Life of the Party : Cartoonist Mary Fleener Draws On a Zest for Life and an Appreciation for the World’s Everyday Zaniness

The world of comics basically has been a Little Boys’ Club ever since it came into existence. From the mainstream’s muscle-bound, homoerotic heroes in tights to the frequently junior high school level sex-and-body-fluid humor of the alternative artists, arrested male adolescence has almost always been the driving force between the panels.

Comic artist Mary Fleener--whose collected autobiographical strips were released Dec. 11 in an anthology called “Life of the Party” (Fantagraphics Books)--is one of the few women to have made a name for herself in the testosterone-steeped realm of comics--er, uh, comix, as alternative comics are generally called.

But the content of Fleener’s comix is distinct not only from the work of her male counterparts, but from most of her colleagues in the so-called women’s comics movement as well. Unlike much of her peers’ strange fruit, Fleener’s strips rarely take on women’s issues, indulge in male-bashing or even so much as touch on any topics in the realm of the political.

Rather, Fleener’s uproariously bawdy tales of life on the fringes of Southern California society could best be described as existential hedonism--the artist and a seedy assortment of associates are depicted playing in rock bands, surfing, going to college, and gleefully partaking of drugs and casual sex, among other such business. In fact, Fleener’s unrepentantly pleasure-seeking lifestyle once moved none other than Robert Crumb (virtual inventor of the underground comix) to remark, “The life that Mary Fleener’s comix reflect down there is really frightening to me. If this is the future of the planet, oh man! How depressing.”

Fleener, for her part, is seriously tickled by Crumb’s regard and prone to loudly snigger with enthusiasm whenever someone expresses horror at her work.

“People fascinate and appall me, and my own behavior fascinates and appalls me,” she said with a chuckle in a recent interview at her home in Encinitas, a beach community north of San Diego. “I’m aware I was doing these things and sometimes I’m embarrassed, sometimes I’m not. But when I was doing these stories, it was like something had to come out--like a burp!

“Doing autobiographical comix is like dabbling in black magic because you have to conjure up all these feelings you had way back when. You have to remember what it was like to be in love with somebody or to really hate them, and it kind of messes with your mind a little bit. You have to go out of your mind to be truthful about those moments in time.”

As she spoke, Fleener, 45, was sitting in her spacious, meticulously manicured yard, surrounded by the things she loves. Subtropical plants, herbs and cactuses created an Oz-like atmosphere. A brugmansia tree--which yields blossoms used in Haitian voodoo rites to create zombies--hunched ominously in the autumn breeze. Fluffy wolf-like dogs and feral-looking black cats frolicked in the grass; exotic fish reflected the sunlight in a number of tiny ponds that appeared like aquatic land mines between the trees.

Fleener’s husband, Paul Therrio, was picking some down-home blues on his guitar a few yards away. A bottle of Anchor Steam beer was at his side, a number of empties strewn about his feet. The scene was straight out of a Mary Fleener comic strip.

Tales of a young Fleener, as they originally appeared in a series of irregularly published comics called “Slutburger” and originally run by a number of alternative publishing houses, ran the gamut from the everyday events of her life to the staggeringly traumatic. Whether being attacked by a knife-wielding drunk in a lesbian bar, being part of a drug bust at sea or encountering myriad sex perverts, religious lunatics and unearthly spirits, Fleener has led an out-of-the-ordinary life, to say the least.

Yet the artist, if anything, seems a bit daunted that “Life of the Party”--the first publishing of her work in book form--will give her an aura of legitimacy among more mainstream readers.

“I kind of find that I’m having post-publication depression; this is all very sobering,” Fleener said. “This is 10 years’ worth of work; this is every autobiographical story I ever did, so in a way it’s like a tombstone and a milestone at the same time. I have very mixed feelings about it, to tell you the truth.”

Fleener’s drawing technique--a pastiche of geometrical abstraction, cartoon exaggeration, sharp, bold lines and flowing brushwork--led first-string underground cartoonist Robert Armstrong to christen the style “cubismo.”

“Everyone always said it was Cubist and compared me to Picasso, but I really don’t like modern art and I really don’t like Picasso,” Fleener said. “I attribute my style to the fact that I grew up in the ‘50s and there was all this atomic Space Age design stuff everywhere. That’s what influenced me, not modern art.”

Fleener’s style perfectly complements her stories, which are narrated in matter-of-fact but bemused first-person dialogue. “I yam disgusted,” Fleener often pictures herself saying after a particularly debauched scene. And it is those scenes of highest action--in the middle of an unwholesome mating ritual, a snort of some illicit powder or a hellish temper tantrum--that the drawing style becomes most animated, most surreal, most startling.

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Fleener’s work came to prominence with the dawn of a second generation of alternative women cartoonists. The initial wave was spawned in the late ‘60s, mostly as a reaction to Crumb’s disturbing, misogynistic works. Led by the crusading Trina Robbins, who edited the stridently feminist (and often pedantic) “Wimmen’s Comix,” the first generation of alternative female cartoonists served as a needed historic precedent, but the work was mostly stilted and humorless.

In 1972, two renegade women artists, Aline Kominsky (future wife of Crumb) and Diane Noomin (future wife of “Zippy the Pinhead” author Bill Griffith), released a comic called “Twisted Sisters.” The book was a portent of things to come, as its subject matter was every bit as ill-mannered and sexually obsessed as the work of Crumb and the male underground cartoon founders.

The title was reactivated in 1991 as a new, Noomin-edited anthology in book form, published by Penguin. “Twisted Sisters--A Collection of Bad Girl Art” featured the work of Fleener, Noomin, Kominsky-Crumb, Krystine Kryttre, Dori Seda, Phoebe Gloeckner, Carol Tyler and many others, and was something of a critical sensation, if less than a sensational seller. A second volume, featuring cover art by Fleener, was published in 1994 by Kitchen Sink.

“In the ‘80s, there was an explosion of new alternative comix artists, and a lot of it was women who liked Crumb,” Fleener said of the much-heralded new breed. “We grew up admiring him. I’ve always said that Crumb made me the liberated woman I am today. He reinforced a real snotty, unladylike aspect of my personality. That first wave of women cartoonists, even though they were drawing feminist stuff, they still had this thing where they were very ladylike. They were brought up in an era of girdles and hair spray and poodle skirts.

“This second group, like myself and Krystine Kryttre and Phoebe Gloeckner, we were sort of influenced by hippies and punks, and we thought Crumb was cool. You’ll see a lot of difference in both the content and the art of these two generations of women. And now we’re starting to get a third wave of gals that are, like, under 25--the riot grrrl cartoonists, so to speak--and they’re very pro-Crumb too.”

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But alas, even the wild and untamed Mary Fleener must settle down at some point. “Slutburger” is now a thing of the past, replaced by an all-ages-friendly comic book simply titled “Fleener” and published by Zongo Comics, a company spearheaded by Matt Groening, creator of Fox’s “The Simpsons.”

But while the sex ‘n’ drugs ‘n’ rock ‘n’ roll autobiographical story lines are no more, “Fleener” is a far cry from what you’d call a conventional funny book. “Fleener No. 2,” released concurrently with “Life of the Party,” introduces readers to the Canapes, a group of anthropomorphous hotheads--Mr. Switch the knife, Ragu the eggplant, Tombo the tomato, Skeeter the fish and, oh yes, Lola Falana, who is a very human female sexpot.

The story line concerns itself with a day at Mr. Switch’s restaurant, where the goings-on resemble the not-unpleasant fever dreams of a particularly imaginative child. The strip is an otherworldly delight, a sign of artistic growth and maturity in Fleener, both in its highly developed but unaffected sense of storytelling and in its ultra-clean, fully realized artwork.

But ask Fleener if she feels any more grown-up than she did when writing those wild stories over the last decade, and you’ll see that the madness in her method hasn’t fully flown the cuckoo’s nest just yet.

“It’s funny--since I started cartooning I don’t have those kinds of experiences anymore because I stay home and draw all the time,” she said. “But I’m still that same person as I was in those stories. I’m still nuts, I still have to be really careful. I’m a total freak magnet, and I guess I always will be.”