| Donna Barr | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1952-08-13)August 13, 1952 (age 72) Everett, Washington |
| Nationality | American |
| Area(s) | Cartoonist, Writer,Penciller, Publisher |
Notable works | The Desert Peach Stinz |
| donnabarr.blogspot.com | |
Donna Barr (born August 13, 1952) is an Americancomic book author andcartoonist. She is best known forThe Desert Peach andStinz.
Donna Barr was born inEverett, Washington, and is the second child of six. She had earned a bachelor's degree in German from Ohio State University in 1978. Barr had enlisted in the United States Army and served from 1970 to 1973. She was a school trained teletype operator who was an E5, or Sergeant.[1] Because of this position she was not sent into war. Donna Barr had met her husband Dan during her time in the army. She now lives in Clallam Bay, Washington with her husband.[2]
She works in pencil, ink, watercolor, and silkscreen.[2]
She is known for her seriesStinz andThe Desert Peach.Stinz, originally published in 1986 as a short story in a hand-bound book, tells the story of a society ofcentaur-like people in a setting reminiscent of pre-industrialGermany.[2] The story was then serialized in theEclipse Comics seriesThe Dreamery, edited by Lex Nakashima, and was picked up byAlbedo creatorSteve Gallacci under his Thoughts & Images label, moving on toMU Press and its imprintAeon Press. It was then self-published under A Fine Line Press.[citation needed]
Her other long-running series,The Desert Peach is about Pfirsich Rommel, the fictional homosexual younger brother ofErwin "The Desert Fox" Rommel. Beginning in 1987, it was set in North Africa duringWorld War 2. The comic has been describes as a fantasy war comic that was set within the German regime.[3] Pfirsch (peach) Rommel is a colonel in the German Afrika Korps in World War II.[3] The rest of this unit of misfits includes a mute radio officer, a shell-shocked mental case with a pet landmine, a French-speaking black Moroccan, an American prisoner of war, and a Cossack mercenary. In this context, a gay colonel engaged to marry a hotshot Luftwaffe ace does not seem out of place.[3] It comes to fruition to long time readers that the story is actually a long running flashback.[4] According to Barr, some of the themes within The Desert Peach are; "Love, Honor, Death and Tea, Surfing, fascism, obnoxious pilots and boyfriends, birth, love, hate, revenge, rape, child-murder, slavery, tribal customs, insanity, drug-use, prejudice, racism, death-camps, warfare, love-at-first-sight, homophobia, bad relationships, feminism, horse-training, camel-theft, fashion, marriage, euthanasia, grandchildren — etc., etc., etc".[5] Donna Barr explains her process of creatingThe Desert Peach as, "I usually do a rough on scrap paper (junk mail has lots of blank backs!), happily cutting and pasting, then I copy the whole thing (so the back is clear), rearrange the copy backwards on the back of the final paper, slap in some lettering guides, flip it over on a light table, and use it as a rough guide while I ink. No penciling, and no erasing".[5] The first three issues were published by Thoughts & Images. Additional issues were published byFantagraphics Books,Aeon Press, and then self-published.[citation needed] The entirety of The Desert Peach series can be found onWebtoons. A Desert Peach musical was produced in 1992 and a novel was published in 2005.[citation needed]
BothStinz andThe Desert Peach are now largely serialized online and her novels are self-published. Other works includeHader and the Colonel (1987),The Barr Girls (1990), andBosom Enemies (1987). Barr has also published a number of novels, includingPermanent Party,An Insupportable Light, Ringcat andBread and Swans. The last two of these featureStinz andThe Desert Peach, respectively. Barr has illustrated severalGURPS roleplaying books, includingGURPS Ice Age andGURPS Callahan's Crosstime Saloon,. andTraveller role-playing books, includingAlien Module 8: Darrians, theMegaTraveller Player's Manual and several issues of both theJournal of the Travellers Aid Society andChallenge magazine.[citation needed] Her latest series,Afterdead, is a crossover of all of her characters. It is said to be politically charged and wild.[6]
Her work has been translated into German, Japanese, Italian, and Croatian. Barr has created a series of handmade ornate, stitchery-covered bound sketchbooks, called theBlack Manuscripts.[2]
Barr and her work have been recognized with numerous awards and honors. These include TheXeric Grant in 2000, The Bruce Brown Foundation Grant in 2004,San Diego Comic-Con'sInkpot Award in 1996,[7] Seattle's Cartoonists Northwest's Toonies in 1998, LondonComics Creators Guild's Best Ongoing Humor Series in 1992, and the Washington Press Association's Communicator of Excellence for Fiction in 1997 and 1998. Barr appeared at the Cartoonists Northwest Association 2016 event and received a Golden Toonie Award.[2]
Donna Barr has been involved in the Northwest community as a member of theGraphic Artists Guild, theNational Writers Union, UAW/AFL/CIO, and has acted as a consultant for the Media curriculum in the Arts Department at Olympic College in Bremerton, Washington. She lectures on her work at conventions and symposiums all over the United States, Canada, and Europe.[2] She had attended Opttaconn in 2019.[8]
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