288 pgs. color | $45.00 hardcover | W: Caitlin McGurk; A: Barbara Shermund; introduction by Emily Flake
Prior to reviewing this book, I had never heard the name Barbara Shermund, but who could resist a book with a title like Tell Me A Story Where the Bad Girl Wins? Not me, that’s for sure, and I’m glad I took a chance with this volume, because the subject turned out to be a pioneering artist who depicted the “new woman” in frank terms and also included queer content in her work at a time when that was not expected in mainstream publication. And the book itself is both well-researched and delightful, creating a sense of the milieu in which Shermund worked while celebrating her unique career.
Born in San Francisco to an artistic family, Shermund was a prodigy, publishing her first illustration in the San Francisco Chronicle when she was eight years old and her first written work at age 12 in the San Francisco Call. She studied at the California School of Fine Arts before taking off for New York City in 1925, where she found a ready market for her work with magazines like Esquire and Life as well as the just-created New Yorker, the publication with which she is most identified. She was the New Yorker’s first female cartoonist and contributed over 600 cartoons and nine cover illustrations as well as innumerable pieces of spot art to the magazine, helping to create its distinctive style and look.
Shermund also advantage of the freedom offered a young woman in the big city, at a time when the future seemed to offer one intriguing possibility after another. Her cartoons frequently feature young women immersed in the moment, who dress sharply, party hard, and don’t hesitate to express their opinions. Shermund often wrote her own captions, giving a voice to these independent and sometimes irreverent young women. Sipping sodas at the neighborhood parlour, one young woman confides to another that “I’ll never marry—though, somehow, I’ve always wanted to be a widow” while in a much tonier setting, a bejeweled and fur-clad lady tells her top-hatted escort that he is “just an experience” to her. And, in a department store, a woman wearing a fedora and necktie asks the sales clerk “Don’t you honestly think I’d look better in a man’s suit?” (that one was changed by the editor, but the original is presented in this volume).
About Shermund’s own sexuality, we don’t know much, although she spent a lot of time in places like the artist colony in Woodstock where a variety of sexual preferences and identities were accepted as the norm. Unlike well-known same-sex couples like actress Wilna Hervey and painter Nan Mason, however, Shermund preferred to keep her private life private. What we do know includes that she was married twice but never lived with either partner, and that she left behind a series of letters and documents suggesting that there was much more to her life than she chose to make public.
Tell Me a Story Where the Bad Girl Wins is more of an illustrated biography than a graphic novel, with so many illustrations included that it qualifies as a coffee table book as well as a work of scholarship (the large format—9.3” by 12.3”—also helps). It’s a delight to read and the variety of art included, from cover art and cartoons to more traditional portraits, makes it a joy to flip through as well.
As Curator of Comics and Cartoon Art at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum at Ohio State University, McGurk comes from the world of cartooning, and it shows in her apt selection of Shermund’s work as well as the creative layouts employed throughout this book. That’s also true of Emily Flake (who penned the book’s introduction), a cartoonist and illustrator whose work has appeared in venues like the The New York Times and the New Yorker. | Sarah Boslaugh
You can see a preview of Tell Me A Story Where the Bad Girl Wins: The Life and Art of Barbara Shermund on the Fantagraphics website. The book will be released on November 19.
