| Joyce Farmer | |
|---|---|
| Born | Joyce Farmer[1] 1938 (age 86–87) |
| Nationality | American |
| Area | Cartoonist, Writer, Artist, Editor |
Notable works | Tits & Clits Comix Special Exits |
| Awards | National Cartoonists Society's Graphic Novel Award, 2011 Inkpot Award, 2011[2] |
Joyce Farmer (born 1938 inLos Angeles, California)[3] is an Americanunderground comixcartoonist. She was a participant in theunderground comix movement. WithLyn Chevli, she created thefeminist anthology comic book seriesTits & Clits Comix in 1972.
Joyce Farmer was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1938. She briefly attended Art Center School (nowArtCenter College of Design) in Pasadena in the 1950s before dropping out.[4] After living in Phoenix, Arizona with her first husband,[5] in 1965, Farmer moved to Laguna Beach, California with her son. She later attended the University of California, Irvine, where she obtained a bachelor's degree in the Classics.
In 1972, Joyce Farmer andLyn Chevli founded Nanny Goat Productions, a feminist publishing company which they established in order to publish their ownunderground comix,Tits & Clits Comix.[6] Nanny Goat Productions published seven issues ofTits & Clits Comix in total, in addition to another underground comic book titledPandoras Box (1973).
In June 1973, following theRoe v. Wade Supreme Court decision on abortion, Farmer and Chevli publishedAbortion Eve, an educational comic begun the year before about women's reproductive rights.[7] Drawing upon their experiences as birth control and pregnancy counselors at Laguna'sFree Clinic, the single-issue comic book presented the stories of five women – all of them named variations onEve, each in differing circumstances – going through obtaining an abortion. Farmer later shared about her personal experience with abortion, which partially inspired the comic.[8]
Some of Farmer's earliest cartooning work is signedJoyce Sutton, causing people to believe this is her birth name,[9] rather than her husband’s last name. She changed her legal name back to Farmer in the mid-1970s.[1]
In 1973, Farmer and Chevli were forced to stop producing underground comix due to the arrest of local booksellers fromFahrenheit 451 Books on obscenity charges for selling underground comix.[10] They resumed publishingTits & Clits Comix in 1976. While their first few comics(Tits & Clits Comix α, Pandoras Box, Abortion Eve, Tits & Clits #2, and Tits & Clits #3) were created solely by Farmer and Chevli, beginning with issue #4 the women of Nanny Goat Productions invited other contributors to their comic, includingTrina Robbins,Lee Marrs,Sharon Rudahl, Shelby Sampson, and others. Farmer and Chevli acted as editors for the series.
During the 1970s and 1980s, Farmer also contributed to the other all-woman underground comix anthology,Wimmen's Comix, in addition to other underground comix such asWet Satin.[1] She later acted as the editor forWimmen's Comix #10: The Internationally Politically Incorrect Issue (1985).[11]
In 1980, Chevli sold her share of Nanny Goat Productions to Farmer. Farmer published one final issue ofTits & Clits Comix,Tits & Clits #7 with co-editorMary Fleener, in 1987, before ceasing publishing underground comix.[12]
Since she never made much money from underground comics, Farmer struggled financially occasionally through the 1970s and 1980s.[3] Farmer worked as abail bondsman in addition to her cartooning, even opening her own bail bonds business in the early 1980s.[13]
Farmer began to care of her aging father and stepmother in the 1990s.[3][14] She started documenting in comics form the sad and sometimes humorous episodes of her parents' final years,[15] sending samples to former fellow underground cartoonistRobert Crumb. Crumb convinced her to finish the book.Fantagraphics published this graphic memoir in 2010 under the titleSpecial Exits.[3] Because of Farmer's macular degeneration,Special Exits took her 13 years to complete.[16]
Farmer's work has also appeared in anthologies such asZeroZero (2000),What Right (2002),No Straight Lines (2012),Best American Comics (2012),Graphic Reproduction (2018),Drawing Power (2019),[17] andMenopause (2020).
In 2023,Fantagraphics issued a collection of all of Nanny Goat Productions' comic books,Tits & Clits 1972-1987.
In 2011,Special Exits won theNational Cartoonists Society's Graphic Novel Award.[18]
