Engendering Genre: The Works of Margaret Atwood

7: “Survivalwoman, Survivalcreature, Womanwoman” Atwood as Cartoonist

T his chapter represents the first extended publication on Margaret Atwood’s comics.1 I want to introduce her comics oeuvre here, paying specific attention to the question of how far gender is also an important aspect of her comics with respect to content, theme, and, to some extent, even form. My analysis will be contextualized by a brief history of cartoon art in the United States and Canada as well as a short treatment of cartoon art as a motif in Atwood’s literary works. cartoon art In the unIted states and canada The cartoon and the comic strip, the comic book, and the graphic novel2 are popular forms of storytelling that usually combine images and words, which are equally important for the transportation of meaning.3 These expressive formats of (short or long) “pictorial fiction” are usually geared to a broader consumer market, constituting a prime example of mass entertainment. After important European generic forerunners in the works of William Hogarth (1697–1764) and Wilhelm Busch (1832–1908), the cartoon and the comic strip in their modern-day conceptions were introduced in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century (1895),4 when Richard Felton Outcault published a cartoon (i.e., a single image) called “The Yellow Kid,” which was to develop into a successful series of comic strips.5 Several internationally 7 “Survivalwoman, Survivalcreature, Womanwoman” Atwood as Cartoonist 196 EngEndEring gEnrE: ThE Works of MargarET aTWood successful American comic strips have brought this hybrid art—which has been called one of the few indigenous American art forms6 —into global popular culture and have repeatedly entered the world of Hollywood: The Yellow Kid (1896), The Katzenjammer Kids (1897), Krazy Kat (1913), Tarzan (1929), Popeye (1929), Blondie (1930), Mickey Mouse (1930), Flash Gordon (1934), Superman (1938), Batman (1939), Wonder Woman (1941), Peanuts (1950), Spider Man (1962).7 For his graphic novel Maus, Spiegelman even won the American Pulitzer Prize. As with every other art form, subgenres, transformations, and developments have emerged and still do. Whereas the main purpose of the earlier “comics” in the first three decades of their existence honoured their designation by being mainly funny (an alternative name for such comics, especially in colloquial North American English, is “the funnies”), this staple characteristic has been complemented over the course of time by, for example, traits of adventure, pornography, or horror. Comics have also been invested with conspicuous seriousness, such as a political,8 sociocritical, or psychological agenda (see Charles Schulz’s enormously popular Peanuts comics, which debuted in seven newspapers on 2 October 1950 and ran daily until 13 February 2000, one day after Schulz’s death, in an uninterrupted sequence of 27,500 instalments). The usual publication forums for cartoons and comic strips have been the newspapers and weekly magazines—such as The New Yorker9 — which have ensured for comics both a regular and a large readership. It was estimated in 1963 that, “conservatively, six to seven hundred million readers weekly” read comics in the weekly magazines, “three times as many Americans as read the important daily news” (White and Abel 1963, 3, 7).10 And in a recent study (2008) by the Newspaper Association of America, figures were still high: “39 per cent of readers polled said they read the comics each day. That’s more than said they read movie reviews, food and fashion coverage and daily TV listings.”11 The comics have thus often been seen as an extra appeal that enlarges the readership of a newspaper (see O’Sullivan 1990, 10–12). At a time of shrinking newspaper markets, cartoons go increasingly online to more than make up for loss of readerships.12 Judith O’Sullivan, surveying 100 years of cartoon art, has pointed out that “comics have achieved a high level of artistic and literary excellence within an intensely “survivalwoman, survivalcreature, Womanwoman” 197 commercial environment and despite a sometimes hostile reception by critics, courts, and lawmakers” (1990, 10). Another link between newspapers and comic art is the latter’s frequent topicality, its reference to contemporary political or social issues. “The comics serve as revealing reflectors of popular attitudes, tastes and mores” (Inge 1990, xi). Perhaps it is not too surprising, then, that “cartooning remained for decades the exclusive territory of white males” (O’Sullivan 1990, 115). Most of the few well-known female comics heroines were created by male cartoonists (Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, 1942–52...