Fantagraphics has collected Roberta Gregory’s Naughty Bits strip into one definitive collection, Bitchy! The Exasperating Existence of Midge McCracken, and today, The Beat can reveal an exclusive preview ahead of the book’s release.
Naughty Bits ran for 40 issues between 1991 and 2004 and remains the longest-running solo comic by a woman creator. Bitchy! collects the Fantagraphics series, arranging it for the first time in chronological order to tell the story of Midge McCracken. She’s rude, she’s blunt, and she has no time for b.s. The book features a new introduction from Gregory and a new afterword by comics critic Helen Chazen.
Here’s the full synopsis for Bitchy!:
Midge McCracken is the abrasive, self-destructive pessimist every office has. Not to mince words, she’s a bitch: bitter, mistrustful, racist, and completely unfiltered in her words and thoughts. But she comes by it honestly, growing up with hateful, racist parents, suffering sexual abuse as an adolescent, experiencing an unwanted pregnancy, etc. Did we mention that this is a comedy? Roberta Gregory’s unflinching sense of humor is the engine driving Bitchy!
This mammoth tome collects Gregory’s “Bitchy Bitch” stories, presenting a life from childhood into middle age, following the character through multiple decades. Along the way, Gregory’s wider cast of characters are introduced, notably Bitchy’s suffering and insufferable coworkers: the obnoxiously cheerful Sylvia (who never met a problem that positive vibes won’t cure); the upwardly mobile and power-hungry Pam (aka Bitchy’s boss); the intolerant, God-fearing Marcie; her hapless friend-with-benefits, Kenny; and many more.
In 1976, Roberta Gregory released Dynamite Damselsthe first underground solo comic created and self-published by a woman. After contributing regularly to the influential anthologies Wimmen’s Comix and Gay Comix throughout the 1980s, she launched Naughty Bits in 1991 while working as a production artist at her publisher, Fantagraphics. It became the longest-running solo alternative <a href="https://comicvibe.com/disney-greenlights-comic-book-afterlife-with-archie-for-animated-zombie-tv-series/" title="Disney+ Greenlights Comic Book ‘Afterlife with Archie' For Animated Zombie TV Series”>comic book series by a female cartoonist, coming to an end in 2004 after an influential and pioneering 14-year, 40-issue run. The Bitchy Bitch stories remain the pinnacle of a historic career, and a highwater mark in comics and graphic novels over the past 40 years.
Check out a NSFW preview below.
“Midge’s story unfolds, age by age, era by era, not necessarily in the order in which they were created,” says Gregory in her introduction. “It’s an epic. Continuity was not my first thought as I churned out issue after issue… [but] these stories do seem to add up to a comprehensive narrative of sorts. And, our deeply flawed Midge does gain insight and achieve some measure of enlightenment in her journey through these pages. Sort of.”
“The weighty tome in your hand tells the story of Bitchy Bitch’s life so far as we know it, an unending cavalcade of frustrations from youth to womanhood,” says Chazen in her afterword. “But this collected life story of Bitchy Bitch was never told in the pages of Naughty Bits—we are reading it for the first time now…
“Not only through arrangement but the very act of compilation, the story of Midge McCracken is changed forever, simply because it is, in fact, a story,” Chazen continues. “It’s a story of a girl who grows up to be a woman, challenged from the start by the violent sexual and social contradictions of heteronormative life… This is Bitchy’s life, and now, in this collected form, it is Bitchy’s life story.”
Bitchy! The Exasperating Existence of Midge McCracken will be available wherever books are sold on July 21.
