Twisted Sisters (comic)


Twisted Sisters is an all-female underground comics anthology initially put together by Aline Kominsky and Diane Noomin, published in various forms from 1976 to 1994. In addition to Kominsky and Noomin, contributors to Twisted Sisters included M. K. Brown, Dame Darcy, Julie Doucet, Debbie Drechsler, Mary Fleener, Phoebe Gloeckner, Krystine Kryttre, Carol Lay, Dori Seda, and Carol Tyler.
Twisted Sisters was the first "breakaway project" by former contributors to the ground-breaking all-female comix collective Wimmen's Comix.

Background

In 1975, Wimmen's Comix contributors Kominsky and Noomin left that collective due to internal conflicts that were both aesthetic and political. Kominsky-Crumb has later claimed that a large part of her break with the Wimmen's Comix group was over feminism-related issues, and particularly over her relationship with Robert Crumb, whom Wimmen's Comix editor Trina Robbins particularly disliked.

Publication history

Kominsky and Noomin put together a 36-page one-shot issue of Twisted Sisters, published in June 1976 Last Gasp, which featured their own humorous and "self-deprecating" stories and art.
In 1991, Noomin edited and put together a 260-page trade paperback anthology which she called Twisted Sisters: A Collection of Bad Girl Art, featuring the work of herself, Kominsky-Crumb, and 13 other female cartoonists, including many former Wimmen's Comix' contributors. All the work in the collection had been previously published, most of it in anthologies such as Weirdo and Wimmen's Comix.
The success of that book led to Kitchen Sink Press publishing a four-issue Twisted Sisters Comix limited series in 1994, also edited by Noomin, with each issue featuring 44 pages of new comics by a number of female contributors. The limited series was subsequently collected in 1995 as Twisted Sisters, vol. 2: Drawing the Line. An exhibition of artists' work promoting the Kitchen Sink collection was held from January 19–February 18, 1996, at White Columns in New York City.

Issues

Twisted Sisters: A Collection of Bad Girl Art was nominated for the 1992 Eisner Award for Best Anthology. The Twisted Sisters limited series was nominated for the 1995 Eisner Award for Best Anthology.