Heavy Flow

By Jen Vaughn
comicscurator.tumblr.com

Jen is no stranger to creating comics about menstruation (in fact, that's how I first met her!), but she's clearly got it down to a science at this point, as this comic about menstrual cups is both informative and entertaining.

The comic opens with Jen remembering her early experiences with periods, and how our society deals with them (generally poorly). Then Jen makes a discovery, paying for disposable tampons and stuff is expensive! (Especially when you also have to buy birth control, "creepy hair removal products", and unicorn figurines.) So Jen gets a menstrual cup.

The then talks about the invention, history, and evolution of the cups, answers common questions about them, discusses the problems of initially getting used to using them (a topic other creators have covered), and more!

Through art filled with visual gags, and ridiculous humour (what sort of cup does a giant use?) Jen creates a.... (I'm trying to avoid the use of the word "entertaining" again, to the thesaurus!) absorbing comic that is worth checking out if you're thinking about getting one of these cups, or even if you have no idea what they are at all.

Plus this comic gives me an excuse to post this video.

My Lady

By Jen Vaughn
www.mermaidhostel.com

I read this comic by my zine BFF Jen Vaughn and was cofused. It tells a story (of which I liked the ending), but the dialogue seems almost like poetry, and a strict nine panel grid was used for no apparent reason.

And then it hit me when I saw Wally Wood listed in the special thanks. This comic was made using the 22 panels that always work! Here's a site that tells the story better than I could, but the you can understand the gist of it by the very title. Clearly this comic was an assignment that Vaughn completed for the Centre for Cartoon Studies. As such it makes far more sense! Vaughn was attempting to create a comic using as many of these panels as possible. It doesn't seem to be made solely out of them (though I could be wrong), but it does use many of them and matching them up is kind of fun.

One thing that still confused me about this comic was the massive size it was printed at! 11x17 paper folded in half. I wondered why it could possibly be printed so huge, when it really doesn't need to be. Finally I decided that it must be because it was drawn at this size, and reducing it would have made it fit onto the page weird. North American paper sizes are stupid. (Check this wikipedia article to see why the A-series of paper sizes makes wayyyy more sense.)