Who is Bitchy?

Bitchy is my best-known cartoon character. She started out as a bit of a joke in a story I wrote back in 1989, and she appeared nationally on the Oxygen Network in the "Life's a Bitch" animated cartoon and in Canada on the Comedy Network.

Before that, she has shown up in dozens of my Naughty Bits comic books, in five trade paperback collections, (all published by Fantagraphics Books), she was in a weekly comic strip in Seattle, Portland and New York, (the collection is now available!) and her stories have been translated and published in books in French, Spanish, German and Swedish, besides in small zines all over the world. She's also been portrayed in three stage productions in Seattle, and the original art from my stories has appeared in so many art exhibits, I can't keep track anymore.

Plus, I must have sketched her scrawly little face hundreds of times in sketchbooks, on buttons, art boards and t-shirts. You would not believe the people who see her usually-scowly face and remark, "WHERE have I seen this before?"

Bitchy's real name is Midge McCracken. She is perpetually about a year older than I am (she graduated from high school in 1970) and represents a sort of everyperson, working in a job she really doesn't like with people she would not choose to be around, barely making enough to get by. She reads a lot of papers and magazines and watches lots of TV and seems to really know what is going on around her, but is so bitter and cynical sometimes that she can't get up the initiative to actually try to change her circumstances. Besides, she would hate to give up that little thrill from being 'right' about how stupid everyone else is and how every day proves to her what she knows all along: that 'life's a bitch and then you die.'

Click on Art to See Panel

She IS clueless about the effect her self-fulfilling prophecy has on her own life. The classic example is of her constantly grousing, "Oh, this makes me sick and THAT makes me sick…" and the next day she has a bad cold and figures it just HAD to be the fault of that inconsiderate bimbo at work with the sniffles. Sound familiar?

Click on Art to See Panel

She really is NOT me, despite what so many people sometimes say! My view of life is worlds apart from hers, but everyone seems able to identify with her on some level. She has a rich inner monologue (which never made it into the animated cartoons) in which she thinks what so many of the rest of us think but would be afraid to admit. She started out as a rather two-dimensional cartoon character, but she got complicated VERY quickly. Her storyline includes a colorful assortment of co-workers, Born-again Marcie, New-Age Sylvia, the ferocious Ms. Rottweiler, and her sometimes-faceless mother. She also has a stunning assortment of sex toys and is not afraid to use them. The stories go back to her childhood and young-adulthood, (taking a humorous historical look at America in the sixties and seventies) and one of my own favorites even shows her living back in the Middle Ages! But, Midge HAS had her moments of enlightenment, and there are times when she has forsaken her selfish tendencies to Do the Right Thing, showing there is hope for almost everyone in this world! Like everything else I seem to write, there is always FAR more going on below the surface!

The stories take a humorous, but very realistic and candid look at adult life, with its frustrations and learning experiences alike, and, like everything else I create, are quite unlike anything else out there!

BITCHY BUTCH

"Butchy" should not be confused with Bitchy Bitch! She is Midge's lesbian counterpart, about the same age and just about as frustrated. She remembers the glory days of the early feminist movement, before 'those darn straight women' spoiled it for the rest of the dykes! She lives in a more benign world than Midge: the other women of the community look out for her well-being and there is even a bit of Magic Realism in her stories: Goddesses keep appearing to help make her life a little easier, or to enlighten her a bit, although Butchy always seems to be completely unaware of their existence. On the other hand, in one story, Butchy proved to be a wonderful inspiration to a young woman, and was also unaware that she was having such a positive effect on another person. Life can be like that sometimes!

Click on Art to See Full Page

Butchy was born when a woman asked me to create a lesbian version of Bitchy Bitch for a cartoon book. When I showed her my first Butchy story, this woman was enraged and offended by it! These stories are some of my favorites, and have appeared in Naughty Bits and in Gay Comix. There is now a complete collection of Bitchy Butch available, with several pages of new material.

BITCHY IN THE COMICS

Bitchy Bitch was born to be a cartoon character: she is rubbery and flexible and scrawly and just a joy to draw! She has appeared in all but one of my 40 issues of Naughty Bits. Five trade paperback collections of many of the stories were published by Fantagraphics (and are all still available!), although there is much more material that, so far, exists only in the comic book pages.

Four trade paperbacks were published in German in the mid 1990s by Tilsner, two books published in Swedish by Epix, and more recently, two books published in French, and two in Spanish by Recerca. The first Spanish version was a translation of my most popular collection, "A Bitch is Born," and for this book I received the prestigious Haxtur award for humor! I guess this shows that humor CAN translate to other languages!

I decided to try my hand at a weekly strip with Bitchy in the late 90s and ended up with over eighty "Bitchy Strips," which were also a joy to draw! I was told that a lot of them ended up on refrigerators and office bulletin boards across the Northwest. I am thinking of more comic strips with Bitchy in them, perhaps sometime in the not-too distant future.

BITCHY ELSEWHERE

Bitchy was widely seen on the Oxygen Network's half-hour "Life's a Bitch" cartoon series, and can still be seen on the Comedy Network in Canada. Previously, Bitchy appeared in short episodes called "Bitchy Bits" and "Bitchy Bitch" which ran on Oxygen's "X-Chromsome" series. If you are familiar with my comics, you will see that Bitchy has had a bit of a makeover and made some new friends.

In 1995, a lot of talented people and myself put together three stage versions of Bitchy's life.

I have also done a bit of merchandising. Fantagraphics created some Bitchy T-shirts, and Scairy Hairy Toys created a Bitchy bendy-doll (neither of which are available now, though I do have enough doll materials left to put together sew-it-yourself kits for the ambitious!) I still sell my custom-made original art Bitchy buttons, magnets and mirrors, and I even occasionally make the Bitchy Action Figure, laboriously hand-drawn and cut out and assembled.