Comic Women

As a movie actress Lucille Ball was, in her own words, "queen of the B-pluses." But on the small screen she was a superstar - arguably the funniest and most enduring in the history of TV. In this exemplary biography, Stefan Kanfer explores the roots of Lucy's genius and places it in the context of her conflicted and sometimes bitter personal life.

Comic Book Women offers a feminist history of the golden age of comics, revising our understanding of how numerous genres emerged and upending narratives of how male auteurs built their careers. Considering issues of race, gender, and sexuality, the authors examine crime, horror, jungle, romance, science fiction, superhero, and Western comics to unpack the cultural and industrial consequences of how women were represented across a wide range of titles by publishers like DC, Timely, Fiction House, and others.

Her marriage over and career gone bust, Arly Hanks flees Manhattan for her hometown: Maggody, Arkansas. In a town this size, nothing much ever happens, so Arly figures she's safe as the town's first female chief of police - until the husband of one of the local barmaids escapes from state prison and heads for town. And that's not all. An EPA official with ties to polluting the local fishing hole has suddenly vanished off the face of the earth.

Nothing ever happens in Maggody, Arkansas, population 755. Aside from handling the occasional barroom brawl or exploding still, Chief of Police Arly Hanks spends her days sipping coffee and squashing flies. She returned to Maggody two years ago, licking her wounds after a bad Manhattan divorce, and she fell backward into the role of sheriff. From Hizzoner the Moron to Ruby Bee Hanks, the people of Maggody are all crazy in their own ways, and that craziness is about to turn deadly.

The visit of quirky world-famous horror author Nathan Grimes to Star City is especially thrilling for Clare Henry and her grandfather Chester. As the owners of The Rescued Word, a charming boutique shop in town, Clare and Chester specialize in restoring old typewriters and repairing beloved books. They've invited Nathan to their shop to use their equipment for his next book. But all plans to work on the book take a step in the wrong direction when a tourist discovers an abandoned ski boot on the slopes.

For more than 75 years, Catwoman has forged her own path in a clear-cut world of stalwart heroes, diabolical villains, and damsels in distress. Her relentless independence across comic books, television, and film set her apart from the rest of the superhero world. When female-led comics were few and far between, Catwoman headlined her own series for over 20 years. But her unique path had its downsides as well.

A stand-up comedian beloved for her combination of feisty wit and Southern charm, Pierce knows all too well that life is funny—until it’s not. But she also knows that it will become funny again. She’s held on to that hope—and that promise—through tragedy and triumph. And now she’s finally ready to tell her full story. In Life Is Funny until It’s Not, Pierce recounts a preacher’s daughter’s childhood filled with heartbreak, including abuse, her parents’ divorce, and the sudden deaths of her two sisters in the span of two years.

Sheriff Gus knows it’s going to be a bad week when he sees Sedric Hedgecock’s breathalyzer score. With a blood alcohol level of 0.62 percent, Hedgecock should be dead. If the breathalyzer’s isn’t on the fritz, Hedgecock’s superhuman. Either way, he’s blind drunk, so off to the county jail he goes. Joining the wannabe Bacchus in Gus’s cells is Jennifer Louis Bachman, awaiting extradition to Kansas on a murder charge. The victim in question is Jennifer’s unborn child, and the murder weapon is an illegal Mexican abortion. With the governor vacillating on whether to extradite, ...

As the creator of "Cathy", Cathy Guisewite found her way into the hearts of fans more than 40 years ago and has been there ever since. Her hilarious and deeply relatable look at the challenges of womanhood in a changing world became a cultural touchstone for women everywhere. Now, Guisewite returns with her signature wit and warmth in this debut essay collection about another time of big transition, when everything starts changing and disappearing without permission: aging parents, aging children, aging self stuck in the middle.

The Grammarians are Laurel and Daphne Wolfe, identical, inseparable redheaded twins who share an obsession with words. They speak a secret "twin" tongue of their own as toddlers; as adults making their way in 1980s Manhattan, their verbal infatuation continues, but this love, which has always bound them together, begins instead to push them apart. Their fraying twinship finally shreds completely when the sisters go to war, absurdly but passionately, over custody of their most prized family heirloom: Merriam Webster’s New International Dictionary, Second Edition.

Billionaire Xavier Summers is lonely. Seeking a companion he hires an escort, Jean Green, to give him company. Little do they know that the two will connect on a personal level and fall for each other. The Escort is an interracial WWBM erotic romance. At 4,000 words it is for mature readers only.

Rael is an apprentice to a hunter of the Order. Hunters have one mission in life, and that’s to vanquish evil beings from other planes of reality that want to conquer our plane—demons, devils, and the like. However, Rael’s current mission isn’t as difficult as all that. Rael and her mentor are in New York City with the goal of finding a few missing children. With not even a hint of demons around, how hard could that task be? It gets a touch more difficult when Rael herself is kidnapped. Her kidnappers don’t even desire a ransom in return for her; instead they want her to find ...

Rael Armstrong is an apprentice to a hunter of the Order. Hunters have one mission in life: to vanquish evil beings from other planes of reality. Normally, it’s very exciting work, but Rael’s current mission feels a little on the dull side. She’s been tasked with watching a suspect, and that’s it—just watching. It is a dull task until an unlikely visitor shows up to talk with her suspect. It couldn’t hurt to do a little less watching and a lot more following of this visitor to see what he’s up to, right? Well, it wouldn’t hurt unless this visitor was something really ...

The lives of six female superheroes and the girlfriends of superheroes. A ferocious riff on women in superhero comics. From the New York Times best-selling author Catherynne Valente comes a series of linked stories from the points of view of the wives and girlfriends of superheroes, female heroes, and anyone who's ever been "refrigerated": comic book women who are killed, raped, brainwashed, driven mad, disabled, or had their powers taken so that a male superhero's storyline will progress.

Part memoir and part how-not-to guide, The Wrong End of the Table is everything you wanted to know about Arabs but were afraid to ask, with chapters such as “Tattoos and Other National Security Risks,” “You Can’t Blame Everything on Your Period; Sometimes You’re Going to Be a Crazy Bitch: and Other Advice from Mom,” and even an open letter to Trump. This is the story of every American outsider on a path to find themselves in a country of beautiful diversity.

Comic book superheroines bend steel, travel across time and space, and wield awesome forces. These mighty females do everything that male superheroes do. But they have to work their wonders in skirts and high heels. The Supergirls asks whether their world of fantasy is that different from our own. Are the stories of Wonder Woman’s search for an identity, Batwoman and Power Girl’s battle for equality, and Manhunter’s juggling of a crime fighting career and motherhood also an alternative saga of modern American women?

Supraman spotted Wooman In Tetrapolis' ruins The battle was done They'd survived the Doom Between them Bodies lay Friends and foes Bones of a fallen age Casualties of war

As Hypnotica emerges into Queensport by day, she comes to realize that the city had been changed. Suddenly, everyone from the office workers to the stockbrokers to the mayor is entranced and enslaved to a powerful hypno-dominatrix! How long can Hypnotica's resolve to fix the situation last? In a city hypnotized to obey her will, it would be so much easier to give into temptation...

"Chris Orcutt serves up a deliciously cheeky and ironic collection of short stories that offer glimpses into the perilous lives of ten men from vastly different walks of life and eras."* An IndieReader Best Book of 2013. From the emotionally poignant to the outrageously humorous, this varied collection of stories dramatizes the lives of a wide range of fascinating men including The Last Great White Hunter... learns that on the African savanna, the most dangerous predator is Woman. The Bootlegger... goes to extraordinary lengths to provide for his family during the Great Depression. The ...

Superhero fiction has been with us for almost a century; high-octane tales crammed with concepts and contrasting themes, from superpowers and the post-human, to masked vigilantes and immortality. In that time, superwomen have evolved from comic book caricatures (created by men, for men) to stronger representations of female power. The Science of Superwomen looks at this evolution, from its hypersexualized origins to today’s more nuanced diversity.