Testify! Drawing Ourselves Whole

Diane Noomin is the creator of the comics character DiDi Glitz, editor of the Twisted Sisters anthologies, and was one of the early contributors to Wimmen’s Comix. She has been nominated for Harvey and Eisner Awards and received an Inkpot Award. Glitz-2-Go, a retrospective of her work, was published in 2013. Inspired by the global #MeToo Movement, Drawing Power: Women’s Stories of Sexual Violence, Harassment, and Survival (Abrams ComicArts), edited by Diane Noomin, is a collection of original, nonfiction comics drawn by more than 60 female cartoonists from around the world. Featuring such noted creators as Emil Ferris, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, MariNaomi, Liana Finck, and Ebony Flowers the anthology’s contributors comprise a diverse group of many ages, sexual orientations, and races and their personal stories convey the wide spectrum of sexual harassment and abuse that is still all too commonplace. With a percentage of profits going to RAINN, Drawing Power is an anthology that fights for a better, safer world. Cartoonist Alison Bechdel said that “The comics in Drawing Power add a striking visual dimension to the #MeToo movement. […] By bearing witness quite literally to a wide range of traumatic incidents, the cartoonists in this book are changing not just the way we understand sexual assault, but the way we see it.”

Erin Williams is a writer, illustrator, and researcher. She’s the coauthor of The Big Fat Activity Book for Pregnant People and The Big Activity Book for Anxious People. In Commute (Abrams ComicArts), Erin Williams offers an intimate, clever, and ultimately gut-wrenching graphic memoir about the daily decision women must make between being sexualized or being invisible. We follow Williams on her daily commute to and from work, punctuated by recollections of sexual encounters as well as memories of her battle with alcoholism, addiction, and recovery. As she moves through the world navigating banal, familiar, and sometimes uncomfortable interactions with the familiar-faced strangers she sees daily, Williams weaves together a riveting collection of flashbacks. Her recollections highlight the indefinable moments when lines are crossed and a woman must ask herself if the only way to avoid being objectified is to simply cease to draw any attention to her physical being. She delves into the gray space that lives between consent and assault and tenderly explores the complexity of the shame, guilt, vulnerability, and responsibility attached to both. In a starred review of her work Publishers Weekly noted that "Williams does not shy away from her shame. She is also angry, and she knows she is not alone, and that brilliant anger is where the book becomes truly great. Her confidence—and literal straight gaze at the reader, full of vulnerability and challenge—makes this volume a critique, a lament, and a sigh. As Williams elegantly argues, many women need all three.”

Kat Verhoeven is an illustrator and cartoonist based in Toronto. She’s the author of the graphic novel Towerkind. Verhoeven’s Meat & Bone (Conundrum Press), a graphic novel that originally started as a webcomic in 2012, is a queer slice-of-life drama about dating and eating. The story, which Verhoeven conceded in interviews that has autobiographical elements, is set in Toronto and focuses on the lives of three roommates, a mysterious neighbor, and their interpersonal struggles. While one roommate is slowly wrestling with severe body image issues, another is trying to figure out how to navigate her new polyamorous relationships―without hurting any of her partners. Meanwhile, the third roommate practically moves into the gym, where’s she’s quietly working through her own problems and those of her friends. In Meat & Bone, Verhoeven braids these four women’s stories about eating disorders, relationships, food, polyamory, and friendship into an unflinching, beautifully illustrated exploration of how women learn to define themselves in the modern world. Kate Leth, author of Adventure Time, and Spell on Wheels, said “Meat and Bone is a beautifully illustrated gut-punch of a book. It holds up a mirror to the worst of our self-loathing and dares us to smash it. Kat Verhoeven has created something terribly real with this lavish delight of colour: a rallying cry to self-love and an honest look at the hard journey to find it. This book made me feel genuinely hopeful that one day I might like myself, too.”

Kristen Radtke is the author of the graphic memoir Imagine Wanting Only This, named a best book of 2017 by Forbes, Entertainment Weekly, Booklist, The Guardian, Kirkus, and many others, and the forthcoming books Seek You: Essays on American Loneliness (2021), for which she received a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant, and Terrible Men, a graphic novel, all from Pantheon. She is the art director and deputy publisher of The Believer magazine. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Marie Claire, The Atlantic, The Guardian, GQ, The New Yorker, Oxford American, and many other places.