Today on the site,Alex Dueben continues his look at Wimmens Comix with an interview with Nancy Burton.
As a younger person I have only a vague sense of the paper. Was The East Village Other political? Was it psychedelic?
The East Village Other had just started up and was very avant-guard and freethinking. In fact one of their top contributors later wrote a book exposing mind control. You might say people were thinking out of the box. Trina Robbins later acknowledged me as the first female underground cartoonist in New York, based on that work for The East Village Other.
Your strip was called “Gentle’s Tripout” or “Gentle’s Trip Out”? I’ve come across both.
Tripout is one word.
Why was that the title?
Remember the slogan “Turn on, Tune in, Drop out?” “Tripout” is a play on “Drop out”
Did you sign the first strip “Panzika”? Or did that come later?
As I can best remember, I signed Gentle’s Tripout “Panzika” because that was my poet husband’s last name. “Hurricane Nancy” came later.
What was the first “Gentle’s Tripout” that you brought to EVO?
I don’t have an archive of The Gentle’s Tripout strip but I brought the first one I did to East Village Other as soon as it was done cause I thought it was a great idea. My belief at the time was Christ was gentle–that’s reason for the name–and my character was a gentle alien. In my way I was trying to say, have adventures and find you own truth.
Were you a big reader of comics then? Or as a kid?
I did read comics when I was young but my favorite images were pictures of cave paintings and Egyptian wall writings. The Sunday comics were great and I did love Little Lulu!
Elsewhere:
Columbus College of Art & Design is the latest art school to offer a comics program, which is especially good since it's in comics hub Columbus, Ohio.
Michael Dooley covers Trina Robbins' Dope comic reissue.
And happy anniversary to Floating World Comics.
