Angela Bocage


Angela Bocage is a bisexual comics creator who published mainly in the 1980s and 1990s. Bocage was active in the queer comics community during these decades, publishing in collections like Gay Comix, StripAIDS USA, and Wimmen’s Comix. Bocage also created, edited, and contributed comics to Real Girl, a comics anthology.

Personal Life/Career

Bocage was born in Fayetteville, Arkansas. She attended the University of California in Santa Cruz as an art major in the 1970s where she was part of the Graphic Stories Guild with Mark Clegg, another comics artist. She published a comic strip called “The Worm” in the Guild's publication. The Graphic Stories Guild was a student-run comics club that published issues of student comics for distribution both on an off campus. While at Santa Cruz, Bocage also participated in the creation of fanzines “Slug Tesserae” and “Amoeba Earhart Flyer.” Also in college, Bocage created a women's section in the university newspaper. Bocage eventually went back to school for law and became an immigration attorney based in Boston.
Bocage worked at a headhunting firm but left in the 1980s to create comics. She also worked as a graphics editor for AIDS News Service, the organization that also published her comic " Sex, Religion, and Politics."
Bocage is married to David Gilden. She has two children named Robin and Jasmine. She is an activist for reproductive freedom.

Comics and Contributions

In addition to creating her own comics, Bocage also did lettering for several other comics artists.
Bocage also created the San Francisco Funny Paper with Norman Dog and Dan Perkins.
In 1991, Bocage contributed an essay to The Comics Journal titled "Define the Terms, Dismiss the Dregs, and Enjoy the Results: A Feminist's Case for Pornography."

''Real Girl''

Real Girl is a comic anthology published by Fantagraphics Books that ran from 1990 to 1997. Comics in Real Girl highlight themes of gender, sexual orientation, and sex. Real Girl had nine published issues, all of them edited by Bocage. Bocage create comics for issues 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. For the seventh issue of Real Girl, Bocage listed herself under her married name, Angela Gilden. Along with Bocage's own comics, Real Girl featured works from other comic artists.
Artists featured in Real Girl: