| Dirty Plotte | |
|---|---|
 The cover ofDirty Plotte #1 (Jan. 1991), byJulie Doucet | |
| Publication information | |
| Publisher | Drawn & Quarterly |
| Schedule | Irregular |
| Publication date | Jan.1991 - Aug.1998 |
| No. of issues | 12 |
| Main character(s) | Julie |
| Creative team | |
| Created by | Julie Doucet |
| Written by | Julie Doucet |
| Artist(s) | Julie Doucet |
| Collected editions | |
| My New York Diary | ISBN 978-1896597232 |
Dirty Plotte is acomic book series byJulie Doucet,[1] published byDrawn & Quarterly from 1991–1998.
Most of the oddball stories inDirty Plotte were autobiographical, often about the struggles of being a woman and being an alternative cartoonist. AuthorAnne Elizabeth Moore summed up the comic this way:
These were the things thatDirty Plotte was about: the isolation of being a driven female creative; the jealousy in personal relationships that come out of that; the ever-present push from the outside to be maternal and nurturing, but the absolute interior knowledge that that is not your way; and the incredibly shifting sense of gender that a strong, smart woman must feel in order to move about in the world.[2]
Dirty Plotte began as a self-published photocopiedzine used to record Doucet's "day to day life, her dreams, angsts, [and] fantasies."[3] Doucet published 12 issues of theDirty Plotteminicomic between 1988 and 1989.[4]
It was only when Doucet was published inRobert Crumb's magazine,Weirdo,[5] that she began to attract critical attention.[6]Drawn & Quarterly (like Doucet, based in Montreal) began publishing Doucet in January 1991 in a regular sized comic series also namedDirty Plotte.[7]Dirty Plotte was the first ongoing solo title published by Drawn & Quarterly.[8]
Drawn & Quarterly published 4 issues ofDirty Plotte in 1991 (with much of the content being reprints of material that had appeared in the mini), but afterwards new issues were published once per year. Doucet played with the title of the series near the end, with individual issues called such things asPurty Plotte andPurity Plotte.[7]
Many of the autobiographical stories fromDirty Plotte were collected in the trade paperbackMy New York Diary (Drawn & Quarterly, 1999), which won the 2000Firecracker Award for best graphic novel.[9]
In 1991,Dirty Plotte was nominated for theHarvey Award for Best New Series (Doucet won the Harvey for "Best New Talent").[10][11] In 1999, whenThe Comics Journal made a list of the top 100 comics of all time,Dirty Plotte ranked 96th.[12]
