Tits & Clits tended to feature the same roster of artists rather than purposefully working to include new artists, although Farmer noted that they were open to submissions by new artists.Ĭhevli and Farmer define Tits & Clits as one of the first (if not the first) self-published underground comic by women. Chevli preferred not to draw and stopped drawing when they had other artists to do the stories. Chevli and Farmer did eventually bring in other artists from Wimmen’s Comix in order to get their comics published more frequently, but the decision was possibly more practically than ideologically motivated. Only having two artists doing the work meant that only about one issue was published a year, if that. Farmer recalled, “The weird thing was that we just decided independently to do a comic book and we didn’t discuss it with anybody in San Francisco.” The two artists worked in close conjunction, often trading the work of drawing and writing the stories. Their location in Laguna Beach, removed from the hubbub of San Francisco, meant that they were initially isolated from the other artists in the underground. (Farmer and Chevli produced seven issues of Tits & Clits between 19.) Whereas Wimmen’s Comix at its inception was a collaborative effort aiming to unite all of the women currently in the underground comix world (and to bring in even more women), Tits & Clits began as a partnership between Joyce Farmer and Lyn Chevli, who created all of the material for Tits & Clits #1 and #2, Pandora’s Box, and Abortion Eve by themselves. Not only was it more single-minded thematically, it completely lacked the collective structure and underlying democratic ideology of Wimmen’s Comix. Farmer and Chevli, as well as many of the women who later submitted to Tits & Clits, viewed female sexuality as fertile grounds (pun intended) for the expression of radical sentiments.įrom its inception, Tits & Clits was a fundamentally different anthology than Wimmen’s Comix. I hated her guts for that, but I knew it was a very good idea.” The name was a play on the phrase “tits and ass” often used in men’s magazines. Chevli said, “One day we were sitting there, drawing, and she shouted it out, ‘ Tits & Clits!’ and I just about fell off my stool. The actual idea for the comic book occurred spontaneously while they were working on the first issue. Joyce Farmer remembers the meeting a little differently, saying that the comic was Chevli’s idea and that they were put in touch by a mutual friend. We were two nice little girls, college graduates and everything, and here we were getting into the sleaze pit. I love it.”…So we got together and we started to work…we had to invent ourselves. And I said, “Ok, draw me something dirty.” Eventually she drew me a woman sitting down on the floor with her legs spread and a rat nibbling at her vulva. She came over to my apartment and I said, “Draw me some stuff,” and she did. I put a little sign in the store, in the window, saying “artists wanted.” And Joyce worked right next door to us showed up and said, “I’m answering the ad for an artist.”So I said, “Ok, fine, let’s get together and show me some of your work, and let’s see what happens.” She had never seen an underground comic before. I thought, ‘Oh my god, this is incredible.’ And it just stirred in me, for maybe two weeks, and then I came up with this thought, ‘If I ever sell the store, I’m going to do an underground comic.'” When Chevli parted ways with her husband, the store was about $20,000 in debt, so she decided the time was ripe to start her comic.Īccounts of the anthology’s founding differ between its founders. Chevli said, “I took one look at one and it blew my mind.

Lyn Chevli had first learned about underground comix through the bookstore Fahrenheit 451, which she owned with her husband. The first issue of Tits & Clits, by Joyce Farmer and Lyn Chevli, was published just weeks before the first issue of Wimmen’s Comix in 1972. While Wimmen’s Comix can be linked to the feminist newspaper movement of the early 1970s through It Ain’t Me Babe Comix, its arrival was foreshadowed by another all-women underground comic out of Laguna Beach. Note: Quotes from Joyce Farmer and Lyn Chvli are from interviews with the post’s author.

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