Woman Rebel

Peter Bagge wastes no time in telling the story of Margaret Sanger, the controversial birth control advocate. From the very first page he uses his manic, large-mouthed style to portray Sanger’s frustration. She was from an era where women were expected to be slaves to their husbands, and if the husband couldn’t feed the wife and kids, well too bad. Women had no recourse. Her alcoholic ner-do-well father preached socialism, while his wife got sick from repeated pregnancies (some of which she miscarried). Obviously, her father’s ideals of freedom didn’t extend to his wife and kids.

One of the reasons Peter Bagge’s drawings work so well is that they never seem to stand still. They always appear to be flapping around and yelling, which is exactly how things would’ve been. Sanger was fighting with her husband throughout their marriage, and when she worked on the Lower East Side, it was bombardment of sight and sound. It gets funny when she meets Havelock Ellis and George Bernard Shaw, because the characters are not manic at all. The dialogue between her and Ellis is hilarious because it’s completely dry; Ellis states his life choices matter-of-factly (they’d be seen as bizarre even today) to the shock of the conservative Sanger. She reacts just as I expect when Ellis says “I am only aroused at the sight of a woman urinating, then I masturbate.” It was the kind of news that would give the average American a heart attack.

Those of you that loved Bagge’s Hate comic will love his colorful, wild, and exciting here. He’s crafted an enjoyable and engaging biography of Sanger, a very controversial woman in US history. But I have one suggestion for Bagge, and it’s to make a comic about Anthony Comstock. That man features prominently in this book, and despite his reputation as the king of prudes, his life story and his antics were interesting.

I can just imagine Comstock pouring over one of Sanger’s pamphlets, sweat running down his face, and yelling “vagina, oh my god, what a horrible word!”