Strangers in Paradise is a creator-owned comic book series, written and drawn by Terry Moore, which debuted in 1993. Principally the story of a love triangle between two women and one man, Strangers in Paradise began as a slice-of-life dramedy that later expanded to incorporate aspects of the crime and thriller genres. Moore has remained the sole creator throughout the run, with the exception of a superhero dream sequence drawn by Jim Lee that opens Volume 3, issue #1. The artwork was originally presented in Moore's distinctive black-and-white style, aside from two full colour dream sequences, which included the aforementioned superhero panels.
Dykes to Watch Out For was a weekly comic strip by Alison Bechdel. The strip, which ran from 1983 to 2008, was one of the earliest ongoing representations of lesbians in popular culture and has been called "as important to new generations of lesbians as landmark novels like Rita Mae Brown's Rubyfruit Jungle (1973) and Lisa Alther's Kinflicks (1976) were to an earlier one". It introduced the Bechdel test, a set of criteria for determining gender bias in works of entertainment, that has since found broad application.
FoxTrot is an American comic strip written and illustrated by Bill Amend. The strip launched on April 10, 1988, and it originally ran seven days a week. From December 31, 2006 onwards, FoxTrot has only appeared on Sundays.
The Family Circus is a syndicated comic strip created by cartoonist Bil Keane and, since Keane's death in 2011, written, inked and rendered (colored) by his son Jeff Keane. The strip generally uses a single captioned panel with a round border, hence the original name of the series, which was changed following objections from the magazine Family Circle. The series debuted February 29, 1960, and has been in continuous production ever since. According to publisher King Features Syndicate, it is the most widely syndicated cartoon panel in the world, appearing in 1,500 newspapers. Compilations of Family Circus comic strips have sold more than 13 million copies worldwide.
Pearls Before Swine is an American comic strip written and illustrated by Stephan Pastis. The series began on December 31, 2001. It chronicles the daily lives of an ensemble cast of suburban anthropomorphic animals: Pig, Rat, Zebra, Goat, and a fraternity of crocodiles, as well as a number of supporting characters, one of whom is Pastis himself. Each character represents an aspect of Pastis's personality and worldview. The daily and Sunday comic strip is distributed by Andrews McMeel Syndication.
Stephan Thomas Pastis is an American cartoonist and former lawyer who is the creator of the comic strip Pearls Before Swine. He also writes children's chapter books, commencing with the release of Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made. The seventh book, It's the End When I Say It's the End, debuted at #4 on The New York Times Best Seller list for Children's Middle Grade Books.
Funky Winkerbean was an American comic strip by Tom Batiuk. Distributed by North America Syndicate, a division of King Features Syndicate, it appeared in more than 400 newspapers worldwide.
Noreen Stevens is a Canadian cartoonist, who illustrated and wrote the lesbian comic strip The Chosen Family. Her work in the field of comics began in 1984. The Chosen Family is featured in the ensemble comic book Dyke Strippers: Lesbian Cartoonists from A to Z alongside the likes of Diane DiMassa and Alison Bechdel.
United Media was a large editorial column and comic strip newspaper syndication service based in the United States, owned by the E. W. Scripps Company, that operated from 1978 to 2011. It syndicated 150 comics and editorial columns worldwide. Its core businesses were the United Feature Syndicate and the Newspaper Enterprise Association.
Girlamatic was a webcomic subscription service launched by Joey Manley and Lea Hernandez in March 2003. It was the third online magazine Manley established as part of his Modern Tales family of websites. Girlamatic was created as a place where both female artists and readers could feel comfortable and featured a diverse mix of genres. When the site launched, the most recent webcomic pages and strips were free, and the website's archives were available by subscription. The editorial role was held by Hernandez from 2003 until 2006, when it was taken over by Arcana Jayne-creator Lisa Jonté, one of the site's original artists. In 2009, Girlamatic was relaunched as a free digital magazine, this time edited by Spades-creator Diana McQueen. The archives of the webcomics that ran on Girlamatic remained freely available until the website was discontinued in 2013.
Trina Robbins was an American cartoonist. She was an early participant in the underground comix movement, and one of the first women in the movement. She co-produced the 1970 underground comic It Ain't Me, Babe, which was the first comic book entirely created by women. She co-founded the Wimmen's Comix collective, wrote for Wonder Woman, and produced adaptations of Dope and The Silver Metal Lover. She was inducted into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame in 2013 and received Eisner Awards in 2017 and 2021.
Frances Edwina Dumm was a writer-artist who drew the comic strip Cap Stubbs and Tippie for nearly five decades; she is also notable as America's first full-time female editorial cartoonist. She used her middle name for the signature on her comic strip, signed simply Edwina.
Richard Church Thompson was an American illustrator and cartoonist best known for his syndicated comic strip Cul de Sac and the illustrated poem "Make the Pie Higher". He was given the Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year for 2010.
Dorothy Woolfolk née Dorothy Roubicek was one of the first women in the American comic-book industry. As an editor at DC Comics, one of the two largest companies in the field, during the 1940s period historians and fans call the Golden Age of Comic Books, she is credited with helping to create the fictional metal Kryptonite in the Superman mythos.
In comics, LGBT themes are a relatively new concept, as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBTQ) themes and characters were historically omitted from the content of comic books and their comic strip predecessors due to anti-gay censorship. LGBT existence was included only via innuendo, subtext and inference. However the practice of hiding LGBT characters in the early part of the twentieth century evolved into open inclusion in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and comics explored the challenges of coming-out, societal discrimination, and personal and romantic relationships between gay characters.
Although, traditionally, female comics creators have long been a minority in the industry, they have made a notable impact since the very beginning, and more and more female artists are getting recognition along with the maturing of the medium. Women creators have worked in every genre, from superheroes to romance, westerns to war, crime to horror.
Paige Braddock is an American cartoonist best known for her Eisner-nominated comic strip, Jane's World, the first gay-themed comic work to receive online distribution by a national media syndicate in the U.S. Braddock concluded the comic strip after completing its 20-year run in 2018.
Notable events of the late 1990s in webcomics.
Kate Charlesworth is a British cartoonist and artist who has produced comics and illustrations since the 1970s. Her work has appeared in LGBT publications such as The Pink Paper, Gay News, Strip AIDS, Dyke's Delight, and AARGH, as well as The Guardian, The Independent, and New Internationalist. Lesbian and Gay Studies: A Critical Introduction calls her a "notable by-and-for lesbian" cartoonist.
Leslie Ewing is an American cartoonist, activist, and breast cancer survivor. Her comics highlight feminist and lesbian themes and her cartoons have been featured in prominent queer comics, including Gay Comix, Strip AIDS, and Wimmen's Comix. Ewing was the executive director for the Pacific Center for Human Growth from 2008 to 2019.
