Peter Bagge, Reason's Favorite Cartoonist, On Tour for his New Margaret Sanger Graphic Biography

Don't say we didn't warn you: Peter Bagge is a-coming!

Reason's favorite cartoonist is hitting the road next month to promote his forthcoming graphic biography of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger. The book is called Woman Rebel: The Margaret Sanger Story.

Here are the dates, via his publisher on this one, Drawn & Quarterly.

BALTIMORE, MD: Friday September 13, 7 pm
Atomic Books, 3620 Falls Rd

BETHESDA, MD: Saturday September 14 + Sunday September 15
Small Press Expo, Bethesda North Marriott Hotel, 5701 Marinelli Rd

SEATTLE, WA: Thursday, September 26th, 7:30 pm
Town Hall Seattle, 1119 Eighth Ave

MINNEAPOLIS, MN: Wednesday, October 16th, 7 pm
Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave S

IOWA CITY, IA: Friday, October 18th, 7 pm
Prairie Lights, 15 South Dubuque St

CHICAGO, IL: Saturday, October 19th, 7 pm
Quimby's, 1854 W North Ave

BOSTON, MA: Monday, October 21st, 7 pm
Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St.

PHILADELPHIA, PA: Tuesday, October 22nd, 7 pm
Locust Moon, 34 S 40th St

NEW YORK, NY: Wednesday, October 23rd, 7 pm
Book Culture, 536 West 112th St

BROOKLYN, NY: Thursday, October 24th, 7 pm
WORD, 126 Franklin St

TORONTO, ON: Friday, October 25-Tuesday October 29
International Festival of Authors, Harbourfront Centre

Be sure to read Peter's previous collection of his Reason work, Everybody is Stupid Except For Me (And Other Astute Observations).

Comments

[Drake]

If he's your favorite, why the Friday Bok's?

[Hugh Akston]

Bagge is the cartoonist we need, but Bok is the cartoonist we deserve.

[Almanian!]

"Deserve's" got nothing to do with it

[Zakalwe]

"You shot that cartoon! It was unlabeled!"

"Well, then it should have labeled itself."

[Hugh Akston]

Seriously though he's going to fucking Iowa and not LA? Does Bagge have a warrant in California or something?

[Almanian!]

Maybe he saw "IA" and mistook it for "LA"?

Just a thought...

[Hugh Akston]

Or maybe he just lost all of his LA privileges.

[Loki]

Zed's dead baby, Zed's dead.

[jesse.in.mb]

Don't act like you don't know why. Last time he was in town you got drunk and frisky with him and now he can't look you in the eye, or be in the same state as you.

[Hugh Akston]

Why does everything I love run away from me?

[Invisible Finger]

CA Taxes

[The Immaculate Trouser]

I forget -- is Peter the guy who draws incomprehensible and unfunny cartoons, or the guy who does the Friday Funnies?

In either case, can't wait to see him marshal his expert wit and ability to hagiographize a eugenicist.

[Gladstone]

In either case, can't wait to see him marshal his expert wit and ability to hagiographize a eugenicist.

And a socialist too.

[Bo Cara Esq.]

I am not an expert on Singer's biography, but have heard of her socialist and eugencist sympathies. But it seems to me what she is most known for, fighting against laws barring the voluntary sale and purchase of contraception and family planning services, is libertarian in itself.

[The Immaculate Trouser]

But it seems to me what she is most known for, fighting against laws barring the voluntary sale and purchase of contraception and family planning services, is libertarian in itself.

That would depend on how euphemistically one would define "family planning services", I would think. At any rate, an applied eugenicist being in favor of the freedom to engage in her own craft is hardly surprising or praiseworthy. She was an odd type of person; the type of socialist who saw sex as a social and "empowering" act rather than an arbitrary one and who subsequently opposed masturbation and other sex acts that she saw as demeaning.

Supporting certain types of sexual license because you see it as being in keeping with crappy social goals seems little different to me from more traditional prohibitions on sexual behavior, even if the particular behaviors proscribed are outside the mainstream.

[Bo Cara Esq.]

What do you mean by 'sexual license?' Non-procreative sex?

I don't know whether Sanger's case was one of simply 'an applied eugenicist being in favor of the freedom to engage in her own craft.' Further, while I might agree that the motivation behind such efforts might not be especially praiseworthy the effects can be said to be. Lastly, I imagine that a great deal of freedoms have been won by 'interested parties' (for example, sellers of a variety of goods and services). I don't think their victories are less worthy of celebration for that fact.

[The Immaculate Trouser]

Sexual license could be broadly defined as support for removing social and political sanctions for sexual acts.

More traditional sources would confine sexual license to either procreative or marital sex, for the ostensible purpose of childrearing.

Folks like Sanger had their own little box they liked to fit sex into, which had nothing to do with political freedom but rather with a very twisted and damaging philosophy.

Contraception is good, but I don't see any reason to hagiographize the person most associated with its spread in the US when it was so obviously for fucked up reasons.

[Bo Cara Esq.]

-Supporting certain types of sexual license because you see it as being in keeping with crappy social goals seems little different to me from more traditional prohibitions on sexual behavior

I think there's an important difference in that the first advances liberty while the second restricts it.

Let us say that a socialist thinks that if people were to smoke more marijuana that they would be less 'cogs in the machine of corporate America' and as a result he begins a tireless effort which results in marijuana being legalized across the United States. As a libertarian I'd be thankful for such a person.

[Ornithorhynchus]

I look at Sanger in the same way I view the Jehovah's Witnesses. I don't agree with all the nutty beliefs they promote, but I admire all the work they've done to secure First Amendment freedoms.

[SIV]

Margaret Sanger gave us Hitler who exterminated Jehovah's Witnesses.

[Tulpa (LAOL-VA)]

But it seems to me what she is most known for, fighting against laws barring the voluntary sale and purchase of contraception and family planning services, is libertarian in itself.

I don't see how the fact that the modern perception of Sanger is incredibly warped and sugar-coated, given her very public motivations for her positions, justifies Bagge treating her as a libertarian hero.

Hopefully he'll do a hagiography of Olliver Wendell Holmes Jr. next.

[Bobarian]

Friday Funnies is where bad cartoonists are sent to be punished.

Subjected to public ridicule and disdain, it's the Reason version of being put into stocks.

[Hugh Akston]

Well I'm in no position to argue with you since you've clearly already read Bagge's book and I have not, but his past work suggests that he's not going to shy away from the less savory aspects of Sanger's views.

[The Immaculate Trouser]

I'm only familiar with Bagge from the Friday Funnies *shudders*

A title like Woman Rebel suggests that readers can expect a traditional narrative about how a put-upon social activist succeeds in beating back the forces of patriarchal evil, etc.

[Hugh Akston]

When has he ever done Friday Funnies? His comics are usually longer form and run as features.

[The Immaculate Trouser]

Are they? Wow, I really haven't been paying attention; I thought it was him and Chip Bok doing them all this time...

What does he do at Reason, then?

[Hugh Akston]

Behold

[Tulpa (LAOL-VA)]

Bagge never does Friday Funnies, and "The Woman Rebel" was a book by Sanger that she got jailed for under obscenity statutes -- I'm assuming that's the reference.

Still pretty disgusting on Bagge's part. Barf, Bagge.

[Tulpa (LAOL-VA)]

I patiently await Bagge's cartoon biography of Adolf Hitler, Aryan Rebel -- hopefully to include some of Hitler's less savory viewpoints.

[Zakalwe]

How is "Reason's favorite cartoonist" determined? Is there a vote? By who? Editorial fiat?

The commentariat demands our voice be heard!

[Tim]

Process of elimination, Bok's the only other choice.

[Hugh Akston]

Well, there's also the URKOBOLD, but that's too horrible to contemplate.

[Drake]

I'll take Ramirez.

http://townhall.com/political-...../09/111357

[Zakalwe]

How soon we forget Payne.

[Robert]

Did you have to remind us? Now I have to expend valuable brain cells erasing him again!

[Kaptious Kristen]

The Cartoonist of the Lake, her arm clad in shimmering polyester....

[Robert]

He's better than Hylkema, and Hylkema was better than any of the others.

Now, Terry Colon may be as good an illustrator?maybe even better?but Bagge's the best cartoonist Reason's ever had.

[Robert]

OK, honorable mention to Baloo.

[Robert]

And Terry Colon has the best sig. A comparable one for Peter Bagge would have to be a condom.

[Invisible Finger]

Pay.

[wingnutx]

I just hope he brings the HATE.

[Tulpa (LAOL-VA)]

From the publisher's summary:

Peter Bagge's Woman Rebel: The Margaret Sanger Story is a dazzling and accessible biography of the social and political maverick, jam-packed with fact and fun. In his signature cartoony, rubbery style, Bagge presents the life of the birth-control activist, educator, nurse, mother, and protofeminist from her birth in the late nineteenth century to her death after the invention of the birth control pill. Balancing humor and respect, Bagge makes Sanger whole and human, showing how her flaws fueled her fiery activism just as much as her compassionate nature did. Sanger's life takes on a whole new vivacity as Bagge creates a fast-paced portrait of a trailblazer whose legacy as the founder of Planned Parenthood is still incredibly relevant, important, and inspiring.

I don't see where a consideration of her eugenics/forcible sterilization/internment camps for "morons" positions are going to fit into that.