Lynda Barry: Girlhood through the Looking Glass (Great Comics Artists Series)

Best known for her long-running comic strip Ernie Pooks Comeek illustrated fiction (Cruddy The Good Times Are Killing Me) and graphic novels (One! Hundred! Demons!) the art of Lynda Barry (b. 1956) has branched out to incorporate plays paintings radio commentary and lectures. With a combination of simple raw drawings and mature eloquent text Barrys oeuvre blurs the boundaries between fiction and memoir comics and literary fiction and fantasy and reality. Her recent volumes What It Is (2008) and Picture This (2010) fuse autobiography teaching guide sketchbook and cartooning into coherent visions.. In Lynda Barry: Girlhood through the Looking Glass author Susan E. Kirtley examines the artists career and contributions to the field of comic art and beyond. The study specifically concentrates on Barrys recurring focus on figures of young girls in a variety of mediums and genres. Barry follows the image of the girl through several lenses--from text-based novels to the hybrid blending of text and image in comic art to art shows and coloring books. In tracing Barrys aesthetic and intellectual development Kirtley reveals Barrys work to be groundbreaking in its understanding of femininity and feminism.