Sweet Little Cunt, a Long Overdue Tribute to Cartoonist Julie Doucet
Julie Doucet's 1990’s comic series Dirty Plotte was wildly imaginative and raucous, pulled no punches, and teetered constantly and surreally on the delicious edge between gross and fascinating.
Ask most people to name the greatest working female cartoonist, and they’ll reply “Julie Doucet.” They’re wrong — Doucet stopped cartooning close to seven years ago — but their hearts are in the right place. Her comics are uniquely expressive, immediately recognizable, and provide instant, easy access to a compelling moment in history …. Ask most people to name the greatest working cartoonist, and you might hear Robert Crumb, Harvey Pekar, Peter Bagge — men to whom Doucet’s work has often been compared. It is only when you add in the issue of gender that her work receives the recognition it is due.
— Anne Elizabeth Moore, Punk Planet #73 (May/June 2006)
Anne Elizabeth Moore, former co-publisher and editor of Punk Planet and current editor of the Chicago Reader, has been championing and elucidating the work of Canadian cartoonist Julie Doucet for even longer than the 12-year gap between the article quoted above and the release of Moore’s new book, Sweet Little Cunt: The Graphic Work of Julie Doucet (Uncivilized Books).
Moore’s commitment to Doucet’s work could be dismissed as pure “fan girl” if not for her project’s careful, and very equitable balance between celebrating the irreverence and nuance of Doucet’s art, and building the canon of feminist role models for those (lucky? unlucky?) artists who find themselves floating between the worlds of writing and image-making.
