Twisted Sisters 2: Drawing the Line

A terrific collection of women's cartoons from Drawn & Quarterly's Twisted Sisters series, these stories by some of today's best women artists cover the spectrum of style, tone and content. The two most notable pieces are by the wives of some of comicsdom's favorite men-Aline Kominsky-Crumb, married to R. Crumb, and Diane Noomin, married to Zippy creator Bill Griffith-and feature their husbands as characters. Drawn matter-of-factly in a simple style, Noomin's story is a personal and poignantly funny account of a woman named Diane's four miscarriages and includes her rambunctious main character, Didi Glitz, as the shrink supervising Diane's embryonic struggles. Also worth seeing is Fiona Smyth's refreshing, primitive drawing in ``Late'' and M.K. Brown's richly surreal, campy ``White Girl Dreams.'' Many stories deal with such issues as teen pregnancy and hustling, and horrible accounts of sexual abuse, especially P. Gloeckner's disturbing ``Minnie's 3rd Love,'' about teen drug users in San Francisco in the 1970s. But there is also an unmistakable sense of sorority and solidarity in these pages that, while unifying the work as ``women's art,'' also allows the artists to show off their individual styles and histories. The lighthearted pieces-Mary Fleener's surfing story, Caryn Leschen's infidelities and the willowy rendering of the Lilith fable by new-toonist-in-town Dame Darcy-are nice breaks from the trials of being a woman in toons. (Apr.)