One thing you should know about me is I can never resist a beautifully illustrated coffee table book. So, when a stunning new collection was released from Fantagraphics late last year, I jumped at the chance to get my hands on it. Tell Me a Story Where the Bad Girl Wins: The Life and Art of Barbara Shermund is exactly what it says on the tin; an official biography (also doubling as a stunning artbook), honouring the life and art of pioneering cartoonist Barbara Shermund. From Caitlin McGurk and with an introduction by Emily Flake, this spectacular hardback celebrates Barbara’s life and legacy as one of the first female cartoonists in the United States.
One of the main things this book seeks to do is bring attention to an often unheralded and overlooked person who was integral in the hay-day of magazine cartooning. I was sad that I hadn’t heard or come across Barbara before, but thrilled that this book sought to remedy her once-forgotten status as a pioneering woman in comics.
Tell Me a Story is extraordinary in its level of detail about Barbara’s life and accomplishments. Coming in at just under three-hundred pages, with a mixture of full pages of text and images from Barbara’s magazines, one really gets the feeling of peeping into the mind of a creative genius. From natural disasters and terrifying diseases, to losing her mother at a young age, to attending art school, to finding her feminist voice and breaking into the world of comics, Barbara’s life is completely laid bare, in beautiful detail.
For those unfamiliar with Barbara, like myself, she really was an icon and trailblazer for women in comics. Fiercely independent from a young age, she became one of the first women cartoonists to work for the New Yorker upon its inception in 1925, creating nine cover illustrations and over six-hundred cartoons for the inside of the magazine. I had no idea before reading that the iconic flapper dancer that comes to mind when I picture the New Yorker, was a creation of Barbara’s. As Barbara’s repertoire grew, so did her legacy – she fashioned cartoons for other acclaimed publications, including Esquire, Life, and Colliers, as well as illustrating books. Later in life, Shermund was among the first three women to be accepted as a member of the male-dominated National Cartoonist Society, an incredible achievement.
As her works depict, Shermund was hugely ahead of her time, particularly when it came to feminism. Whilst the first wave of feminism was more prominent around her zenith, the women in her comics can most be aligned with the second wave of feminism, which didn’t even begin until the 1960s; these are women that are stepping out of their domesticated roles, who smoked cigarettes, and who think that sex should be for more than just childbearing. These women laughed, and were loud and asked questions, in a time period where women were still fighting for the vote.
Shermund herself was just as independent as the women she illustrated. Much like their subject matter, her cartoons can easily be recognised by their boldness, as well as their loose lines. I loved the playfulness to her sketches, from impossibly long-limbed women swimming in charcoal, to her cheeky captions at the bottom of the page (another aspect she insisted on writing herself). Another benefit of a biographic book of this sort is to be able to see the artist’s style evolving; Shermund’s drawings were initially very smooth and loosey-goosey, but soon became more speckled, showcasing finer details. One element that never changed was that of the glamour within the panels; confident, sexy women, wearing the most beautiful dresses. Using pencil and brush sketches, she worked from her kitchen table, preferring this to having her own studio, and mailing her contributions to magazines from the comfort of her own home – this also meant she was free to travel. She kept drawing, right up until her death in 1978.
This isn’t the traditional kind of book I’d review on Broken Frontier, being more of an artbook than graphic novel, but this collection of insightful and witty sketches, correspondence, covers and more is something that the world needs to feel awe over. I can imagine Barbara would be delighted that McGurk, the Curator of Comics and Cartoon Art at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum at Ohio State University, is bringing her ahead-of-its-time work into the twenty-first century, and carrying on the legacy of women in comics.
Caitlin McGurk (W) • Fantagraphics Books, $45.00
Review by Lydia Turner
