Dirty Plotte: The Complete Julie Doucet

"Julie Doucet, a French-Canadian cartoonist who lives in Montreal, decided to call her comic book, which she started self-publishing in 1987, Dirty Plotte . Just to translate, plotte means ‘cunt’. Julie is widely revered by all sorts of people, so the publication of the Complete Julie Doucet in a box set composed of two hardcover volumes was a huge event in the world of comics. I’ve actually written about her before for ArtForum . She did these incredible comics from 1987 until she stopped making comics in the year 2000, when she turned to printmaking, bookmaking and collage. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter There are a lot of gems in this collection. Many of the comics’ plots are feminist, focused on reclamation of the bodily. There’s a lot about sex and menstruation—classics like a well-known comic called “Heavy Flow,” in which she turns into a Godzilla-like figure, bleeding and tearing down buildings while looking for a Tampon. She depicts a surrealistic fantasy escape in which the attention to women’s bodies is violent. There are comics in which the female protagonist character rips off her own breasts and guts herself. A lot of penises get chopped off. There’s a lot of lopping off of body parts in general. Doucet is known for this incredible psychic landscape. “A lot of penises get chopped off. There’s a lot of lopping off of body parts in general” That dark, surreal work is beautifully combined with brighter pieces that are more tethered to reality. There’s an autobiographical story called “My New York Diary” which ran across several different issues. It anatomizes the life of a young woman moving to New York City to move in with a boyfriend. The story tracks the decline of their relationship. It is a signal text in feminist autobiographical comics. So it’s really exciting to get all of her different kinds of work collected together here. Interesting. So, I think it’s similar to literary publishing. All sorts of terms stick and don’t stick. “Alternative comics”—heavy quote marks—was a phrase that really stuck to describe work that was happening in the 80s and 90s. Many of the same comics artist like Charles Burns and the Hernandez brothers are still publishing, but people don’t call their work ‘alternative’ anymore. Alternative was just one of those eighties and nineties terms anyway, right? Like alternative music. These days, people talk about ‘indie music’ and ‘indie comics.’ So there are all sorts of appellations for comics. “Independent comics publishing is auteur-driven” But I think the only one that’s been really important is the distinction between underground—an independent—and commercial. You mentioned Julie Doucet started off in the underground. What that means is that she literally self-published her work. Dirty Plotte used to be a self-published fanzine. Again, there’s so many different words for the same thing, people now call fanzines ‘mini-comics.’ But self-published work is underground work: in other words, outside of any commercial systems of distribution. Returning to the example of Doucet, she was picked up by Drawn & Quarterly , which is an independent publisher. The independent publishers are distinct from huge commercial companies, like Marvel and DC. They’re not owned by media conglomerates. Independent publishers don’t employ teams of people to produce comics. Independent comics publishing is auteur-driven."