 (November
1940); she ultimately began sharing the bill with Scribbly in 23
(February 1941). Mayer even appears in All-American Comics 45
(December 1942) in a story reminiscent of the early Bud Fisher
strip discussed above, where Mayer, despondent over criticism
of his comics, breaks through the panel border on the top tier of
the page and attempts suicide by leaping to the bottom tier. The
Red Tornado manages to rescue him by running down the stairs,
changing into costume, and arriving at the final panel just in time
to catch her creator (see Fig. 2.3). This is a rather ingenious and
imaginative way to demonstrate the tensions between creator
and creation. Scribbly later received his own comic book, which
ran for fifteen issues from 1948 to 1951. Other autobiographical
cartoonists would follow Mayer by creating pseudonymous
stand-ins to tell their life stories, including Justin Green’s Binky
Brown, Aline Kominsky-Crumb’s Bunch, and Phoebe Gloekner’s
Minnie Goetze. Such creations allowed the cartoonists to blur or
challenge generic boundaries of autobiography, yet we see that
such challenges occurred in the earliest examples, before a tradition
of autobiography even starts in the comics medium.
The feature Inkie was a humor series appearing in Quality
Comics’ Crack Comics 28 (March 1943) to 60 (May 1949), origi-
nally created by cartoonist Al Stahl and heavily influenced by Max
Fleischer’s 1918–29 animated series, Out of the Inkwell, featuring
Koko the Klown. Early strips in the series served as sharp and often
surreal satires of the comics industry in general, and of Quality
Comics in particular. In the first installments, Inkie, a tiny boy
made out of ink, emerges from the comics page because he is dissat-
isfied with the quality of stories in which he appears. Late at night,
he comes to life in order to create more satisfying stories. In some
28 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS

FIGURE 2.3 Sheldon Mayer’s Scribbly and the Red Tornado (December
1942). From All-American Comics 45 © DC Comics. Used with permission.
 The History of Autobiographical Comics 29

of the early episodes, Inkie also befriends the artist who works on
his strip at the time, including series creator Al Stahl as well as later
fill-in artists Jack Cole and Milt Stein. Each creator would appear
overworked and beset upon by a blustery, demanding, cheap, and
dictatorial boss, who may be a caricature of Jerry Iger, the owner
of the studio that initially produced the strip. In one of Jack Cole’s
contributions, from Crack Comics 34 (Summer 1944), Cole is
frequently interrupted by notes from the editor demanding the
appearance of Inkie in the story. Cole responds by quickly drawing
a picture of Inkie and holding it up to the reader before returning
to the story at hand (see Fig. 2.4). Often, the cartoonist becomes
enmeshed in a crime, and Inkie comes to the rescue. But like some
of the other contemporaneous representations of the industry, the
creation of comics appeared to be grueling, thankless work with
little reward. The story from Crack Comics 35 (Autumn 1944),
drawn by Milt Stein, depicts the Quality offices: the boss is hitting
on a buxom, bespectacled young secretary, while an artist shows
off his stick-figure drawings. The early strips in this series created
a sense of a “bullpen” responsible for the production of comics,
anticipating Mad’s “Usual Gang of Idiots” in the 1950s and the
Marvel bullpen that Stan Lee would perpetuate in the 1960s and
later. These metafictional plots and industry satires continued
through issue 39 (Autumn 1945), at which point the series became
a generic humor strip about “the world’s smallest boy.” Though
Al Stahl remained the series creator until the end, he no longer
appeared in the strip and no one mentions that Inkie is a boy made
of ink.
Another significant precursor to later autobiographical
comics appeared in EC’s Weird Science 22 (1953). “My World,”
written by Al Feldstein and drawn by Wally Wood, features a
series of panels with caption boxes that explain how each image
represents an aspect of the narrator’s “world.” The six-page story
begins, “This is my world. This is the world I love,” and the
final panel shows an artist at the drawing board, with the word
balloon,

For my world is the world of science-fiction … conceived in my

mind and placed upon paper with pencil and ink and brush and
sweat and a great deal of love for my world. For I am a science-
fiction artist. My name is Wood.
30 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS

FIGURE 2.4 Inkie from Crack Comics 34 (Autumn 1944). Published by

Quality Comics.

We see on the drawing board the very page we are looking at in

the process of creation (a concept later discussed in Chapter 3 as
mise en abyme). Like other early examples, this may seem like a
minor occurrence of autobiography. However, the influence of EC
Comics, especially the work of Wally Wood, on later underground
and mainstream creators is profound.
As with Scribbly and Inkie, throughout the history of comics,
creators continued to depict themselves entering the world of their
characters, usually for humorous effect rather than any kind of
autobiographical revelation. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby try to crash
the wedding of Reed Richards and Sue Storm in Fantastic Four
Annual 3 (1965), only to be given the bum’s rush by Nick Fury
and his Howling Commandos. This moment began a long tradition
of Marvel creators appearing in the comics, with the idea that
 The History of Autobiographical Comics 31

the Marvel Comics offices, complete with its bullpen, existed in the
Marvel universe and produced comics based on the real adven-
tures of these heroes. During this same “Silver Age” period, in the
pages of DC Comics’ Green Lantern and The Atom, artist Gil Kane
would often directly address the reader from his drawing board.
And in what amounts to a darker version of Inkie, an egomaniacal
Kane is sucked into his own horror story after killing editor Joe
Orlando in “His Name Is … Kane” from House of Mystery 180
(May–June 1969), written by Mike Friedrich. Though the title
is primarily a reference to Gil Kane’s groundbreaking adventure
comic, His Name Is … Savage (1968), one can also read in the title
a reference to the final line of Wally Wood’s “My World”: “My
name is Wood.” While such a story is pure fantasy, it offers what
may be only a slight exaggeration of the tensions at work between
members of a comic book’s creative team. And as in the Wood
story, the autobiographical trope of the artist addressing the reader
from his drawing board would later be exploited by Justin Green,
Lynda Barry, Art Spiegelman, and many others as a signal for the
autobiographical mode. It also may be no accident that such an
experimental story in a mainstream comic appeared at the onset of
the underground comix movement.4
Other rare instances of autobiographical comics precede under-
ground comix. Henry Yoshitaka Kiyama’s Four Immigrants Manga
(also known as Manga of the Four Students), self-published in
Japan in 1931, tells of the creator’s immigrant experience, along
with his three friends, in San Francisco from 1904 to 1924 (English
translation by Stone Bridge Press [1998]). In 1946, Miné Okubo
published Citizen 13660 (1983), her illustrated memoir of life
in a Japanese-American internment camp during World War II.5
With full-page illustrations and accompanying text, Citizen 13660
more resembles an illustrated story than a comic, but its historical
significance, resistance to contemporary racial stereotypes, and
influence on later graphic narratives make it a frequent part of
discussions about graphic memoirs. In 1961, manga creator Shinji
Nagashima created The Cruel Story of a Cartoonist (Mangaka
Zankoku Monogatari), which addresses the creator’s frustrations
with the Japanese comics industry. Such frustrations have been
the subjects of autobiographical comics from the genre’s inception.
Comics scholar Mark McKinney has found an early 1960s memoir
by Coral (Laroque Letour), who chronicled his life in prison and
32 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS

far-right nationalist beliefs using journals in comics form (cited

in El Refaie 2012a: 227 n.16). None of these works had the
popularity or cultural penetration to kick off a trend in autobio-
graphical comics, however.
The potential for autobiographical comics has always existed
in the medium, much as the potential for any genre would in any
medium. In this sense, these early forays into autobiography are
unremarkable. None of the examples from the early 1900s to the
1960s rose to the level of influence that would firmly entrench the
genre in the medium. Nor do they have the intimate, confessional
power that marked Justin Green’s work and those that followed
him. Instead, the examples from popular comics sources function
on a playful, metafictional level. Thus, these works often go unmen-
tioned in historical discussions of autobiographical comics, which
might gesture toward the existence of early examples but instead
focus on the clearer and more significant underground influence.
Nonetheless, they demonstrate the potential for the medium to allow
for personal creative expressions and even establish some of the
basic conventions of the genre that would become significant later.

Underground comix
So, while Justin Green’s Binky Brown did not appear sui generis
as the first comic to feature autobiographical elements, it is safe to
say that this seminal work spawned a tradition of autobiography,
especially confessional autobiography, in comics form.
That tradition had its origins in the experimental, boundary-
pushing work found in the underground comix movement. Joseph
Witek (1989) defines “underground comix” as “cheaply and
independently published black-and-white comics which flourished
in the late 1960s and early 1970s as outlets for the graphic fantasies
and social protests of your counterculture” (51). These “comix”
likely first appeared on American university campuses, often self-
published by contributors to the local campus newspapers and
college humor magazines, like Frank Stack’s The Adventures of
Jesus (1964) and Jaxon’s (Jack Jackson) God Nose (1964), both
at the University of Texas. By 1966, free underground newspapers,
most notably the East Village Other in New York and the LA Free
 The History of Autobiographical Comics 33

Press in California, included strips by the first wave of underground

cartoonists. In 1968, copies of Crumb’s Zap Comix 1 were sold
from a baby carriage in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district.6
Soon after, underground comix—many produced by dedicated
publishers like Last Gasp Eco-Funnies, Kitchen Sink Press, Print
Mint, and Rip-Off Press—could be found in the head shops of the
Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco during the height of the
counterculture movement, to which they were intensely connected.
As Roger Sabin (1993) describes it, the counterculture was both
a social and artistic movement, led by “a generation that viewed
society as essentially reactionary and bellicose, and which instead
interested itself in pacifism, sexual freedom, minority rights and,
perhaps most notoriously, the benefits (spiritual or otherwise) of
drugs” (36). As a part of the counterculture, the underground
comix were defined by their resistance to censorship and the
cultural norms of the time, and they flaunted taboos often for the
sake of exposing otherwise forbidden topics, with the added irony
of appearing in a medium that was closely associated with children.
Witek (1989) explains that, because comics was already such a
“specially circumscribed cultural space,” the early underground
creators found that “the comics medium offered a particularly
fruitful ground for iconoclasm” (50–1). No subject was off limits
in these books: graphic sex, violence, drug use, racism, resistance
to authority, the Vietnam War.
A particular target was the Comics Code, the restrictive self-
censorship regime that mainstream publishers committed to in the
wake of Fredric Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent (1954) and
the infamous Senate hearings on the relationship between comics
and juvenile delinquency. Hence, the “x” in “comix” emphasized
their distinction from conventional comics and signaled their
adult or “X-rated” content. Underground creator Spain Rodriguez
explained the overt antagonism toward mainstream comics’ self-
censorship: “We were able to kick the despicable Comics Code in
the teeth” (qtd in Mazur and Danner 2014: 29). In one notorious
example, in S. Clay Wilson’s “Head First” from Zap Comics 2
(1968), a pirate lops off and eats a fellow pirate’s penis. In the same
issue, Wilson also has an untitled short story in which a naked man
flings his own feces at some onlookers. Such graphic imagery was
certainly boundary-pushing, and the “anything goes” mentality of
these creators would open the door for more works that would
34 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS

challenge the status quo, even if those works were not so overtly
shocking.
Charles Hatfield (2005) argues that, in addition to the taboo-
breaking content, one of the lasting influences of underground
comix was to make the comic book as a publication a viable
commodity for adults (7). Hatfield sees a direct line from this
particular revolution to the development of, among other things,
autobiographical stories as content for comic books: “It was
through the underground comix that comic books per se became
an adult medium, and the self-contained nature of these ‘books’
… made the medium an ideal platform for kinds of expression
that were outrageously personal and self-regarding” (7). In turn,
that potential personal expression also led to a kind of “auteurist”
approach to comics, where individual creators achieved a status in
which their work was sought out by readers. And so, many of the
most popular underground cartoonists created their own individual
comic books, like various works by Crumb, Kim Deitch’s Corn Fed
Comix, and Gilbert Shelton’s Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. Thus,
a work like Justin Green’s Binky Brown—a stand-alone, book-
length autobiographical story by a single creator—fits logically into
this auteurist sensibility.
Furthermore, underground publishers followed models that
challenged corporate publishing strategies and creator contracts.
For example, underground creators retained the rights to their
creations and received royalties on sales, benefits that were virtually
unheard of in the mainstream comics industry. Many of the most
popular underground comix went through multiple printings, so
they could conceivably always appear on store shelves, unlike the
more ephemeral nature of the monthly periodical comic. Therefore,
these publishing models also fomented and encouraged a culture in
which creators could tell personal stories because they could also
own their stories.
In this creative environment, autobiographical comics emerged
as one of the ways that the medium and the prevailing culture
could be challenged. In addition, the work of underground creators
was already intensely personal, and figures like Robert Crumb rose
to the level of celebrity quickly within the movement. Therefore,
the rise of autobiographical stories seems inevitable as an obvious
form of personal expression. In the earliest underground comix,
the autobiographical mode manifested through vivid descriptions
 The History of Autobiographical Comics 35

of intense LSD-trips, as Jared Gardner (2012) explains: “Comics,

with its emphasis on the nonverbal and its openness to nonlinear
storytelling, was also latched on to as the ideal medium to tell the
unique and uniquely untranslatable experience of taking LSD”
(120). Crumb and Art Spiegelman were among those who created
“acid trip” comics to convey their experiences, though through
semi-autobiographical avatars.
Crumb, as Gardner (2012) also points out, dabbled in autobio-
graphical expression in his earliest comics, even drawing himself into
stories in Foo, the fanzine that Crumb produced with his brother
Charles in 1958 (115). Into the mid-1960s, Crumb continued to
produce “semiautobiographical stand-ins” as he worked through
his neuroses and anxieties on the comics page. By 1972, he
was using “R. Crumb” as a character in his comics to address
concerns about his own celebrity status, as in “The Confessions of
R. Crumb” (The People’s Comics, 1972a) and “The Many Faces of
R. Crumb” (XYZ Comics, 1972b).
Justin Green explains how his first exposure to the work of
R. Crumb changed his life and led him to move to San Francisco
and join the underground scene. While studying classical art in
Rome during his senior year at the Rhode Island School of Design,
Green received a copy of an underground newspaper from another
American: “Little did I know that therein was a cartoon by a fellow
named Crumb that was to change my life” (qtd in Rosencranz
2008: 94). This self-described “epiphany” inspired Green to shift
his focus from fine art to cartooning, and it ultimately led him to
move to San Francisco in order to pursue a career in comics.
Every history of autobiographical comics (Hatfield [2005],
Gardner [2008], Chute [2010], El Refaie [2012a], and others)
has identified Justin Green’s Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin
Mary, a 1972 forty-four-page one-shot published by Last Gasp
Eco-Funnies, as the seminal autobiographical underground comic.
In addition, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, among others, cites Green’s
work as her inspiration for not only entering the world of under-
ground comix, but also for creating her own autobiographical
work. In “More of the Bunch” from Twisted Sisters 1 (1976a),
Kominsky-Crumb’s avatar, the Bunch, reads Binky Brown as her
first experience with underground comix: she thinks, “Hey this
is heavy shit. This kid’s got problems … and so do I!” She’s then
inspired to make her own similar comic, deciding that she will be
36 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS

the main character. Most notably, Art Spiegelman (1995), in his

introduction to Binky Brown, states that “without [Green’s] work
there could have been no MAUS” (n.p.). Spiegelman’s inspiration
came even before Green’s book was published: he saw the pages in
progress while hanging out at Green’s apartment. He then went on
to produce the proto-Maus story that appeared in Funny Aminals 1
(1972) just a few months after Binky Brown. Regardless of any
debates about its designation as “the first,” Binky Brown inspired
many creators to see comics as a viable medium for their own
autobiographical stories.
Binky Brown receives more detailed attention in Chapter 5,
but a brief description is warranted here. In addition to being
a seminal autobiographical comic, this was also the longest
sustained narrative in underground comix to this point in time.
Justin Green uses the character of Binky Brown (a name derived
from a childhood nickname Green had received from an uncle,
combined with a color) to explore his experiences with what would
later be diagnosed as obsessive-compulsive disorder related to his
adolescent involvement in the Catholic Church. Specifically, Brown
is obsessed with impure thoughts directed at the Virgin Mary, and
he believes these thoughts radiate from his penis and, later, all of
his appendages, which take the form of penises in the comic. For
example, he fears that these penis rays will destroy a church if they
are directed at the building, even from a distance.
From the outset, Binky Brown does not read like a straight
autobiography. Green utilizes a symbolic or allegorical style as
a means of autobiographical expression: his fears and obsessions
are literalized in the book’s imagery. Therefore, the experimental
potential of comics to tell autobiographical stories in a unique way
is evident in this early work.
Other creators quickly followed suit with their own short
autobiographical works, and some would make sustained efforts
at creating a body of personal stories. Robert Crumb and Aline
Kominsky-Crumb continued their prolific output of autobio-
graphical comics, both separately and together. Their collaborative
Dirty Laundry Comics (1974 and 1977, collected in 1993) features
tales of their off-beat relationship in which the artists draw
themselves. Art Spiegelman continued to dabble in autobiography,
most notably with the original “Maus” story in Funny Aminals
(1972), and “Prisoner of the Hell Planet” from the first issue of
 The History of Autobiographical Comics 37

Short Order Comix (1973a). He also produced a variety of short

dream comics, sometimes using his cartoon stand-in, Skeeter Grant.
Manuel “Spain” Rodriguez was another notable contributor to the
genre, whose autobiographical works were later collected in My
True Story (1994). Spain told stories of his experiences with the
Road Vultures motorcycle club during the 1950s and 1960s and
also created some of the earliest examples of comics journalism,
like his coverage of the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago
for the East Village Other.
Many creators influenced by Green also became editors of some of
the more prominent underground and post-underground periodical
comics anthologies that frequently published autobiographical
comics. Robert Crumb and later Aline Kominsky-Crumb edited
Weirdo (1981–93), and Art Spiegelman co-founded and co-edited
Arcade (1975–6) and Raw (1980–91). Spiegelman and co-founder
Bill Griffith published seven issues of Arcade: The Comics Revue,
through San Francisco underground publisher Print Mint. Despite
its short run, the magazine contained important autobiographical
work by significant underground creators, including Spiegelman,
Crumb, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Bob Armstrong, and Diane
Noomin. In addition, Weirdo, especially under the editorship of
Kominsky-Crumb (issues 18–28, 1986–93), became a significant
venue for the publication of autobiographical comics from both
underground creators and the next generation.
Autobiographical stories also flourished in the pages of comix
devoted to groups underrepresented in the mainstream comics
industry, both behind the scenes and on the page. While series
like Wimmen’s Comix, Tits & Clits, Twisted Sisters, and Gay
Comix did not exclusively deal with autobiography, these series
had a high concentration of personal stories that addressed topics
not otherwise covered in mainstream popular culture or the
more male-dominated underground comix industry, like promis-
cuous sexual activity, menstruation, masturbation, sexual abuse,
domestic violence, and coming out. Even when not dealing with
dramatic events, they exposed readers to sympathetic portrayals of
otherwise marginalized groups, usually in a frank and honest way.
These four series, along with Mary Wings’s one-shots—Come Out
Comix (1973) and Dyke Shorts (1978)—require more considered
attention because of the significant roles they played and long-term
impact they had in this history. The sheer concentration of
38 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS

autobiographical stories that these series offered was a part of their

contribution, but they also served as vehicles (or even launching
pads) for many of the key creators in the genre. These works will
also be discussed in the “Gender and sexuality” section of the
“Social and cultural impact” chapter.
Wimmen’s Comix and Tits & Clits survived the underground
comix crash, though they experienced sporadic publication. The
seventeen issues of Wimmen’s Comix published from 1972 to
1992 bridge the time from the publication of Binky Brown to the
completion of Art Spiegelman’s Maus, and, as such, the series both
influenced and was influenced by trends in autobiographical comics
during this period. Tits & Clits continued irregular publication until
its seventh issue in 1987. Gay Comix (1980–98, created by Howard
Cruse and initially published by Kitchen Sink) arrived much later
than the other two series, but it followed the same format, antholo-
gizing a mixture of autobiography, real life, humor, and fantasy
stories focused on themes dealing with sexuality and gender.
Many female creators felt excluded from the underground comix
movement as both creators and readers. The taboo-breaking ethos of
the undergrounds led male creators to graphic stories of misogyny,
rape, and violence toward women, often played for laughs.
Male-dominated anthologies rarely had room for female cartoonists,
and so women often had to create their own routes to publication.
However, the underground also offered the potential for new creative
outlets that didn’t exist in the mainstream comics industry. Hillary
Chute (2010) explains the importance of comix for women:

The growth of the underground comix movement was connected

to second-wave feminism, which enabled a body of work that
was explicitly political to sprout: if female activists complained of
the misogyny of the New Left, this was mirrored in underground
comics, prompting women cartoonists to establish a space
specifically for women’s work. It is only in the comics under-
ground that the U.S. first saw any substantial work by women
allowed to explore their own artistic impulses, and further,
women organizing collectives that undertook to articulate the
challenges and goals of specifically female cartoonists. (20)

Trina Robbins was one of the earliest female cartoonists to establish

such a space, first in the all-female anthology It Aint Me Babe
 The History of Autobiographical Comics 39

(1970), published by Last Gasp and in association with the feminist

newspaper of the same name. Robbins then went on to help form
the Wimmen’s Comix Collective, a group of ten female cartoonists
who would each serve as contributors and rotating editors for a
new anthology series, Wimmen’s Comix.7 From the first issues,
beginning in 1972, the series featured autobiographical stories,
including works by Robbins, Kominsky-Crumb, Diane Noomin,
Sharon Rudahl, and others. As the series progressed, it published
a vast number of autobiographical short stories, occasionally
even devoting entire issues to the genre. Later autobiographical
contributors included Caryn Leschen, Phoebe Gloeckner, Lynda
Barry, Alison Bechdel, Carol Tyler, Joey Epstein, Mary Fleener,
Leslie Sternbergh, Dori Seda, Sophie Crumb, Penny Moran, and
Julie Doucet.
Three months prior to the publication of Wimmen’s Comix,
Joyce Sutton (later Joyce Farmer) and Lyn Chevli (also known as
Lyn Chevely and Chin Lyvely) formed Nanny Goat Productions
and released Tits & Clits Comix. The first two issues were
created completely by Chevely and Farmer, and then the comic
became a multi-artist anthology with its third issue. The series,
later published by Last Gasp through its seventh and final issue
in 1987, increased its autobiographical offerings through its run,
featuring creators like Trina Robbins, Roberta Gregory, Chris
Powers, Sharon Rudahl, Mary Fleener, Dori Seda, Joey Epstein,
Joyce Brabner, and Leslie Sternbergh and topics ranging from single
motherhood and adolescent sexuality to abortion rights and sexual
predators.
Aline Kominsky-Crumb and Diane Noomin separated from the
Wimmen’s Comix Collective in 1976 to produce their own comic,
Twisted Sisters. As Chute (2010) explains, Kominsky-Crumb
was “frustrated by what she perceived as an almost superhero-
inflected glamorization of women under the auspices of feminism”
amongst the collective (24). The first issue cover of Twisted Sisters
forms a kind of mission statement for the series (though the two
creators provide an actual mission statement on the inside, using
their characters Bunch and Didi Glitz as spokeswomen), with
Kominsky-Crumb’s Bunch persona sitting on a toilet and criti-
cizing her appearance in a hand mirror. Noomin went on to use
the Twisted Sisters title for a pair of anthologies and a miniseries
in the 1990s.
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
21. Has the disability been aggravated by—
(a) Intemperance?
(b) Misconduct?
22. Is the disability permanent?
23. If not permanent, what is its probable minimum duration?
To be stated in months.
24. To what extent is his capacity for earning a full livelihood in
the general labour market lessened at present?
In defining the extent of his inability to earn a livelihood,
estimate it at ¼, ½, ¾, or total incapacity.
25. If an operation was advised and declined, was the refusal
unreasonable?
26. Do the Board recommend—
(a) Discharge as permanently unfit, or
(b) Change to England?
Signatures:—

——————President.

——————Members.

Station ——————
Date ——————

APPROVED.

Station ——————
——————
Administrative Medical Officer.

Date ——————
It should be remembered that the bulk of the medical officers were
civilians, that they were unaware of the broad questions of policy
involved, and that they were inclined on principle to give a holiday to
a man who had been fighting, and even to believe the stories told
them by the malingerer. The reader will therefore not be surprised to
learn that a number of men who were certainly not in a very bad
way were recommended for two, three, or six months' change, or
even for discharge. The proceedings of the Board were reviewed by
a responsible officer; for a long time by Lieut.-Col. Barrett when
acting as A.D.M.S. on General Ford's staff. It was, however, difficult
to persuade any Board which had once expressed their opinion to
modify it, and almost impossible to get them to reverse it. If their
recommendations had been rejected altogether, the conduct of the
Service would have become difficult. Under direction, an attempt
was made to modify the practice by appointing a permanent Board
in each hospital, presided over by a senior medical officer charged
with the duty primarily of attending to Board work, and of acting as
a clinician only when he had time.

The Following Draft was made the Basis of the

Arrangement
1. Two medical officers are to be detached from other duties at
Nos. 1 and 2 Australian General Hospitals respectively, in order
to form a majority of a permanent invaliding board at each
hospital. They will be known as the senior and junior invaliding
officer respectively.
2. The duties of the Board at Nos. 1 and 2 Australian General
Hospitals will be to form an Invaliding Board by meeting in each
case the medical officer in charge of the case.
3. The Board proceedings when completed will be sent to the
A.D.M.S. Australian Force, Headquarters, Cairo, and on being
approved will at once be forwarded with nominal roll to the
Australian Intermediate Base Depot, Cairo.
 4. The Australian Intermediate Base will forward to the O.C.
Hospital or Convalescent Home nominal roll of patients who are
to be discharged or transferred to Australia or England. These
patients will be transferred to the Convalescent Home, Helouan
(if they are able to leave hospital), and will remain at the Home
till transport is ready for them.
5. The only circumstances in which completed Board cases are
to be retained in any hospital, except the Convalescent Home,
Helouan, are when patients require a considerable amount of
treatment, and are unfit to leave the hospital.
6. The senior invaliding officer will be responsible for the
accuracy of the nominal rolls.
7. At Alexandria an invaliding officer will be attached to the
Australian Convalescent Home at Ras el Tin. It will be his duty,
under direction of the A.D.M.S. Alexandria, to proceed to the
various hospitals and camps in Alexandria, arrange for the
formation of Boards, of which he will be a member, to deal with
all cases in Alexandria. These cases, in like manner, must be
forwarded to Convalescent Home, Helouan, except in the cases
of those who are unfit to leave hospital.
8. The cases to be dealt with fall into two classes: (a) men unfit
for military service, who may be sent by (i) transport to
Australia or (ii) by hospital ship to Australia; and (b) men likely
to profit by change to England during hot weather, to proceed
by (i) transport or (ii) hospital ship.
9. The Board proceedings are to indicate, in the opinion of the
Board, the best manner of dealing with patients under the
several headings.
June 30, 1915.

Again difficulties arose, since none of the medical officers wanted

the job. In fact, medical officers in general never want to do
anything except attend to patients. They are unsuited
temperamentally for administrative work, and dislike it. Even with
this modification, though the system worked somewhat better, evils
obtruded themselves. The statements of men who swore they were
suffering from rheumatism and severe pains in the back were
sometimes taken at face value, and further modification
consequently became necessary. Any medical officer could
recommend any patient to be boarded. The Board then sat and sent
in its report to the A.D.M.S. Under the modified arrangement no
patient could be boarded until he had been examined by the senior
medical officer of the Australian Force in Egypt, or by the D.D.M.S.
Egypt, Col. Manifold. By this means most of the trouble was
eliminated and a satisfactory principle was established. It is the old
story—the reversion to direction by a limited number of experienced
and responsible people.
It was decided not to send Australian patients to Great Britain other
than in exceptional cases, that is if they had friends or relatives
there, and if they only required a short change, say two months. As
the voyage to Australia occupied a month each way, it was absurd to
send them back there for two months. For three months or more
they were sent to Australia, and in some cases were discharged on
arrival. Some men who were no longer fit for service at the front
were kept in Egypt for Base Duty.
Only those who have experience of base work become aware of the
enormous demands made on a garrison for guard work, for clerical
work, orderly work, and the like. At Al Hayat, Helouan, for example,
the commandant really required ninety men for sentry work, though
he had only forty. The demands for competent clerks were incessant.
 The Eastern Mediterranean.
The Red Cross indicates Medical Stations of special interest
to the Australian Force.
To face page 77
As soon as patients were destined for dispatch to Australia they were
forwarded to Helouan and kept there until the ship was ready to
leave. As a result Helouan was filled with waiting cases. In order
then to ease the pressure at Helouan, a waiting camp was
established at Suez close to the Government Hospital, to which any
patients could be admitted. This establishment of course
necessitated further demands for medical officers, orderlies, etc.

Transport of Sick and Wounded by Sea

As soon as it was decided to return patients to Australia in addition
to those sent to England, Cyprus, or convalescent hospitals in Egypt,
a system was developed in order to provide the necessary staffs and
equipment on ships. Surgeon-General Williams had exerted himself
to get hospital ships provided, but in the early stages they had not
even been promised, and a service was perforce created by utilising
empty transports and collecting the staff in Egypt. The first efforts
may be described as almost maddening. It was impossible to get
adequate notice when a ship was likely to leave for Australia. It had
probably been to the Dardanelles and unloaded soldiers and
munitions of war. It had returned to Alexandria packed with
wounded. It might then be drafted to Australia, at a few days'
notice. It was necessary to clean and refit it, to place hammocks,
blankets, beds on board, to provide drugs and surgical appliances
and Red Cross stores, and to provide a staff in Egypt.
In looking back on the efforts made, the wonder is not that minor
defects occurred in the early stages, but that the work was done
anything like as well as it was. The difficulties were almost
insuperable, and nothing but the devotion of a number of medical
officers to the service rendered any decent result possible.
The first ship to leave with wounded on board was the Kyarra on
June 7, but previously a number of ships had left containing invalids,
venereal cases, undesirables, and oddments. In every case there
was a scramble at the last moment to get things ready. The staff for
the ships was provided by detailing officers, nurses, and orderlies
from the scanty staffs of Nos. 1 and 2 General Hospitals. The
Australian Government, under request, then began to provide
transport staffs who came with the troopships and returned at later
intervals when the troopships went back again as "hospital carriers."
Of hospital ships proper there were none. Each ship was inspected in
order to ascertain the number of patients she could carry, and to
determine the staff requisite—consequently a routine procedure was
adopted. Cot cases were seldom taken, as it was thought better
where possible to keep cot cases in Egypt. A minimum of two
medical officers was allowed for 300 patients, and an additional
medical officer for every 150 patients. One trained nurse was
allowed for every 50 patients, and one orderly for every 25 patients.
These numbers were arbitrary and approximate, but served as a
working basis. The supply was probably in excess of real
requirements, but it was necessary to contemplate the possibility of
an epidemic outbreak in the tropics and the grave results which
might ensue. The equipment of drugs and instruments was liberal,
and was arranged on a fixed plan worked out by the officer in
charge of the base medical store at Heliopolis. The Red Cross stores
were supplied in the same way, and the commanding officer was
given a sum of money, sometimes as much as £150 to £200, to
spend on comforts for the men. A canteen was placed on board in
addition. The ship was not allowed to leave the wharf until the
commander had given a certificate that he had on board all the
medical comforts required by the Admiralty regulations, and until the
principal medical officer had given a certificate that he had all that
he required in the way of staff, drugs, surgical and medical
equipment, and Red Cross stores.
There is no more dangerous branch of medical service than the
transport of sick and wounded over the ocean, since there are so
many possibilities of disaster.

Base Medical Store

These continual demands on personnel and on medical stores
necessitated suitable arrangements, and messages were sent to
Australia asking for reinforcements. In addition a large base medical
store was established at Heliopolis, and made an independent unit.
It became the business of the officer in charge of this store, Captain
Johnson, to make up drugs and surgical instruments per 100
patients, and to receive the surplus stores from each of the incoming
transports. Two hospital ships were ultimately provided, the Karoola
and the Kanowna, and reached Egypt in October.

CASES RETURNED TO AUSTRALIA FROM FEB. 3 TO SEPT. 25, 1915,

AND REASONS
Officers = O. Other ranks = O. R.
Medically Venereal Services Other Change Wounded
Total.
Unfit. Cases. no longer reasons. to in Action.
required. Australia.
O. O.R. O. O.R. O. O.R. O. O.R. O. O.R. O. O.R. O. O.R.
29 2,496 1,344 5 215 24 49 29 1,154 137 5,258 52 1,571
450 also
sent
 to Malta.

Transport of Sick and Wounded to Suez

The arrangements for conveying the invalids from Cairo to Suez
were interesting. They could not be conveyed to Alexandria or Port
Said because one passenger placed on a ship at those ports
enormously increased the charges made by the Suez Canal
Company, and Suez was consequently fixed upon as the port of
departure and the port of equipment. Patients to be conveyed to
Suez were at Helouan, or at different hospitals in Cairo, and
accordingly two trains were made up—one at Helouan and one at
Palais de Koubbeh, Heliopolis. Each train was filled at a specific time,
the two trains conveyed to Cairo, a junction effected in the Cairo
station, and the whole conveyed to Suez. The journey took about
five hours, and the necessary provision was made for feeding the
men on the way. One of the difficulties in conveying such patients
was to prevent them riding on the platforms of the carriages and
falling off. A sentry was placed at each end of the carriage to
prevent the continuance of these disasters, which had been too
numerous in the case of healthy men in the troop trains. Men had
even lost their lives or been mutilated from trying to ride on the
buffers à la Blondin.

The Red Cross indicates Medical Stations of special interest

to the Australian Force.
 To face page 80
On arrival at Suez the train proceeded alongside the ship, the
patients and their kit were moved on board, and a guard placed in
the dockyard. Even then men straggled into Suez, and their
recapture gave some trouble. The Australian is essentially a roamer.
The table on page 80 indicates the number of soldiers returned to
Australia up to September 25, 1915, and the reason for their
transfer.
 CHAPTER VII
SICKNESS AND MORTALITY AMONGST AUSTRALIANS—THE
DANGERS OF CAMP LIFE—STEPS TAKEN TO PREVENT
EPIDEMICS—NATURE OF DISEASES CONTRACTED AND
DEATHS RESULTING—DEFECTIVE EXAMINATION OF RECRUITS
—OPHTHALMIC AND AURAL WORK—THE FLY PEST—LOW
MORTALITY—THE EGYPTIAN CLIMATE AGAIN—SURGICAL
WORK AND SEPSIS—CHOLERA—INFECTIOUS DISEASES.

CHAPTER VII
In civil practice we had long been aware of the fundamental failing
of the medical profession. Its members operate in a community as
individuals. They seek to cure disease in general; they are
conscientious to a degree in the discharge of this duty, and they give
valuable personal advice respecting hygiene. But of the prophylaxis
of disease they have little trained knowledge, and they are not
seriously interested. The prophylaxis of disease really implies
organised and co-operative effort, and can only be effectively
undertaken by those public-health officials who are charged with it
as a definite function. In Australia at all events the inducements to
enter the public-health service as a profession are not very great.
The influence of the department is not very far-reaching, and the
prophylaxis of disease is still in its infancy. One can foresee the time
when the number of practitioners per 100,000 of the population will
be fewer than at present, and the number of public-health officials
will be greater. The transition from the one occupation to the other
will only take place when a much higher standard of general
intelligence prevails in the community.
What applies to civil life applies to a lesser extent to an army,
because the headquarters staff of an army are as a rule excellently
informed respecting the risk run by neglect of sanitation. They
understand thoroughly that disease may do more harm than battles,
and that outbreaks permitted to get out of hand are with difficulty
controlled. In the Australian Army, by reason of its necessarily
scratch nature, there was practically no instruction in prophylaxis. It
was certainly not acutely understood, and the disastrous events
which attended the formation of camps in Victoria and elsewhere
show that the controlling authorities were either not fully informed
of the risks, or if informed, did not understand the best plan of
action. What applied in Australia was true to a lesser extent in
Egypt, because Surgeon-General Williams and many of the R.A.M.C.
officers who controlled medical operations in Egypt, and
distinguished members of the Indian Medical Service who were
associated with them, had been through a number of campaigns in
South Africa and elsewhere, and were aware both of the risks and
the difficulties. Consequently some effort was made to avoid, or to
minimise the effects of, some of the disastrous outbreaks.
In March and April, before the arrival of wounded, the number of
cases in hospital was a source of common comment amongst the
medical officers, who could not understand why healthy men under
service conditions, camped on the edge of a dry desert, should be
suffering from serious disease to such an extent. The diseases were
for the most part measles, with its complications, bronchitis,
broncho-pneumonia, and a certain amount of lobar pneumonia,
infectious pleuro-pneumonia, and tonsillitis. There were a few cases
of cerebro-spinal meningitis. The impression made on a physician
who had all the cases coming from the Heliopolis camps under his
control was that these diseases were inordinately prevalent; but the
following figures, obtained from headquarters and forwarded to the
Government, show that while disease was more extensive than it
should be, it was not excessive. Including venereal disease, the
cases certainly did not exceed 6 to 8 per cent. of the force.
 Officers and Nurses, No. 1 Australian General Hospital.
To face page 86

First Australian General Hospital

Memorandum prepared to show the Extent of Disease amongst
Australian Troops

Palace Hotel,
Heliopolis,
May 8, 1915.
(Report begins) "The following figures have been obtained from
the office of the D.M.S. Egypt. Owing to the movement of
troops out of Egypt, comparisons are apt to be a little difficult to
institute with accuracy. Nevertheless the figures given
substantially indicate the position.
On February 15 there were 1,329 patients in hospital. The
number of sick and off duty in the lines, but not in hospital, is
not stated; but as it amounted to 423 on February 1, and to 644
on March 1, it may be assumed to be 500, which will give a
total of 1,829 sick and off duty on February 15.
On March 1, 1,737 men were in hospital, 644 off duty and sick
in the lines, or a total of 2,361.
On March 15, 1,429 were in hospital, 500 off duty and sick in
the lines, or a total of 1,929.
On April 1, 1,217 were in hospital, 495 sick and off duty in the
lines, or a total of 1,712.
The totals, therefore, off duty on the dates specified were:
February 15 (approx.) 1,829
March 1 2,381
March 15 (approx.) 1,929
April 1 1,712
It should be stated that the figures quoted above would have
been very much larger were it not that a large number of men
unfit for duty by reason of venereal and other forms of disease
have been returned to Australia, and a considerable number
sent to Malta.
There have been returned to Australia by the Kyarra on
February 2, the Moloia on March 15, the Suevic on April 28, and
the Ceramic on May 4, a total of 337 soldiers who were
medically unfit for various reasons, and 341 suffering from
venereal disease, or 678 in all. In addition about 450 were sent
to Malta. If these soldiers had been added to the list of those
reported sick and unfit for duty daily, the number would have
considerably exceeded 2,000. The estimate of 2,000 sick and
unfit for duty daily was studiously moderate, as pointed out in a
private letter to Colonel Fetherston at the time when precise
figures could not be immediately obtained.
It is gratifying to find that the amount of sickness is diminishing
and that the amount of venereal disease, so far as can be
ascertained, is also decreasing.
Strenuous efforts have been made by the A.M.C. to attack both
forms of inefficiency by dealing with the causes, and with a view
to avoiding future troubles the D.M.S. Egypt has appointed a
committee of medical officers to inquire into the causations of
the outbreak. It is unlikely that the committee can be very
active just at present, because of the prior claims on the time of
all concerned owing to the influx of wounded. At a later period
it is hoped that an exhaustive report will be furnished for the
benefit of future undertakings.
Most strenuous efforts have been made to limit the amount of
venereal disease. General Birdwood, Commander-in-Chief of the
New Zealand and Australian Army Corps, has personally
interested himself in this question, and has through the O.C.
First Australian General Hospital arranged for me to visit each
troopship on arrival, all leave being stopped from the transport
until I have been on board. The practice followed is to interview
the commanding officer and the officers of the transports, to
explain to them the gravity of the position, and to ask each and
all of them to use all the influence he possesses with his men to
deter them from exposing themselves to the risk of contagion,
to draw their attention to the fact that on the physical fitness of
the individual man depends the possibilities of success to the
army, and to ask for the loyal and enthusiastic co-operation of
every officer in work of such importance from a military point of
view, and the point of view of subsequent civil life. The officers
immediately parade the men, address them, and convey to each
of them a printed message from General Birdwood. General
Birdwood's letter to General Bridges, written during the early
part of the stay of the Army in Egypt, is handed to the
Commanding Officer to be read by him and his staff. There is no
doubt that this systematic procedure has drawn attention to the
gravity of the problem. It has always been responded to loyally
by the officers concerned, and it has certainly limited the action
of young and inexperienced men on their first landing in an
Eastern country.
Other steps were taken by Surgeon-General Williams, who on
arrival in Egypt called a conference of senior medical officers to
consider the gravity of the venereal diseases problem.
 It is satisfactory to find, notwithstanding the amount of disease
which has existed, and which, while not excessive, is still heavy,
that the mortality has not been as serious as it might have
been. The mortality in No. 1 Australian General Hospital for
February and March was seventeen cases out of a total of 3,150
admitted" (Report ends).

The following return shows the total number of casualties in the

Australian Force up to July 16, 1915:
Casualty. Officers. Other Ranks. Total.
Killed 110 1,598 1,708
Died of Wounds 46 740 786
Wounded 341 8,404 8,745
Missing 16 770 786
Died of Disease —— 43 43
Totals 513 11,555 12,068
The next table shows the average length of stay in hospital of
venereal cases at a particular date:
First Australian General Hospital
Total venereal cases admitted 1,288
Average stay of patients 16 days

The Enlistment of the Unfit and its Consequences

Prior to the arrival of the wounded the medical service was
inconvenienced by another circumstance. Men were continually
arriving with hernia, varix, and other ailments which they had
suffered from before enlistment, and which had been overlooked
during the preliminary examination in Australia. In one case a soldier
suffering from aortic aneurism arrived in Egypt, and similar instances
might be given. The examination of recruits in Australia had been
conducted by practitioners in country towns and elsewhere, often
under conditions highly unfair to the practitioner. There is no doubt
that the Government would have been well advised to have
withdrawn a few men from private practice altogether, paid them
adequate salaries, and made them permanent examiners of recruits.
Experience of war demonstrates most completely the folly of sending
any one to the front who is not physically fit. It is apt to be forgotten
that in warfare there can be no holidays, or days off, and that the
human being must be at his maximum of physical efficiency, and his
digestion of the best. If his soundness is doubtful it is better to keep
him for base duty at home, on guard duty at the base, or as an
orderly in the hospital. It is simply a waste of money, and tends to
the disorganisation of the service, to send such people anywhere
near the fighting line. We made an attempt at one stage to roughly
calculate what the Australian Government had lost in money by the
looseness of official examination. It was impossible to make an
accurate estimate, but the sum was great.

Ophthalmic and Aural Work

When one of us joined the hospital as oculist and aurist and registrar
(Lieut.-Col. Barrett) he was informed that specialists were not
required, but apparently those responsible had formed no
conception of the excessive demands which would be made on the
ophthalmic and aural departments. The first patient admitted to No.
1 General Hospital was an eye case, and an enormous clinic rapidly
made its appearance. It was conducted somewhat differently from
an ordinary ophthalmic and aural clinic, in that (by reason of the
remoteness of their camps) some patients were admitted for
ailments which would have been treated in the out-patient
department of a civil hospital. There were usually from 60 to 100 in-
patients and there was an out-patient clinic which rose sometimes to
nearly 100 a day. It should be remembered that these included few,
if any, serious chronic cases, which were at once referred back to
Australia. The amount of ophthalmic and aural disease was very
great. The figures subjoined show the extent of the work done.
From the opening of the Hospital to September 30, 1915, the
patients treated in the Ophthalmic and Aural Department numbered
as follows:
Ophthalmic cases 1,142
Aural, nasal, and throat cases 1,474
There were 246 operations.
The ophthalmic cases may be roughly classified as follows:
Ophthalmia (chiefly Koch-Weeks and a percentage
of Diplo-Bacillary) 546
Affection of lids 15
Pterygium 8
Corneal opacities 6
Trachoma 17
Iritis 12
Cataract 8
Foreign bodies in the eye 14
Old injuries 9
Detachment of retina 2
Strabismus 16
Concussion blindness 4
Refraction cases:
(a) Hypertropia 210
(b) Myopia 30
(c) Hypertropic astigmatism 230
(d) Myopic astigmatism 15—485
——
1,142
====

Aural, Nasal, and Throat Cases

Acute catarrh (middle ear) 95
Chronic 315
Cerumen 190
Dry catarrh (Eustachian) 120
Oto-sclerosis 138
Otitis externa 143
Concussion deafness 139
Nasal catarrh 114
Septal deflection 96
Adenoids 74
Polypi 4
Enlarged tonsils 12
Antra and sinuses 14
Pharyngeal catarrh 11
Aphonia 8
Laryngeal growth 1
——
1,474
====

Operations Performed
Ophthalmic
Excision 36
Iridectomy and extraction 11
Removal F.B. 7
Pterygium 4
Minor operations 6
—
64
==
Aural
Mastoid operations 17
Removal F.B. 3
—
20
 ==
Nasal
Adenoids 73
Spurs 34
Polypi 14
Tonsils 41
—
162
==
Total performed, 246

The distribution of disease is unusual. In the course of a long and

extensive practice one of us (Lieut.-Col. Barrett) had not seen as
many cases of adenoids in adults as he examined in Egypt in three
months. It seemed that the irritation of the sand containing organic
matter caused inflammation and irritation of the naso-pharynx. Of
ophthalmia there was a great deal. It was usually of the Koch-Weeks
variety, and gave way readily to treatment. There were a few cases
of gonorrhœal ophthalmia, two of which arrived from abroad, and all
of which did well. After the arrival of the wounded, however, a new
set of problems made their appearance. A limited number of men
were totally blind, mostly from bomb explosions, and a large number
of others had received wounds in one eye or in the orbit. It soon
became evident that an eye punctured by a fragment of a projectile
is almost invariably lost. The metal is non-magnetic. It is usually
situated deep in the vitreous; it is practically impossible to remove it
even if the eye were not infected and degenerate. A still more
remarkable phenomenon, however, made its appearance. If a
projectile enters the head in the vicinity of the eye, and does not
actually touch it, in most cases the eye is destroyed. Whether from
the velocity or the rotation of the projectile, the bruising disorganises
the coats of the eye and renders it sightless. In all such cases, if the
projectile was lodged in the orbit, the eye was removed together
with the projectile. The total number of excisions was thirty-six. In
no case did a sympathetic ophthalmitis make its appearance. The
eyes were not removed unless the projection of light was manifestly
defective. A fuller account of the precise ophthalmic conditions will
be published elsewhere.
If the general physical examination of recruits was defective, it is
difficult to find suitable terms to describe the examination of their
vision. Instances were not infrequent where men with glass eyes
made their appearance, and there were several recruits who
practically possessed only one eye. Spectacle-fitting was the chief
work, as many of the recruits required glasses, mostly for near work,
but sometimes for the distance. Ultimately the War Office decided to
provide the spectacles. In such a war, it is impossible to exclude
recruits for fine visual defects, still, men with only one eye can
hardly be sent to the front.
One remarkable instance occurred. A man suffering from
detachment of the retina had but one effective eye. I gave directions
that he should not be sent to the front, but he eluded authority, and
reached Gallipoli, where he was hit in the blind eye with a projectile.
I subsequently removed the eye.
The work was excessive, but only one life was lost, though on
occasion the condition of some of the sufferers was grave to a
degree. One of the most remarkable cases of injury was that of a
man who was struck below the left eye by a bullet which emerged
through the back of his neck, to the side of the median line. The
bullet in emerging tore away a large quantity of the substance of the
neck, leaving a hole in which a fair-sized wine glass could have been
placed. He was a cheerful man, and sat up in bed propped with
pillows, because of the weakness of his neck, and observed to a
visitor "Ain't I had luck!" He made an excellent recovery.
 Heliopolis Palace Hotel: Rotunda and Piazzas.
To face page 97
It is remarkable that there should have been so much refraction
work, and there is no doubt that a working optician, i.e. spectacle
maker, should accompany every army. Men are often just as
dependent for their efficiency on glasses as on artificial teeth, and in
a war of this character cannot be rejected.
The acute inflammations of the middle ear were of the most severe
type, caused temperatures rising to 103° F. and sometimes left men
on convalescence as weak as after a serious general illness. The
attacks were so vicious that the pathologist, Captain Watson, sought
for special organisms, but found only staphylococcus. Probably the
same group of organisms which caused vicious pulmonary attacks
also caused these severe aural inflammations.
Before our arrival in Egypt malingerers in the force who, having
enjoyed a holiday trip to Egypt, wanted to go home again, suddenly
discovered that they were blind or deaf. For a time the department
was fairly busy detecting the wiles of these men. When they
discovered, however, that they would be subjected to expert
examination, sight and hearing soon returned. A number of devices
were resorted to in order to detect the fraud—i.e. the use of
faradisation, blind-folding, and the like—and it was rarely that the
impostor escaped.

Other Diseases: Measles and its Complications; Food

Infections
The danger run by an army from measles is very great indeed, and
at an early stage the position was surveyed, and an attempt made to
limit the trouble. A cable message was sent to Australia, asking that
precautions should be taken against shipping measles cases or
contacts. At Suez arrangements were made with the Government
Infectious Diseases Hospital to admit any patients suffering from
measles or infectious diseases who might land with the recruits. In
such cases the clothing of the remaining recruits was disinfected
before they were allowed to proceed to Cairo. In this way disease
was kept out of Egypt as much as possible. In the case of measles it
is not simply temporary disablement, but also the complications and
sequelæ which are to be feared. The experience gained has made us
converts to the open-air method of treating such cases, at all events
in a rainless country like Egypt. Treated on piazzas and in open
spaces the cases seem to do better than in hospital wards, and, as
far as one can judge without a critical examination, with a lower
mortality.
The extent to which the troops suffered from measles and other
diseases was the cause of the appointment of a committee to inquire
into causation. The committee made some inquiries, but owing to a
set of complications never completed its work. There seemed,
however, to be a consensus of opinion that the use of the bell tent
was objectionable, as it did not ventilate readily, and that the habits
of the men contributed to these diseases.
The men were apt to visit Cairo, spend the evenings in the cafés or
theatres, ride home in the cold nights in a motor car or tram, get to
bed at the last moment possible, and then turn out again for a hard
day's work. The opinion of the physicians was that the drilling of
men suffering from even a moderate cold was a source of
considerable danger. If to these causes be added the neglect of the
teeth on the part of many of the men, some explanation may be
found for the presence of these diseases. Every effort was made to
instruct the men through the regimental officers, and there is no
doubt that as time went on the quantity of this type of disease
somewhat diminished.
Sunstroke was practically unknown. A number of cases occurred
during a severe khamsin, but the use of a looser and lighter uniform,
and the adoption of sensible hours of work, prevented any
recurrence. Of two deaths known to have taken place the cause was
only partly due to heat. The men were warned against the risk of
bilharzia, and as they were provided with shower baths there was no
inducement to bathe in the muddy pools and canals where bilharzia
lurks.
With the provision of dentists another risk was removed, at all
events in parts. In hospitals, tooth brushes were supplied in
thousands, and every effort was made to get the men to use them.
As the summer wore on, however, another type of disease made its
appearance—the intestinal infections which, at first unknown,
became so frequent in Gallipoli as to be more serious than fighting.
In Gallipoli itself it is difficult to see how they could be prevented. In
a limited space there were many dead bodies scantily buried, and
consequently myriads of flies. The plentiful use of disinfectant, had it
been obtainable, might have been useful, but the difficulties were
great. Once the dysenteric organisms were introduced, it was
practically impossible to stop the spread of disease.

The Fly Pest

At the Island of Lemnos, however, which was not under fire, and
where there was room, the conditions appear to have been nearly as
bad, and it is somewhat difficult to know why the fly pest could not
have been got under at Mudros. At Heliopolis at an early stage the
fly problem was seriously tackled. A sanitary officer was appointed,
and charged with the duty of dealing with this important matter. The
following precautions were adopted. All refuse and soiled dressings
were placed in covered bins, which were provided in quantity. These
were removed once daily. Any moist ground in the vicinity of these
bins was watered with sulphate of iron solution, and sprinkled with
chloride of lime. Fly papers in great numbers were distributed
throughout the wards. The food in the kitchens, whether cooked or
uncooked, was kept under gauze covers or in gauze cupboards. By
these means the fly pest was reduced to small proportions. But with
the least slackness in administration the flies were again in evidence.
It was most instructive to see a floor covered with flies if fluid
containing food material had been spilled, and to see dirty clothing
covered with masses of flies. A piece of soiled clothing half buried in
the desert appears to act as an excellent breeding-place.
It was impracticable in Egypt to cover all the windows and doors
with fly-proof netting. The exclusion of the air in the hot weather
would have been troublesome, and the best type of netting was not
obtainable. Furthermore the precautions already enumerated kept
the pest under in Heliopolis.
The fly problem was one of the most serious the army had to face.
The passage of a dysenteric stool by a man who is really ill was
often followed by the entry into his anus of flies before an attendant
had time to intervene. Each of these flies might then become a
source of infection and had only to light on a piece of food, cooked
or uncooked, to cause further damage.
Circular issued by the Officer Commanding
Hospital
the
Destruction and Prevention of Flies

Outside.
1. No rubbish heaps will be allowed.
2. All manure heaps shall be sprayed twice a week with sulphate
of iron—2 lb. to 1 gallon of water.
 3. All food in the Arab quarters shall be kept in a closed
cupboard.
4. All rubbish boxes and open receptacles shall be removed from
the premises and neighbourhood.
5. No receptacles other than iron tins with lids kept closed will
be allowed to be used for refuse.
6. Every place on which garbage has been exposed shall be
freely sprinkled with chloriated lime.
Wards.
1. All food and receptacles for food shall be kept constantly
covered.
2. All spit-cups shall be kept covered.
3. All remains of food shall be removed at once to receptacles
which are to be kept covered completely and constantly except
when uncovered necessarily to receive waste materials.
4. Sisters-in-Charge shall use a liberal quantity of fly papers.
Surgical soiled dressings shall be placed in special bins which
shall be kept covered.
Kitchen and Mess Rooms.
1. All food shall be kept locked up or completely covered.
2. All remains of food shall be treated as in the wards. The
responsible officer shall use a liberal supply of flat or hanging fly
papers.

It need hardly be said that the enforcement of even these simple

precautions is more difficult than giving the order.
A good sanitary officer, however, acting on these directions, can and
did reduce the fly danger to small proportions. The flies were never
exterminated, but were kept well under. The least slackness,
however, ended in their rapid reappearance. As they are in all
probability the principal cause of the gastro-intestinal infections, the
matter is one of the first importance.
Typhoid fever made its appearance, and a proper statistical
investigation should be made later on to show the extent of the
damage done. The general impression respecting the result of the
inoculation to which all the troops were subjected was that the
disease was not so frequent and certainly not nearly so fatal as it
otherwise would have been. Deaths were few.
The men had not been inoculated against paratyphoid, so that exact
conclusions will be difficult to draw even when figures become
available.
Many people suffered from Egyptian stomach ache, a form of
disease which is as unpleasant as it is exhausting. It manifests itself
by repeated attacks of colicky pain, apparently usually associated
with the colon. The severity of the pains is remarkable, and the
persistent recurrence speedily ends in a considerable degree of
exhaustion. It is almost certainly due to food infection.
It is obvious that the business of a sanitary medical officer is not
merely to inspect buildings and kitchens, but to spend an hour or
two a day in the kitchen quietly watching the preparation of the food
and giving the necessary instruction and supervision to those who
are preparing it. The inefficiency caused by food infections has
probably done more harm than many battles. In the camps similar
troubles occurred. By reason of the lack of cold storage and the high
temperature, rotten food was not uncommon, and caused outbreaks
of incapacitating diarrhœa and ptomaine poisoning.
When, however, the problem is surveyed dispassionately, the
remarkable feature of the work at Heliopolis and in Cairo was the
low mortality, as the following table will show:
Burials in Old Cemetery, Cairo
From Arrival of Australians in Egypt, December 5,
1914, to August 14, 1915
British Imperial Force 77
 Australian Imperial Force 155
New Zealand Force 50
In view of this extraordinarily low mortality, it is interesting to
comment on human intellectual frailty. It was said that the hospitals
were septic, that operations of election could not be performed with
safety, that the climate was particularly dangerous, and so forth.
One letter which reached us made reference to hundreds of deaths
of brave fellows due to faulty camp and hospital conditions. Yet here
is the fact recorded that the total deaths in Cairo amongst
Australians from disease and wounds to August 14 were only 155.
All men tend to generalise on insufficient instances, and the
tendency in this case was aggravated by some physical discomfort
experienced by the generalisers throughout an unusually warm
summer—a discomfort accentuated by overwork and a conscientious
devotion to duty under trying conditions.

The Egyptian Climate again

Dealing with the surgical side of the matter, nothing was commoner
at one time than to hear the statement made that owing to the hot
weather septic infections were common, that wounds did not heal as
they should in Egypt, and that it was not a suitable place to which
wounded men should be sent. While quite agreeing with the critics
that a cool climate is always preferable to a hot one, it may be
remarked that in the first place summer in Egypt, apart from the
khamsin, is not excessively hot. The khamsin blows for a certain
number of days in April, May, and the first half of June. The
temperature may rise to 112° or more. The wind blows with a fiery
blast, and there is no doubt it is exceedingly trying. But if buildings
are shut up early in the morning and opened at night, even the
khamsin may be made tolerable. After the middle of June, however,
there is very little wind. One day is very like another. The midday
temperature is from 90° to 95° Dry Bulb, and the nights perhaps 65°
to 70° Dry Bulb. The Wet Bulb temperatures are set out in the table
previously referred to.
For the most part men slept in nothing but pyjamas. No sheet is
wanted until towards the end of August. Whilst it is not pleasant to
wake in the mornings in a lather, nevertheless, if a practical and
cold-blooded examination be made of the facts, the result shows
nothing but discomfort.
Grave septic diseases did not occur. The hospitals were perfectly
clean, and at Luna Park in particular we have the testimony of
Colonel Ryan that the wounds healed by first intention and that the
cases did excellently.
As the garrison of Egypt was a very large one, and as Australian
troops were continually pouring into it, it was impracticable even if it
had been necessary to take the patients anywhere else. The islands
of Lemnos and Imbros were far less suitable even for those who had
been injured at Gallipoli, and apart from the inconvenience caused
by the heat there was no reasonable ground for complaint in Egypt.
Furthermore the heat is not tropical. It is subtropical, as the Wet
Bulb temperatures indicate.
In the First Australian General Hospital every care was taken to
minimise the inconvenience; a very large number of excellent ice
chests were purchased, an enormous quantity of ice was used, and
the necessary steps thus taken to diminish the amount of food
decomposition and prevent ptomaine poisoning. Fans and punkahs
were used, and the nights were quite tolerable.

Medical Organisation in Egypt

When the Australian forces pass three miles from Australian shores
they cease, at all events technically, to be under Australian control,
and pass under the control of the Commander-in-Chief. On arrival in
Egypt they passed under the control of General Sir John Maxwell,
G.O.C.-in-Chief, Egypt. The medical section passed under the
command of the Director of Medical Services, Surgeon-General Ford.
The D.M.S. Australian Imperial Force, Surgeon-General Williams,
arrived in Egypt in February and was placed on the staff of General
Ford to assist in managing these units. He left for London on duty on
April 25, and one of us (J. W. B.) was appointed A.D.M.S. for the
Australian Force in Egypt on the staff of General Ford. Later, Colonel
Manifold, I.M.S., was appointed D.D.M.S. for Australian and other
medical units. Thus the Australian medical units were under the
same command as New Zealand or British units, but with separate
intermediaries.

The Risk of Cholera

In view of the risk of cholera, the following note by Dr. Armand
Ruffer, C.M.G., President of the Sanitary, Maritime and Quarantine
Council of Egypt, Alexandria, was issued and, later on, inoculation
was practised on an extensive scale.

Dr. Ruffer's Views on Cholera

(Report begins) "The first point is that although, in many
epidemics, cholera has been a water-borne disease, yet a
severe epidemic may occur without any general infection of the
water supply. This was clearly the case in the last epidemic in
Alexandria. Attention to the water supply, therefore, may not
altogether prevent an epidemic. The second point is that the
vibrio of cholera may be present in a virulent condition in people
showing no, or very slight symptoms of cholera, e.g. people
with slight diarrhœa, etc.
The segregation of actual cases of cholera, therefore, is not
likely to be followed by any degree of success, because this
measure would not touch carriers or mild cases, unless orders
were given to consider as contacts all foreign foes, and all
soldiers who have been in contact with them. This is clearly
impossible.
There cannot be any reasonable doubt, therefore, that if the
Turkish army becomes infected with cholera, the British Army
will undoubtedly become infected also.
Undoubtedly inoculation is the cheapest and quickest way of
protection of the troops, provided this process confers immunity
against cholera.
It is very difficult to estimate accurately the protection given by
inoculation against cholera. My impression from reading the
literature on the subject is that: (1) The inoculations must be
done at least twice. (2) The inoculations, if properly made, are
harmless as a rule. (3) The inoculations confer a certain
protection against cholera. I may add that I arrived at this
opinion before the war, when the French editors, Messrs.
Masson & Co., asked me to write the article "Cholera" for the
French standard textbook on pathology. My opinion was
therefore quite unprejudiced by the present circumstances.
The cholera inoculations were harmless as a rule; that is, they
were not always harmless. Savas has described certain cases of
fulminating cholera amongst people inoculated during the
progress of an epidemic. In my opinion, the people so affected
were in the period of incubation when they were inoculated,
and the operation gave an extra stimulus, so to speak, to the
dormant vibrio. One knows that, experimentally, a small dose of
toxin, given immediately after or before the inoculation of the
microorganism producing the toxin, renders this microorganism
more virulent.
The conclusion to be drawn is that inoculations should be
carried out before cholera breaks out.
I am afraid I know of no certain facts to guide me in estimating
the length of the period of immunity produced by inoculations.
Judging by analogy, I should say that it is certainly not less than
six months, that it, almost certainly, lasts for one year, and very
probably lasts far longer.
I understand that 90,000 doses of cholera vaccine have been
sent from London. I take it that the inoculation material has
been standardised and its effects investigated, but, in any case,
I consider that a few very carefully performed experiments
should be undertaken at once in Egypt, in order to make sure of
the exact method of administration to be adopted under present
conditions.
Probably, a good deal may be done by the timely exhibition of
drugs, such as phenacetin, etc., to mitigate the more or less
unpleasant effects of preventive inoculation.
As I am on this subject, may I point out the necessity of
establishing at the front a laboratory for the early diagnosis of
cholera and of dysentery. Cholera has appeared in the last three
wars in which Turkey has been engaged, and therefore the
chances of the peninsula of Gallipoli becoming infected are
great. The early diagnosis of cases of cholera, especially when
slight, is extremely difficult and often can be settled by
bacteriological examination only.
There never has been a war without dysentery, and almost
surely our troops will be infected in time, if they are not already
infected. But whereas in previous wars the treatment of
dysentery was not specific, the physician is now in possession of
rapid methods of treatment, provided he can tell what kind of
dysentery (bacillary or amœbic or mixed) he is dealing with.
This differential diagnosis is a hopeless task unless controlled at
every step by microscopical and bacteriological examination.
The French are keenly aware of this fact, so much so that they
have sent, for that very purpose, three skilled bacteriologists,
two of whom are former assistants at the Pasteur Institute, to
the Gallipoli Peninsula" (Report ends).
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