still couldn't use her work because it was not enough about feminism for us. The content was sort of a whiny mama’s girl who’s always trying to please the boyfriend, which idea didn't exactly match the position a lot of us were taking, the empowerment of women.
Now, I look at it, and she did a great job, and paved the way for a lot of women who eventually got syndicated. I'm glad we could help her get a leg up and get her started.
Ceres: What kind of influence did Wimmen’s Comix have on the advancement of females in the world of comics?
Terre: A lot of women who are now pretty well-known in the comics world, including some of the women who draw graphic novels, got their start with Wimmen's Comix. Phoebe Gloeckner just had her comic book novel, The Diary of a Teenage Girl, turned into a movie. She was a regular contributor and one of the editors of Wimmen’s Comix. So, almost every female that you know in the world of comics had some contact with this core group of Wimmen’s Comix, and published their early work in it. Then, there were those who were already well-established and well-known, such M.K. Brown. She contributed to Wimmen’s Comix, too.
In fact, any woman who could draw, including some of the New York women who worked for comic book companies but couldn’t get a job drawing in superheroes comics, they drew their own comic strips and submit them to us. They were really good artists, as good as the men, but they couldn't get published elsewhere because they weren’t doing the boys-in-cape stories.
In 2012, we had a 40st Anniversary show, which I curated, at the San Francisco Public Library, and as a result we are now archived at the Harvard Law Library and at the San Francisco Public Library. We are written into the history of women in art in America.
Ceres: What are you up to, now?
Terre: I still draw but I am a filmmaker as well. Right now, I'm working on a comic book movie based on one of my published comics about a female superhero, Suzi Skates, who is a real person. I did a comic on her, with her trademark image of a 6-foot tall blonde punk rocker on skates, funny and rebellious as hell!
Ceres: Can you tell me about your other contributions?
Terre: My work has appeared in many places besides Wimmen’s Comix. I contributed to Roller Skates magazine with my Suzi Skates comic. I was also a contributor to Charlie Hebdo. In 1978, me and my ex-husband, cartoonist Ted Richards, and my three-year old daughter Miranda were invited to a Paris Comic Convention. There, I met the editor of L'Écho des savanes, Dominique Grange. She loved my comics. By then they had been published in other magazines like underground comix and High Times magazine, and in anthologies such as Titters, The First Humor Collection by Women, published in
"They were really good artists, as good as the men, but they couldn't get published elsewhere because they weren’t doing the boys-in-cape stories."
21 | Ceres Magazine | Fall 2016
The cover to Wimmen's Comix #1, November 1972. Art by Patricia Moodian. Photo: Lands of Void with the permission from Terre Richards.