A Year for Women in Comics

Jewish women have been pushing boundaries of comics for years, but 2014 proved an especially rich year for smart, challenging work from supremely talented artists.
Some confront personal history. Last year, in “Letting it Go,” Miriam Katin beautifully captured her own ambivalence about visiting Germany — and the double edge every place holds for her as a Holocaust survivor.
This year, Roz Chast’s compassionate “Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?” chronicled the cartoonist’s own attempts to cope as her parents age.
And Joyce Brabner’s moving, funny “Second Avenue Caper” recounts the nutty — but eminently rational — plan hatched by her friends to smuggle pharmaceuticals from Mexico at the height of the AIDS crisis.
Mark Zingarelli’s classic-comix art bring Brabner’s words to urgent life.
Fans of graphic-novel storytelling also got rewarded this year. “Lena Finkle’s Magic Barrel,” by Russian-Jewish New Yorker Anya Ulinich, nails the tale of a divorcee’s dark dive into dating. And Liana Finck’s “A Bintel Brief” — inspired by the classic Forverts column! — evokes the Jewish past with warm magic.
Finally, one of the most intriguing works by a Jewish woman cartoonist wasn’t illustrated. Ariel Schrag’s “Adam” twists the classic gender-disguise story into a 21st-century tale — and captures the messy fluidity of love and identity among Brooklyn millennials. Even without pictures, it speaks in vivid color.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Most Popular
- 1
Opinion My Jewish moms group ousted me because I work for J Street. Is this what communal life has come to?
- 2
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 3
Fast Forward Suspected arsonist intended to beat Gov. Josh Shapiro with a sledgehammer, investigators say
- 4
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Dozens of members of UK’s largest Jewish group sign letter condemning war in Gaza
-
Culture Actor Ben Platt says his Jewish identity is ‘not defined’ by Israel, showing a gap between him and his influential family
-
Fast Forward Shapiro house fire suspect targeted Jewish governor over pro-Israel stances, search warrant says
-
Fast Forward Jewish family killed in New York plane crash
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.