Comic Book Writer and Illustrator
She didn’t find anything published which reflected her personal experience so she decided to write and illustrate comics which did.
FAMILY BACKGROUND
Mary Wings (MW) was born in Chicago. Both her parents were ‘creative’ – her father built furniture and her mother was a fashion sketch artist who would often pull MW and her brother out of school to accompany her at work.
EDUCATION
Following high school graduation, MW attended Shimer College (now part of North Central College in Mount Carroll, Illinois.)
After taking some time to travel, MW settled in Portland, Oregon, where she studied ceramics at the Museum Art School, a part of the Portland Museum of Art.
COMING OUT AS A LESBIAN
Growing up in a household that nurtured MW’s creative side also gave her a reason to reject the heteronormative strictures of America. MW greatly admired her mother and thought of her as a model for her life but she also saw how her mother, despite holding down a full-time job, was expected to do the bulk of the housework, including having dinner ready every night.
MW didn’t know what “lesbian” meant until she was in her late teens – but as soon as she found out, she knew it described what she’d been feeling for years.
The death of MW’s mother while MW was in college, gave MW the mental freedom to explore her new-found identity as a lesbian.
When she came out as gay, MW found a small but supportive community among feminists and artists centered in the city. She legally changed her surname to Wings, inspired by the adage that “friendship is love with wings.”
EARLY ADULT ADVENTURES WITHOUT A CAREER PATH
Following graduation from college, MW used a combination of part-time jobs (‘gigs’) – including selling some of her traditional artwork – plus occasional cash gifts from her father, to support her lifestyle of traveling in Europe and across the U.S.
Basically, MW was a travelin’ / starvin’ artist.
SEARCHING FOR ARTISTS WHO REFLECTED HER OWN EXPERIENCE
As a traveling artist, MW hoped to find fellow artists whose work represented her personal experiences – especially in ‘underground’ (nontraditional) comics, with their boundary-bursting depictions of sexuality in all its many forms.
Except she didn’t. Perusing the work of R. Crumb and other comic artists, MW discovered page after page of violent misogyny and homophobia. She also encountered those characteristics in person when she met some of the artists in real life.
FROM WRITING AND ILLUSTRATING COMICS TO AUTHORING BOOKS
One day while browsing in a feminist bookshop in Portland, Oregon, MW found a comic collection, Wimmens’ Comix, which included a stunning story called “Sandy Comes Out,” about a young woman who suddenly announces that she is gay. But as MW read it, her enthusiasm wilted. She felt the author had failed to capture the texture of coming out.
“It seemed so superficial,” recalled MW. “I thought this has nothing to do with what it really feels like.”
That night, back at home, MW went to work with her pen and paper and a week later, she emerged with Come Out Comix, her own version of the sort of illustrated story the other comic book had tried to tell. It was the first comic book about lesbians, by a lesbian and for lesbians.
A friend owned an offset printer in the basement of her karate studio and after business hours, they churned out hundreds of copies of Come Out Comix, which MW then advertised by leaving fliers (one page, paper advertisements) all around the city.
A publisher with national distribution picked up one of the fliers, agreed to publish Come Out Comix and within a year, it was said to be on the bookshelf of every lesbian in the country.
MW went on to write two more comic books in a similar vein – “Dyke Shorts” and “Are Your Highs Getting You Down?” She also contributed to a growing number of gay comic collections that emerged in the 1980s, inspired by early writers like her.
After publishing her three comics, MW turned to novels, writing five books, four of which featured a lesbian detective.
CAREER SATISFACTION
While MW rarely returned to making comics, she spoke regularly at art schools. One of the students who attended a presentation by MW said, “It just felt like standing under the shadow of a mountain. I’m now writing a tiny little queer kids’ comic about “Batcat” but I wouldn’t be able to it she hadn’t gone first.”
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This career story was based on an obituary written by Clay Risen, published by The New York Times on August 10, 2024 plus internet research.
