Paige Braddock – cartoonist – Brief Article
S.G.
Brings lesbian life to the comics pages of mainstream newspapers with her acclaimed strip
Cartoonist Paige Braddock is about to cross over into the entertainment world’s final frontier for gay and lesbian artists. Her comic strip, “Jane’s World,” broke new ground in May when it became the first gay-themed strip to receive national media syndication through United Media’s Comics.com Web site. And now, through that affiliation, Braddock–a former protege of “Peanuts” creator Charles Schulz–is poised to be the first person to trove a gay-themed strip in national newspapers.
“Comics pages in newspaper are probably the most conservative entertainment outlet that we have,” the 38-year-old Braddock says. “Comics are so far behind the rest of the world [that] anybody doing anything contemporary has a hard time breaking in.” United Media picks only two comic strips a year from submissions that number near 7,000, and this year Braddock is one of the lucky two cartoonists whose work will be made available for national newspaper syndication starting in August.
“Jane’s World” first hit Web sites and gay papers in 1994 and has developed a healthy following since. Braddock thinks the strip’s broad appeal lies in the “nonissue” of her characters’ sexual orientations, as proven when Jane expressed her rage at President Bush’s idea to drill for oil in the Arctic. “I got this really long-winded letter from this minister who went off on the fact that I picked on George Bush, but he said nothing about the fact that I was gay!” she recalls with a laugh.–S.G.
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