Lynda Barry (placeholder)

I went to a book signing of hers at Diesel: A Bookstore in Oakland, right after One Hundred Demons came out. It was fantastic, she talked to everyone for a long time, and got friendlier and friendlier as the evening wore on, as she was drinking out of a brown paper bag the whole time. I asked her what it was like being married to Matt Groening, and she didn’t understand it was a joke at first (based on Groening’s cartoon of things people often ask him, where someone asks “what’s it like being married to Lynda Barry?”).

I first encountered the caroons and story by Linda Barry in Ernie Pook’s Comeek. These cartoons, with their gritty look on life, people, families, and its sharp, sometimes harsh, but always funny and truthful, helped me to pass many minutes commuting on Chicago’s El, or being alone in the City of Broad Shoulders, the City that Works, during the years from 1983 through 1985.

According to the website:

http://www.sou.edu/art/anicomic/

“Lynda Barry was born in 1956, and grew up in a working-class Seattle neighborhood. After a tumultuous childhood she attended Evergreen State University where she met her friend Matt Groening. (“The Simpsons”) The story goes that he printed her work in the school paper without her knowledge and the rest is history. Barry is the creator of Ernie Pook’s Comeek, and the wonderful characters Marlys, Maybonne, and Freddie Mullen. Her most recent work is the illustrated novel Cruddy, which has received critical acclaim from such papers as the New York Times Book Review, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Wall Street Journal. The subject matter like much of Barry’s work contains dark uncomfortable topics, events, and behaviors with some occasional humor.”

She is the bomb, and has inspired and amused me for 18 years.