Humor and Feminism in British Comics: A Conversation with Nicola Streeten

Humor has long been a powerful tool for critique, resistance, and storytelling. In British comics, it has also played a crucial role in feminist expression — challenging norms, exposing inequalities, and creating space for voices historically pushed to the margins. This exploration of humor and feminism in British comics draws on a wide-ranging conversation with cartoonist, curator, and academic Nicola Streeten, whose work has helped reshape how comics are understood in the UK.

From graphic memoir to collective activism, Streeten’s career offers a unique lens through which to examine how comics can be both deeply personal and politically resonant.

How Humor and Feminism Intersect in British Comics

The relationship between humor and feminism in British comics is not simply about being funny. Instead, humor often operates as a strategy — a way of making difficult subjects approachable, of subverting power, and of revealing uncomfortable truths.

British comics have historically leaned toward satire, irony, and social commentary. Feminist cartoonists have taken these traditions and redirected them, using humor to explore lived experiences such as sexism, grief, motherhood, aging, and professional marginalisation. Rather than diluting the message, humor frequently sharpens it, allowing readers to engage emotionally before realising the deeper critique at work.

As Nicola Streeten discusses, humor can also function as a survival mechanism, particularly for women navigating industries that have not always welcomed them.

Nicola Streeten and Feminist Comics Activism

Nicola Streeten is widely known for her work as both a creator and an advocate. Her graphic memoir Billy, Me & You, which deals with grief and loss, demonstrates how comics can handle profoundly serious themes without losing warmth or humanity.

Beyond her personal work, Streeten has been instrumental in building feminist comics communities in the UK. Through curation, teaching, and public scholarship, she has consistently argued that comics deserve recognition as a legitimate cultural and academic form — and that women’s contributions to the medium must be taken seriously.

This dual role — artist and activist — is central to understanding humor and feminism in British comics. The work does not exist in isolation; it is embedded in networks of support, mentorship, and shared resistance.

Ladies Do Comics and Collective Space-Making

One of the most significant initiatives discussed in the conversation is Ladies Do Comics, a UK-based collective co-founded by Streeten. Created in response to the lack of visibility and opportunity for women in comics, Ladies Do Comics provided a space for collaboration, publishing, and mutual encouragement.

Importantly, the collective embraced a wide range of tones and styles — from overt comedy to raw autobiography. This diversity reflects a core feminist principle: there is no single “correct” way to tell women’s stories.

Humor played a key role here too. By refusing solemnity as the default mode of feminist expression, British women cartoonists challenged assumptions about what political art should look like.

Graphic Memoir, Grief, and Emotional Honesty

A striking theme in discussions of Streeten’s work is the use of comics to process grief and trauma. Graphic memoir, often dismissed in the past as niche or indulgent, has become one of the most powerful areas of feminist comics practice.

What makes this especially relevant to humor and feminism in British comics is the tonal balance. Even in stories about loss, moments of humor appear — not to undermine the seriousness, but to reflect the complexity of real emotional experience. Life, after all, is rarely one-note.

Comics allow for this layering in ways that other media often cannot, combining visual metaphor, pacing, and voice to hold contradiction on the page.

British Comics Culture vs American Traditions

The conversation also highlights differences between British and American comics cultures. While American comics are often associated with superheroes and large-scale commercial publishing, British comics have tended to be more rooted in satire, autobiography, and small-press experimentation.

This environment has arguably made it easier for feminist voices to emerge, even if recognition has been slow. British feminist cartoonists frequently operate outside mainstream publishing, using zines, independent presses, and community events to reach audiences directly.

Humor, again, becomes a connective thread — a way of inviting readers in rather than lecturing them.

Why Humor Matters in Feminist Storytelling

Ultimately, humor is not a distraction from feminist politics in comics; it is one of its most effective tools. It disarms defensiveness, builds solidarity, and allows difficult conversations to happen without alienation.

In examining humor and feminism in British comics, Nicola Streeten’s work reminds us that laughter can coexist with anger, grief, and critique — and that comics are uniquely suited to holding all of these at once.

Final Thoughts

British feminist comics continue to evolve, shaped by creators who refuse to separate art from lived experience. Through humor, honesty, and collective action, figures like Nicola Streeten have helped expand what comics can be — and who they are for.

For readers, creators, and scholars alike, this intersection of humor and feminism remains one of the most vital and exciting areas of contemporary British comics culture. If you enjoyed this then check out conversation with comics creator Eira Richards

Chapters

00:00 The Return of OH!CAST and Community Spirit

05:46 The Evolution of Comics in Education

11:41 Creating a Welcoming Space for Women in Comics

17:28 Navigating Success and Community

20:26 Adapting to Change: Online Events and Accessibility

23:19 Collaborative Projects and Family Involvement

26:53 The Journey to Creating a Cookbook

27:40 Collaborative Art and Storytelling

28:46 Exploring Grief Through Comics

29:48 The Role of Women in Comics

31:46 Creating Inclusive Spaces in Comics

33:21 Personal Experiences in Comic Creation

36:57 The Importance of Sharing Personal Stories

37:56 Diversity in Comic Representation

39:40 Historical Perspectives on Women in Comics

41:47 Early Women Cartoonists

44:31 Activism Through Comics

46:20 Advice for Creating Women-Centered Spaces

48:43 Catharsis in Comic Creation

51:25 The Rise of Autobiographical Graphic Novels

52:19 Exploring Jane Austen Through Comics

53:35 The Power of Creative Expression

53:55 Ordering Books and Creative Inspiration

54:48 Quickfire Questions: Comic Book Worlds

58:05 Creative Tools and Inspirations

59:03 Useless Superpowers and Celebrity Graphic Novels

01:02:53 Fictional Transportation and Ridiculous Names

01:04:58 Food and Drawing: A Creative Necessity

01:06:24 Future Projects and Farewells

Transcript

Cal MacDonald (00:01.164)
Okay, good evening everyone and welcome back to OH!CAST your island gateway to all things geek. Joining me tonight, I think have you recovered from another OH!CON Kathleen?

Kathleen (00:13.411)
Just, but with a lot of crisps and chocolate, which is not very healthy, but yeah. Replacing sugar. It was a terrific one. It was a terrific one. It was lovely to see so many people there enjoying themselves and yeah, just amazing.

Cal MacDonald (00:18.318)
Yeah, it was a good one this year. Yeah. Yeah.

Cal MacDonald (00:30.22)
Yeah, it is just great when we see the nerd community in the island come to life in October. Anyway, on to the main focus of tonight's episode. We have a wonderful guest tonight, known for her activism as well as her work in comics, co-founder of Ladies 2 Comics, written a good few graphic novels herself that are quite interesting to talk about. Welcome to the show, Nicola Streaton. How are you doing?

Kathleen (00:35.821)
Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (00:58.481)
Thank you. Good thanks. Nice to be here.

Cal MacDonald (01:01.646)
Wonderful to have you. I suppose like with all good things, it's just let's go to the start. Like did you have this comics bug from a young age or were you very or did you have to do a traditional proper subject at school and then you went into comics?

Nicola Streeten (01:18.855)
I didn't have comics from a young age except Jackie which I realised was a claim. I started meeting the comics community I realised I did, I had a link but that was it and so it felt really slightly tenuous. I mean occasionally I'd buy a beano or chips but I was also not very

Kathleen (01:26.297)
Yeah.

Kathleen (01:30.819)
Hmm.

Kathleen (01:34.969)
Mm.

Nicola Streeten (01:46.627)
not particularly good at school either, not very academic, but my degree at university was social anthropology and so I think in terms of the more intellectual ideas that I've engaged with, is comics is part of, is what is how I've come into it. It's become more relevant even though I was a mediocre student.

the ideas that I was introduced to at that time in my twenties have kind of grown with me and developed.

Kathleen (02:21.472)
Yeah, that sounds fascinating because looking at your career and all you've done, it's comics are at the heart of everything, you know.

Nicola Streeten (02:30.966)
Yeah, well, actually, I mean, I came from comics as an illustrator. So I was a freelance autodidact, officially illustrator for about 10 years before I came to comics. And my style as an illustrator was quite cartoonish. I did the work I got was lots of spot cartoons. But so I didn't make the connections. So when I discovered the graphic novel,

Kathleen (02:37.016)
that's it,

Kathleen (02:44.79)
Mm-hmm.

Kathleen (02:51.33)
Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (03:00.718)
a long form comic, that's what pulled me in. And I discovered it, it was really through Chris Ware when he won the Guardian First Book Award for Jimmy Corrigan. it was then, I think that opened Cartoot Comics and the graphic novel to a whole audience of Guardian readers that was what I was. And so already I was familiar with, know, Art Spiegelman and

Kathleen (03:20.044)
Yeah.

Bye.

Nicola Streeten (03:30.703)
Marjan Satrapi and so this was, wow, this is how you can tell a serious story using the comics form. And there's quite a lot of variety from Chris Ware to Satrapi, isn't there, in the style. So that's kind of what took me, I could learn this language and slightly translate, but I already had a quite distinctive scratchy style anyway.

Kathleen (03:30.935)
Yeah.

Kathleen (03:43.778)
Yeah.

Kathleen (03:48.817)
mmm yeah yes

Kathleen (03:57.847)
style. Yeah. I mean that's just, it makes you think, you forget now we're in schools I think and maybe a lot of libraries, probably not. They're still struggling to get acceptance along with other literature, you know, in the classroom. But you forget how tough it was back then when you think it was really just Spiegelman, it was Mouse, it was

considered to be almost an oddity, like an exception rather than this just this wonderful form.

Nicola Streeten (04:29.956)
Yes, yes, exactly. again, like Will Spiegelman, that was in the 80s when he was trying to get published, even struggling to get Mouse published, wasn't it? Yeah, it was turned down. But the other thing for me was it's never comics per se that has held my interest, but the subject matter. So what still continues to fascinate me is that you can...

Kathleen (04:37.313)
Yeah.

Kathleen (04:40.92)
Something like that. Yeah.

Kathleen (04:51.384)
Hmm.

Kathleen (04:54.872)
Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (04:59.462)
and you'll be the same, you can convey, communicate an idea in a form that's so well loved and so accessible, so huge. And the whole history of cartoons and comics is about that accessibility and you don't need to be fully literate and so on. So I think that's what drew me in the beginning and still is my interest. I don't care.

Kathleen (05:02.924)
Mm-hmm.

Kathleen (05:06.476)
Yeah.

Kathleen (05:12.746)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Kathleen (05:22.647)
Yeah.

Yeah. Mm. Yes, that's it. Yeah. Mm.

Nicola Streeten (05:26.15)
what the form is actually of whether it's animation or video games, it's about the subject matter and it's about communicating something. So it's I think popular culture is a very powerful way of doing that. Yeah.

Kathleen (05:41.176)
communicating that, yeah. And it's that combination of the visual and the word that just, it just seems to reach that perfection, that perfect way of conveying a story. I kind of learned that. I kind of got interested in children's literature and it was always the older literature that interested in me. And then someone educated me about picture books, which, and then I realized how

Nicola Streeten (05:53.53)
Yes.

Nicola Streeten (06:07.942)
Hmm.

Kathleen (06:11.938)
far more complex and challenging almost they were there was no subject they couldn't deal with and they were still regarded as something for sort of very young children but then you realize most picture books are for any age and it's taking that form right up and just well you know anything's possible

Nicola Streeten (06:29.54)
Yes, it's really, it's really sad the way about 10 or 11 suddenly, the children's books don't have pictures in anymore. Or if they do, it's black and white illustrations. It's really doesn't make sense, does it? It's just really sad when you sad for the children to have to.

Kathleen (06:35.938)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Cal MacDonald (06:39.468)
Yeah.

Kathleen (06:42.936)
here. No, no.

Kathleen (06:50.232)
It is, yeah. And I think that's again why, sorry I'm babbling, Cal you'll have to mute me, mute me. Yeah, in like comics like The Phoenix and that are getting so popular and that, so it's just lovely to see a better selection now and it be more accepted. It's taken long enough, but it's good to be here, yeah.

Cal MacDonald (06:56.736)
No, no, carry on, finish your point then. No.

Nicola Streeten (07:14.222)
And I think young adult is the area which is really pushing, know, really burgeoning, isn't it, for publishers? think if you're gonna, if you're looking for a publisher, that's, from what I've heard anecdotally, that's where you wanna try and work in that area.

Kathleen (07:17.272)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Cal MacDonald (07:18.786)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kathleen (07:23.927)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kathleen (07:28.758)
That's... Yes, no.

Kathleen (07:34.326)
Definitely, yeah.

Cal MacDonald (07:35.224)
Yeah, because there's one of your colleagues in the library who once said that to me, Kathleen, that she pointed out the young adult section. That's where the good stuff is these days. That's where you find the most interesting stuff. That's where all the innovation's happening.

Kathleen (07:43.98)
Yeah. absolutely. Yeah. It... That's it. And yet sadly, yes, yes, but sadly in the library still quiet. It's just still not cool to be seen, but they're reading. They're reading them, which is great. Yeah. No, young adult books, definitely they, yeah, they've been quite adventurous, but yeah. Very, very racy, some of them.

Nicola Streeten (07:45.616)
Mmm. Mmm.

Nicola Streeten (07:51.15)
Yeah. And the sales for the...

Cal MacDonald (08:00.366)
You

Cal MacDonald (08:11.246)
Yes sir.

So like I'm going through some of the questions that our back chat, our backroom chat room they've been firing through. Obviously you're famous for like ladies to comics, trying to promote women in comics. So just going back when you entered the industry, how male dominated was it? And the question Martin's been asking, did you ever feel threatened implicitly or explicitly when you started getting into the industry by your male counterparts?

Kathleen (08:14.167)
Okay.

Kathleen (08:24.79)
Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (08:42.174)
Well, so 2007, 2008 was when I, I'm not sure the industry, but the community in the UK. So, and first of all, I've never felt threatened. I think the comics community, however you describe that community, every part of it.

in my experience has been so friendly and so welcoming. So there was never any overt sexism or certainly that I've experienced. And also because I'm coming in via the graphic novel and I'm coming in, I was in my 40s. So it's not like I was a young, innocent girl. I was coming in loud with a-

Kathleen (09:09.836)
Yeah.

Kathleen (09:30.121)
Mm. Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (09:31.769)
with all my opinions in place. and the first, but I had a really nice experience. So I was working as an illustrator. I was based in Lincolnshire in the middle of England. And I was bored with the, never kind of was pushing to the next level in terms of my income and status as an illustrator. So kind of as professional development, I signed up to an MA course at Lincoln University and it was very open.

Kathleen (09:51.831)
Hmm.

Nicola Streeten (10:00.678)
you could take and it was about taking on a creative project. And I thought, oh, this is, I know I'll do a graphic novel. And I, and you probably know my story that 13 years before our first child had died, that was Billy. And so I thought, oh, I've got, I've got the story and I'm, hang on, I'm ready. I wasn't crying. I was over it. could, so I, my approach was, but,

Kathleen (10:11.02)
Yeah.

Cal MacDonald (10:12.206)
You

Kathleen (10:19.297)
Mm.

Kathleen (10:22.804)
story.

Kathleen (10:26.623)
Hmm.

You were wrong.

Nicola Streeten (10:30.168)
So at the beginning, when I signed up, I had a supervisor who said, I've looked up this guy, Paul Gravet. You must follow him. And then Paul Gravet, quite soon after this, was doing the first talk in London around the graphic novel. So I went down for that, and that's where I met Sarah Lightman, who was...

Kathleen (10:39.53)
Yeah.

Kathleen (10:47.499)
Mmm.

Nicola Streeten (10:52.614)
starting her PhD into autobiographical comics and we were both working on autobiographical comics and she'd come from art, fine arts, she'd come trained at the Slade School of Art. So, and I'd been working with my spouse for some years with a visual arts charity in Lincolnshire, commissioning quite contemporary visual arts.

that's where I was coming from and that's where Sarah was coming from. So we clicked immediately as friends because we had the same fine art references, not comics. So we weren't coming as comics fan. So our entry in was quite kind of at the side. We were slightly older and we were having different references. But she, the reason we started what's now LD comics is because she'd...

Kathleen (11:36.193)
You go.

Nicola Streeten (11:43.653)
been interested in autobiographical comics and she'd gone to a reading group, a reading, a comics reading group somewhere in London and it was across London, it was in a pub, which is, although everyone's friendly, I still think that pubs, well, certainly historically they're masculine spaces. So even now in my confidence, I feel slightly conscious if I'm walking into a pub alone. And so there's all that side of it that when we met for a coffee meeting, so we were discussing and she'd

Kathleen (12:00.373)
Hmm. Hmm.

Kathleen (12:07.317)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nicola Streeten (12:13.69)
go in and be very friendly and they'd be talking about books by Alan Moore, that kind of book. And she'd say, how about we talk about some autobiographical works? And they looked at her slightly blankly. They did 2008 or nine. So there was work out there, but it was kind of, well, it was sort of,

Kathleen (12:24.663)
Mm.

yeah yeah yeah just rare yeah

Nicola Streeten (12:37.754)
there wasn't much community in London at that moment, at that moment in time. There wasn't much gathering of people and there wasn't much anything different. Now it's completely transformed. Anyway, so we were chatting and thinking, how would it look a space that's welcoming to women? So if a woman comes along on their own, they feel welcome. So it's not revolving around...

Kathleen (12:48.886)
Hmm.

Nicola Streeten (13:03.512)
alcohol because I think there's such also Sarah didn't drink I drink heavily still but she didn't drink but but and so we were thinking that would be nice and so we serve tea and cake and make it really welcoming and it's not a place where you have to pay because money in London everything is expensive but comics artists don't make very much money so let's offer it as a platform so that's that was the beginning so we rented

Kathleen (13:05.045)
Yeah. Yeah.

Cal MacDonald (13:09.474)
You

Kathleen (13:10.143)
It could.

Kathleen (13:16.085)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kathleen (13:23.809)
Mmm. Very much.

Nicola Streeten (13:30.839)
rag factory of space off Brick Lane in East London and set up there and that was a very, I think he asked for about 70 quid for the evening and we split it between us. We didn't ask for money from our, we offered it as a free event and covered the costs and set up our teas and coffee.

Kathleen (13:34.785)
Cool.

Kathleen (13:45.686)
Mm.

Nicola Streeten (13:51.087)
And it was amazing because the guy Silas who's doing up the rag factory, he was renting it out to actors as spaces. So it was freezing cold. It had water coming through the roof onto the electrics. And we brought our projector and our kettle and all this. And we derive and he was like, yeah, which room? yeah, very last minute, quite stressful, but also lovely because it had that kind of edgy. The place had...

Kathleen (14:00.289)
Yeah.

Kathleen (14:06.198)
Yeah.

Kathleen (14:14.55)
kind of create a vibe, yeah.

Nicola Streeten (14:17.718)
Yeah, and it because we thought, library, university space, but those places are institutions. And what we wanted to do was grassroots. didn't want to be, we didn't want to start like that. We wanted to give a different feel. And this place had this lovely provenance that originally had been Tracy Emin's studio space, which was nice because Tracy. Anyway.

Kathleen (14:32.992)
Mm-hmm.

Kathleen (14:36.949)
in.

Kathleen (14:43.158)
Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (14:44.282)
So that's, don't think I answered the question at all except, well, I just managed to talk about 45 minutes on and on, but to finish what's, and of course Paul Gravet was immensely friendly. He's brilliant and a complete knowledge of all things comic. And he was immediately very supportive of what we were doing. And we got a few people, friends came the first night and by,

Cal MacDonald (14:45.935)
You

Kathleen (14:50.666)
No.

Cal MacDonald (14:53.263)
I don't know what say.

Kathleen (14:56.534)
Hmm.

Nicola Streeten (15:11.666)
three months later we had Posey Simmons as our guest and 75 people turning up. we grew and grew and we, and like I said before I'd been working with John as in developing audience in the middle of nowhere in Lincolnshire for quite conceptual fine art. And it was always a struggle to get people to come to get ordinary the public, but with comics it's like.

Kathleen (15:14.974)
That's amazing. Yeah.

Kathleen (15:27.765)
Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (15:36.487)
you couldn't keep people away. It's like, oh yeah, I want to hear, I want more. And so that's what was such a delight for me. And, cause I was always nervous. Oh Sarah, what if no one comes? And she's like, well, me and you are here. We can have a lovely chat. And so we, and what we, we also started it as, like a book club model. So we thought we'd have people to talk about their recommendations.

Kathleen (15:38.187)
Yeah.

Kathleen (15:47.093)
Yeah.

Kathleen (16:01.492)
Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (16:02.404)
we had a brilliant first guest in Sarah McIntyre whose work Kathleen you probably, yeah, yeah, yeah. And she was fantastic because she's so, so yeah, so charismatic and yeah. And she came with a whole crowd of Sarah McIntyre mates and it was just really bubbly. And then we, and she had her like recommended and she chose Sean Tan arrival to talk about, which was just great. And then after that we,

Kathleen (16:06.471)
yes, yes, fantastic. Yeah, yeah. Just full of energy, larger than life and just wonderful energy.

Kathleen (16:22.218)
Yeah, bye bye.

Kathleen (16:29.206)
Fantastic. Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (16:31.792)
thought, it's actually will be really interesting to hear about people's own practice. So, you know, have someone talking about what they're doing. So that's when we started inviting guests always who are slightly better than us. So, but yeah, but also then we could learn and then it became also a networking so that quite soon publishers would come or reviewers and that kind of. Yeah, it really was very nice.

Kathleen (16:42.704)
lovely. Yeah, strive, strive.

Yeah.

Kathleen (16:58.19)
extraordinary and how long has this been going on?

Nicola Streeten (17:00.902)
So that was our first one, was July 2009. then we moved premises after a while. We moved to the flagship foils in about 2014, 15, and then moved to Gosh Comics for a while. But the main obstacle was always finding venues in London. And the reason we had London was because I knew from living and working outside London that there's no critical mass.

Kathleen (17:14.112)
Yeah.

Kathleen (17:20.714)
Yes, yeah.

Kathleen (17:26.516)
Mmm.

Nicola Streeten (17:29.668)
like in Lincolnshire, no one would have got there, partly because of traveling. And you'll know that in the has to and there's something about the city of London train, you know, all roads go to there. So I, I thought that would, we had to be start there. But then we had offshoots springing up. So we had Lou Crosby set up a Leeds branch, which was fantastic. So she set up a Leeds branch and

Kathleen (17:32.454)
Yes, it had to be central. Yeah.

Kathleen (17:45.726)
made sense.

Nicola Streeten (17:57.359)
And I'd try and get there when I could. one day, always when we started, people went around the room and said their names and what their connection was. And we threw a question to the audience that they responded to, like, how do you keep going in the winter or something like that? Something kind of icebreaker-y. And we went around at Leeds and one of them went, Jackie Fleming. And I'm like, you're not the Jackie Fleming. Jackie Fleming was a kind of, and she went.

Kathleen (18:05.324)
Bye!

Kathleen (18:13.737)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kathleen (18:23.348)
Hahaha

Nicola Streeten (18:27.108)
Yeah. And then the next person was Annie Lawson. was like, not Annie Lawson. So it was Leeds was this kind of hot, hot bed of feminists, cartoonists and from, you know, who became my research case studies for my PhD later. But that was so that was lovely. And then Paula Knight set up a Bristol, a Bristol one. And at one time we had them in Chicago and San Francisco and

Kathleen (18:27.893)
Yeah, see?

Kathleen (18:33.822)
Yeah, hotspot for that. How wonderful. Yeah.

Kathleen (18:43.062)
Yeah.

Kathleen (18:48.552)
Hmm.

Nicola Streeten (18:55.512)
and Dublin, we had shoes. Yeah. But it was quite, but it was quite, well, I don't know, was it tricky? It was, we were all just doing it and we were doing it. We didn't have any funding. wasn't our, we had our day jobs and we, you know, we had lives and I think it's quite difficult to, I don't know. I don't know, perhaps we could have.

Kathleen (18:55.922)
It spreads throughout the world.

Cal MacDonald (18:58.853)
Yeah.

Kathleen (19:07.092)
Hmm. Hmm.

Kathleen (19:14.909)
Yes.

Nicola Streeten (19:23.428)
There's always this pressure, I don't know if you relate to this, to make something, you start something and it catches on. And then there's this pressure to make it bigger and to make it better and every time to be different. When actually, I kept saying every year we'd meet up and still do it. And then it's like, well, no, how can we get smaller and less well known? I don't know, there's something.

Kathleen (19:25.834)
Hmm.

Kathleen (19:32.531)
Yes.

Kathleen (19:38.516)
Yeah.

Kathleen (19:44.01)
Yes, yes, yes. You kind of were victims of your own success almost because you kind of wanted, yeah, not, yeah.

Nicola Streeten (19:49.767)
Not victims, but kind of, I think it's capitalism, that whatever you do is that we live in a world that expects, yeah. And so we did have Arts Council funding in 2018 to 20 to do festivals. So we did a a day's festival, but it wasn't a thought bubble. had...

Kathleen (19:57.236)
That's it, yes. It's gonna grow, yeah.

Kathleen (20:05.808)
Yeah.

Kathleen (20:17.097)
Mm.

Nicola Streeten (20:17.158)
a prize connected to it. So we did a lot of

Kathleen (20:19.743)
Yeah, nothing's like that, But you probably just miss the getting together with a cup of tea and some cakes and just having a chat. Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (20:24.475)
Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (20:28.751)
Well

Yes, well you were talking about the 2020, so we were scheduled to launch our third two-day festival at the Free Word Centre in London the week after and I remember, I was in London, I remember phoning Lou saying, Lou what the hell should we do? Because already the sort of stories of lockdown were coming and she's saying yeah we'll just have to, we've got to cancel, we just have to cancel. So

Kathleen (20:42.633)
Hmm.

Nicola Streeten (21:00.05)
We had one of our team members was Charlotte Bailey who set up the Birmingham branch. And so all of us were involved with the festival planning and it was, you know, having our various roles and, and she was brilliant because she said, well, we go online. And this was like, we did an online festival on Facebook that she managed and it was just like, like that. then, but it, yeah, it was really great. And then, and then

Kathleen (21:06.089)
Yeah.

Kathleen (21:18.771)
Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Wow.

That's brave.

Nicola Streeten (21:28.706)
Immediately, we've always our core thing has been the online month, the monthly meetup, like you say, Kathleen, the excuse to meet and have a cup of tea and listen to inspiring people. but and that immediate we thought immediately Zoom was invented and we thought, well, we'll just do it on that. know how. So we were very quick adapt to adopters of the online thing, which is completely normalized, isn't it? Here we are. We don't we don't bat an eyelid.

Kathleen (21:32.167)
Yeah, yeah.

Just connect, yeah.

Kathleen (21:49.969)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. You don't think twice about it. It was still strange even then when it just hadn't become a fundamental part of how we connect.

Nicola Streeten (21:58.052)
Day.

Nicola Streeten (22:08.164)
Yeah, but and so since then we've been running our monthly events online, which is great for accessibility for people outside, you know, the cities to get to all globally. But you know, Zoom isn't isn't for everyone. There's there's some we've had some of our community that they can't their neurological condition can't can't something happens with zoom or

Kathleen (22:17.385)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kathleen (22:25.119)
No.

Kathleen (22:31.593)
Yeah.

They find it challenging to, yeah, it needs to be an in-person, yeah.

Nicola Streeten (22:36.612)
something I've, yeah, so there's, so it's not quite perfect and it doesn't, it's not the same, but.

Kathleen (22:43.732)
Hmm.

It's not, but it helps when you can't always meet face to face. So it's having that balance, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. I'm looking, I have to ask you have this most wonderful event coming up and I may not make it to London. We Are Hungry, Vegan Meals for 800 Hungry Artists. I just love the name. I just think that sounds fabulous. I just want to be there.

Nicola Streeten (22:51.046)
Yes.

Kathleen (23:15.349)
So is that just... it's a book launch? yeah. was that last year? I see I got my years mixed up. It's a brilliant, brilliant title.

Nicola Streeten (23:15.715)
Aww.

Nicola Streeten (23:20.55)
You're hungry. Oh, no, that was well, that's over. was last year. But yeah, it was. No, that's all right. It's still around somewhere. Perhaps I haven't got. Oh, here it is. It's the book I did. Here's the book cover. It's. It's well, it's it's nice because when I when I started Billy and me and Billy me and you, which was my graphic memoir.

Kathleen (23:37.895)
how fantastic! That is just fabulous!

Kathleen (23:46.229)
Mmm. Mmm.

Nicola Streeten (23:50.567)
Like I said, I'd signed up to an MA course, quite very quickly the questions that I got from my fellow from the fellow students were things like Why do you want to do a comic? Why don't you do a proper book? Kathleen back to that. Wait, why do you need the pictures? And then they were saying Well, isn't it a bit depressing to do something about death and bereavement and things like that? And so

Kathleen (24:00.682)
Mm-hmm.

Kathleen (24:10.793)
Yeah.

Kathleen (24:15.517)
Hmm.

Nicola Streeten (24:19.918)
And then I thought, these questions are just so interesting. I'm sod it. I'm switching. So I switched to an academic master of research because I wanted to understand, yeah, why am I doing comics? And so that's when I had the chance to really read about how the comic swarm works, how autobiography works, how memoir works, and why.

Kathleen (24:25.461)
Hmm.

Cal MacDonald (24:26.0)
Yeah.

Kathleen (24:30.869)
Okay, yeah. Why? Yeah.

Kathleen (24:43.519)
Mm-mm.

Nicola Streeten (24:44.518)
why use the comic to talk about death. meanwhile, so I wasn't doing, Sally wasn't doing the graphic novel, but meanwhile, have I got any? Oh yeah, meanwhile, our second child was Sally and by that time she was 12 and she was, I was talking to her about Jackie and about comics and she was an avid Beano fan. And then I said, oh, why don't we produce a zine together? So we did,

Kathleen (24:47.273)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kathleen (24:58.515)
Yeah.

Kathleen (25:03.859)
Yeah, man.

Kathleen (25:11.13)
great, look at that Liquorice! that's terrific!

Nicola Streeten (25:12.866)
Yeah, we did Licorice Magazine was this series and we did the my favourite one we did this is it always had little gifts and the first one which I haven't got one now on the the first gift we did was a plastic bag from Tesco's. I mean, you cannot get hold of those bags anymore. Little did we realise that they would be so valuable. And of course, and so then we did a dog one and we had a little plastic like

Kathleen (25:17.214)
Fantastic!

Kathleen (25:23.71)
Yeah.

Kathleen (25:33.328)
No!

Cal MacDonald (25:33.55)
Hahaha

Kathleen (25:36.264)
Yeah

Kathleen (25:41.399)
that is lovely. Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (25:42.321)
pocket dog. we did, we always had in the middle, we had these cut out dolls that you could dress. So we had, we had this tracing paper and we invited people to do costumes, but this issue was a dog special. So people would send in their things, but, then we had an origami one as well. So we just had really good fun and Sally did things like the children's page, like

Kathleen (25:49.373)
Yeah. Cut it!

Yeah.

Kathleen (25:57.428)
No.

Kathleen (26:02.623)
That's... yeah. wow. Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (26:10.522)
poo jokes, that kind of thing. she had a page with her dad, who's, John is also an artist. So he did how to make stuff and he had a men's page. And then, yeah, it wasn't really a zine, it was printed. And we had a subscription to our 40 friends and relatives that we kind of...

Kathleen (26:10.982)
What a fantastic thing to do together, you know, not the poo jokes specifically, but...

yeah.

Kathleen (26:25.78)
I mean those are substantial books. Look at them. They're Yeah.

Kathleen (26:34.77)
yeah. wow. yeah.

Nicola Streeten (26:38.724)
then abandoned because so we did about seven and then but but I made the decision at the very final moment because we got them properly printed and I I put chapters I put chapters from the original We Are Billy story in the back of each one and then I sent them out to people like Paul Gravett and Roger Sabin who's who I got to know who's a historian and Corrin Perman who I'd met

Kathleen (26:43.75)
amazing.

Kathleen (26:55.421)
Yeah.

Kathleen (27:07.047)
Hmm.

Nicola Streeten (27:07.578)
who was the then editor at Myriad Editions. So she signed up to become one of my subscribers. And then six months later, she said, Nicola, we'd like to talk to you about publishing Billy Myre News. So that's how that happened. So, which was amazing because I'd squashed all the chapters into this format of A5. And so what Corinne did was,

Kathleen (27:15.88)
Yeah.

Kathleen (27:22.804)
yeah.

Kathleen (27:27.891)
Interesting. Yes.

Kathleen (27:32.326)
into the... yeah, yeah.

Nicola Streeten (27:36.313)
worked with me for about six months, yeah, letting it breathe. So anyway, moving on, decades later, Sally, our daughter is now a trained artist. And during lockdown, she lived with us back in Lincolnshire at home. we were then like planning this project together. So we've got this history of collaborating. And now she's a vegan. So we were thinking of that. And then we and then

Kathleen (27:36.936)
could spread it out.

You

Kathleen (27:46.558)
course.

Kathleen (27:57.607)
Amazing.

Nicola Streeten (28:02.67)
lockdown ended, she floated back to London and we got on with our lives and moved to Norfolk. But since we've been in Norfolk, we've been running these artists residencies here at the Grange where we're based. And so we've been cooking for eight people every night. And so we've got this batch of recipes. And so last summer, last Christmas, I was saying to Sally, I think I'm going to do a Grange cookbook. And she was saying,

Kathleen (28:03.208)
Hmm. Hmm.

Kathleen (28:14.759)
Yeah.

Kathleen (28:22.524)
Yeah, yeah.

Nicola Streeten (28:31.79)
It sounds like We Are Hungry, which was our original. And I was going, my God, we could do it together. So we just pulled it all together. And both of us had all this artwork that we'd had and kind of for other things. And so we just put it together and published it, but self-published. I haven't even put it in any bookshops, but it sold through the first small run and it's...

Kathleen (28:34.574)
Yeah.

Cal MacDonald (28:36.368)
You

Kathleen (28:41.266)
Yeah, it's brilliant. Yeah.

Kathleen (28:54.342)
Yeah, well, if you reprint, I want a copy, so please, yeah, absolutely, tell me. But yeah, fantastic. But what a fantastic thing to do together. I'm just thinking, you know, families creating comics together. Wow, yeah.

Nicola Streeten (28:57.286)
that's so kind. Yes, we've got 10 copies left and then we'll reprint probably for this Christmas. So yes, I'll send you one. I know it's so nice. Yeah. I mean, very loosely comic as well. I mean, it's got a couple of pages doing stuff.

Kathleen (29:15.38)
Yeah, but it's just creating things together just about their lives and what they do. just think that sounds an amazing thing. We've got to do something with that. But the autobiographical, when people are saying, why did you use comic form to tell such a sad story? And now thinking of Michael Rosen's The Sad Book. Now it just seems...

Nicola Streeten (29:23.62)
Yeah. Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (29:41.188)
Yes. Yes.

Kathleen (29:45.842)
Why not use the medium? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Nicola Streeten (29:47.205)
Yes, and I remember when I was working on it. So I was under contract working on it and I went to a talk in London with Michael Rosen and Willie Linehout. Do you know that Dutch cartoonist who'd done a book about his son's suicide? Do you know it, Cal? Do you know something? I think it's called Elephant in the Room. Quickly Google it and this is where I...

Kathleen (29:58.408)
Hmm.

Kathleen (30:04.948)
Yeah, I think...

Cal MacDonald (30:07.632)
No, not at all.

Kathleen (30:11.923)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (30:14.626)
Anyway, that was, and I was, I went along really nervous because I thought, but I've got the copyright on Death of Child. Well, no, it's like, what if I'm doing, but what it made me realise also is, well, how interesting that this is men telling a story about the death of their child and where are the women in this? Like they're referring to their wives, but it's like, hang on, it was such a

Kathleen (30:19.4)
Yeah.

Yes, yes, because it feels like... Personal,

Kathleen (30:35.016)
Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yes! Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (30:44.602)
big thing for my identity as being a mother and like with this, with this kind of script that I'd been given to me by society and this is the way my, and then that's suddenly taken away. And I was thinking, yes, that happens for men, but it's, I think it's a very different experience. And it's odd that it's like, I don't know, it just made me think, wow, this is interesting. Something not.

Kathleen (30:47.55)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kathleen (30:55.144)
Yeah. Yes.

Yeah.

Kathleen (31:11.956)
Yeah. Yes, yes. Just sort of, as you say, Not unusual, but it is something notable to think about. Yeah. And, yeah.

Nicola Streeten (31:13.478)
Something strange. Anyway.

Nicola Streeten (31:18.31)
and

Yeah, and then that's back to that. Well, of course, women don't have time to do these stories because there's usually other children and it's that whole division of, you know, it's still quite a masculine world of even writing comics, whatever, whatever form.

Kathleen (31:31.764)
Mm.

Cal MacDonald (31:38.468)
Yeah.

Kathleen (31:38.548)
It is still, yeah, yeah. And there are more and more women, but they are lost, you know, the individuals. And I think, yeah, it's something we'd like to do is sort of highlight more, which is Kel, you're doing a terrific job. You know, there are more and more women out there, but it's, yeah, yeah.

Cal MacDonald (31:59.921)
That type of artist.

Kathleen (32:06.248)
And I think that's probably why you start ladies comics. It's not just sort of talking about the comics, but inspiring more women to tell their stories through comics.

Nicola Streeten (32:15.481)
Yes.

Cal MacDonald (32:17.274)
Mm-hmm.

Nicola Streeten (32:18.692)
And we were never women only, but we were women led and women creator led still is. And so what that did is, so when we invited guests, we invited men as well and men were as welcome or non-binary as well, of course, but always there was a quota in our minds. So we were very conscious and I think it's...

Kathleen (32:21.971)
Mm.

Kathleen (32:33.419)
Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm.

Nicola Streeten (32:45.198)
you know, that we've met lots of people, you know, we've met a number of women who are very anti-quota, very anti-women only, but actually, actually, yes, we shouldn't need that, but the world's not perfect yet, the world's not right, so let's impose it, and it does work. And so what was just brilliant in the very early days, we have a few friends who are men, cartoonists and comics artists, who came along and they were saying, is it okay if we come?

Kathleen (32:48.083)
Mmm.

Kathleen (32:51.694)
Yeah, yeah.

Kathleen (32:56.571)
You shouldn't, yeah. Yeah.

Cal MacDonald (32:57.359)
Yeah.

Kathleen (33:12.657)
Yes, yes. And if you're very good, yes, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And as you say, it shouldn't, you shouldn't need to do that. But it is still the situation is still that it tends to just fall to being largely men unless you focus specifically. I'm thinking of coding clubs as well. You get a lot of girls, but you'd have to have a

Cal MacDonald (33:13.424)
Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (33:13.803)
are we allowed that kind of thing because they assumed that it was women only and and kind of but it was never it wasn't

Nicola Streeten (33:25.999)
Yeah.

Cal MacDonald (33:35.023)
Yeah.

Kathleen (33:41.319)
girls only coding club to get more and hopefully it won't be necessary in a couple of years time but it still is.

Cal MacDonald (33:42.767)
Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (33:50.767)
Mmm.

Cal MacDonald (33:52.273)
I can come in there. Kimberly has got a question. Hello Kimberly. It's lovely to hear from you. She's a friend of the convention. Yes, it's kind of, you might have kind of covered this, but she's asking, you know, with Lady's Two Comics, you created this space for women's voices and she's just asking, what kind of conversations do you have there that you don't get in the more traditional spaces for comics, like the more male-led ones? Is there some different conversations that go on?

Kathleen (33:54.067)
Mmm! it's so good.

Yes, Kimberly!

Nicola Streeten (34:20.55)
Yeah, yeah, very and and I'm thinking back to the early days because I think there's some like you Kathleen talked about something very particular about in person, but it still happens online in the early days. We I can't remember who the guest was, but they were or who the men were in the audience, but they started there's a quest a Q &A at the end and the and the men were asking so.

Cal MacDonald (34:22.159)
Yeah

Kathleen (34:25.619)
Mm.

Nicola Streeten (34:46.69)
Is it really a comic because it's only got hasn't got panels and the gutters and Sarah very swiftly said, well, that's an interesting question. So we'll move on to the because we just were not interested in the process of comic of what is a comic who cares, but what the question. So to answer to Kimberly. Yes. The conversations that came out were about the personal experience that were being voiced and talked about with the comic. So

Kathleen (34:50.823)
Hahaha.

Cal MacDonald (34:51.6)
you

Kathleen (35:02.353)
Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (35:15.96)
Rachel Ball, who's one of the, who was one of our core members and stepped down maybe two years ago. Rachel Ball came when we were at the Rag Factory and she'd been trained in art and she was now, she's the same age as me, so she was in her 40s and she'd had a breast cancer that had, as a result of that and the treatment she'd had, I think she'd worked with a coach or something that

Kathleen (35:32.403)
Hmm.

Kathleen (35:43.218)
Hmm.

Nicola Streeten (35:44.473)
and she realized and she decided she wanted to make art again as she was working as an art teacher, but her own work. And she came and I remember she was our guest and she showed her. We always had slideshows as people talked and she showed this painting that she'd done. So it wasn't a comic yet, but she talked about her experience, her experience of breast cancer. And then she showed this painting and the whole crowd, which was we were getting maybe 40 people, something like that, was just went, wow, like that. And so

Kathleen (36:00.576)
Hmm. Hmm.

Kathleen (36:10.644)
Amazing. Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (36:13.818)
But people would, and so that was the first time that she spoke about her work that went on to become the inflatable woman, very different to what she showed, but was kind of, it was a place to test what you were doing and always very constructive, positive feedback. and people, we had a lot of people who would stand up and talk about their experience and there would be tears and there would be, you know, quite,

Kathleen (36:21.669)
yeah.

Kathleen (36:29.777)
her ideas, yeah.

Kathleen (36:34.941)
Hmm.

Nicola Streeten (36:42.544)
quite honest and raw conversations that came out. And that was, it was a real privilege to be part of that. And we weren't filming it. That was the other thing when it was, when it was live, we never, we weren't recording it. There was no docu-, well, we did. And I was looking through just yesterday, we had people, we, we asked people to be blog essays or to do report in comics form of the event. And

Kathleen (36:45.907)
Mm.

Kathleen (36:52.519)
Hmm.

Kathleen (36:56.403)
No.

Kathleen (37:06.035)
So honored.

Nicola Streeten (37:09.998)
and then we put them online and then they kind of got lost. So that's our problem of the archive business. But there was that privacy and that trust in the room. so when we do it online, we record it on Zoom and then we just put on the YouTube just the presentation. And so there's still that space for Q &A for people to ask. And I think there is some, but it...

Kathleen (37:21.213)
Yeah.

Kathleen (37:29.447)
That's it, not the rest.

Nicola Streeten (37:36.325)
I mean, you there's always, you know, very well, there's always questions about process and in spite of myself, I always want to know which pencil people use or whatever. But always our primary interest. Well, that did, and it does come up more and more online, but I think that was, you know, to respond to Kimberley, was really, it was just brilliant those days of people sharing.

Kathleen (37:45.715)
Yes, yes. But that comes after the question. Yeah, Yeah, yeah.

Kathleen (38:00.765)
Yeah. Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (38:03.544)
And also there was always a balance. So some people would, their presentations, they choose to talk more about their inspirations or their processes. And some people would talk about their personal experience that brought them to this stage and why they were using comics.

Kathleen (38:10.408)
Hmm.

Kathleen (38:20.669)
But it implicitly gave that permission to share those very personal stories that wouldn't have happened necessarily in another structured group. Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (38:28.644)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I think so.

Cal MacDonald (38:37.2)
And we've got another question from one of our content, Graham. And he's asking, what's the most surprising thing you discovered when you were working on the Inking Woman?

Nicola Streeten (38:47.846)
Really good question, Graham. Thank you for that. The most surprising thing... I'm not sure. think... I mean, I finished my PhD, so a lot of what I was contributing was drawn from that.

Kathleen (39:12.349)
Hmm.

Nicola Streeten (39:12.752)
But I think Cath Tate, who I co-edited, was brilliant on the more historical, pulling in the historical facts. I sort of, I think it was still, that was kind of at the end of my PhD, at the end of my research, was still this, it's not really surprising, but how few people of color are contributing to comics. And that's still,

you know, with the and again, not it's not surprising. So it's not answering the question, but it's it kind of is it's like, wow, here we and so it and what it what it's a reminder is, you know, it's not just women. It's people who have different, you know, you talk about women, but women aren't just white middle class women, you know, that thing. And it's like

Kathleen (39:49.043)
Yeah. Still, yeah.

Kathleen (40:04.354)
Mm, mm. Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (40:06.212)
well, where are the other voices? Where's the voices and heterosexuality? Where are the voices of gay and lesbian comics artists and trans artists, which are coming out now and being given platforms and women? So I think not a surprise, but a surprise in terms of here we are in the 21st century, what's going on. Again, like it's a surprise that we need that.

Kathleen (40:10.162)
Yeah.

Kathleen (40:18.45)
Mm. Mm.

Kathleen (40:27.826)
Yeah.

Kathleen (40:32.42)
Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (40:35.63)
And also it was, I suppose, slightly a surprise that it was the first illustrated history of comics and cartoons in Britain of its kind, of this first sort of for a general reader. And the same, there wasn't a taxonomy of women's cartoons and comics within academia and certainly not feminist cartoons and comics, which is what my PhD was. So it's still that wow.

Kathleen (40:44.227)
yes.

Kathleen (40:49.671)
Yeah.

Kathleen (40:55.867)
Hmm.

Kathleen (41:01.884)
Which is quite extraordinary. Yeah. Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (41:04.742)
Really? It hasn't been done? Yeah, it's so late in... in the...

Kathleen (41:12.476)
Yes, the surprise is that, yeah, you were actually doing something new, you know, and you think, good, no, so many people must have explored this already.

Nicola Streeten (41:13.656)
I'm

Nicola Streeten (41:18.501)
Yeah, yeah.

Nicola Streeten (41:23.278)
Yes, and they have in America, of course, Trina Robbins had done the entire history of brilliantly. But when I and this was it's not a surprise to be in Kingwoman, but it was a surprise and a revelation when I started my PhD, really, or that that stage of my academic career was was a realisation that I had taken American history of comics as mine.

Kathleen (41:25.648)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kathleen (41:50.354)
Yes.

Nicola Streeten (41:52.007)
So women's comics, all the women's comics, and a secondary realization, but America is nothing like the UK. It is like it, that there's a common language, but if you think of the impact of the welfare system in the UK, the health system, the education system, it's dramatically different. The miners strike, all that 70s, 80s, 90s.

Kathleen (41:56.209)
Yeah.

Kathleen (42:08.452)
Yes.

Kathleen (42:13.915)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (42:17.83)
politics in the UK is very different to what's happened in America. So that there was a similarity that Trina Robbins entrance to cartoons and comics was not through comics, it was through feminist papers. And Alison Bechdel's entrance into cartooning was through feminist press. And it's the same, that's where I found my research, where I found the women's cartoons was not in the comics section of the British Library, but in the feminist section through spare ribs. So that's...

Kathleen (42:31.45)
Yeah, I guess. Yeah.

Kathleen (42:39.611)
Yeah.

Kathleen (42:44.722)
Yes, of course, yeah.

Nicola Streeten (42:47.534)
You know, it's, it's, it is a surprise that what we're told, and it's a surprise like we're told what art is, and we don't even question that it's us, the whole history we're fed is all men. And then you, and as soon as it's pointed out, you think, yeah, and you can't look back.

Kathleen (42:56.306)
Yeah.

Kathleen (42:59.696)
Yeah. Yeah.

Really? Yeah. So your book, The Inky Woman, you focused on 1970 to 2010. But in your research, did you discover any kind of early or sort of woman cartoonists? You know, I'm not quite intrigued about how early on women managed to get their work represented.

Nicola Streeten (43:21.114)
Yeah.

Well...

Nicola Streeten (43:28.964)
Yeah. Well, Mary Duval was the first cartoon. So in The Inking Woman, we have those chapters of the first caricaturist was a woman. no, this is where my mind goes blank. that someone will help me, I'm sure. And then and so when we talk when we talk about the first comic, so sure.

Kathleen (43:38.036)
X-Grid

Kathleen (43:43.698)
no.

Cal MacDonald (43:45.796)
you

Nicola Streeten (43:58.119)
Where's my book gone? Yeah, you. Well, here we are. That's okay. These were, this was, I mean, so this was the kind of deeper history that there's chapters in the books about. But my academic research, my PhD research was from 1970 to 2010, because that's what I knew from the 70s. that, but so there was quite a bit.

Kathleen (43:58.564)
Now I've put you on the spot, yeah. I'm sorry. excellent.

Cal MacDonald (44:03.12)
you

Kathleen (44:15.013)
Yeah.

Mmm.

Yes, yeah, yeah. Oh, I mean, to go beyond that would have taken your life, yeah.

Nicola Streeten (44:29.7)
Yeah, yeah, Mary Duvall was Victorian cartoonist, so she was the cartoonist on, what's his name, Half. I'm reading this. Well, gosh, how can I have forgotten? here it is. yeah, here he is. And Mary Darley, Mary Darley, that's right, the first caricaturist. So she had a shop in The Strand where she was producing prints of caricatures.

Kathleen (44:57.326)
Yeah, I am so ignorant I'd never heard of her and of course I'm googling it as you speak and it's just it's extraordinary.

Nicola Streeten (45:04.358)
Yeah, it's extraordinary. then the first, the first comics was Ali Sloper. That's right. Ali Sloper is known as the first comic character in the UK because it was the because it was a recurring character. So that was why it was. And and the artist was Mary Duval and

Kathleen (45:14.769)
Yeah.

Kathleen (45:21.169)
Wow.

Yeah.

Kathleen (45:30.503)
Mm-hmm.

Nicola Streeten (45:31.554)
So there's a chapter about her in the Inking Woman as well and the Victorian drawing. And there's a whole archive of her work now in the British Library. So it isn't just the feminist works, it's also further back. And then cartoonists in suffrage, women's suffrage. So there was a lot of...

Kathleen (45:38.428)
That's... hmm.

Kathleen (45:44.562)
Yeah.

Cal MacDonald (45:50.084)
yeah.

Kathleen (45:50.703)
Yes. Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (45:53.713)
Well, I don't know if you remember the big exhibition that Paul Gravet was involved with at the British Library, I think 2016, but that he had there in it, there's that big banner, the famous banner of, which is divided into panels made by suffragettes. I don't think there isn't, it's not in here, but it's definitely a comic, so.

Kathleen (45:54.63)
Yeah.

Kathleen (46:12.23)
Mmm.

Kathleen (46:17.285)
Yes, yeah.

Nicola Streeten (46:17.444)
We claim it as a, but what they were doing was the same strategy as feminists in Spare Rib was promoting the cause through humour and through the comics form. So it was a very big part of their activism. thank goodness I've got all these.

Kathleen (46:24.945)
Mm.

Kathleen (46:29.583)
Yeah.

Kathleen (46:34.235)
But I'm just thinking people would not think of that. Yes, it's a comic. didn't we connect that before, but you don't connect it in your head? You just see these images and just sort of put them on one side, don't you?

Nicola Streeten (46:48.462)
And also it's back to what you were saying earlier, Kathleen, it's that it's how you define a comic. So there are various definitions, but for me, it was always, I did, you know, not, not strictly, but image and text together, because that's a simple definition. Yeah. And not necessarily with text, but there's that.

Kathleen (47:04.847)
Yeah, in whichever, whichever form you want, you know, then yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah.

Cal MacDonald (47:14.336)
And one comment come in from someone we know very well, Kathleen Era.

She's saying, no it's just a general comment. She was shortlisted for a Ladies 2 Comics award in 2019 for what became for what became between for what we know as Between Storms which is set in the Hebrides. So there you go. She was shortlisted that year. So I don't know, do you remember that one Nicoletto? Era Richers as I ring a bell. Yeah yeah. yeah it's all right.

Nicola Streeten (47:22.544)
Bye.

Nicola Streeten (47:28.198)
how fantastic. Congratulations.

Kathleen (47:29.359)
Fantastic! That's fantastic.

wow! fantastic! Yeah?

Nicola Streeten (47:38.15)
Fantastic. Kind of probably, but you're putting my memories shot to bits, I'm afraid for anything. But that's great. Thank you for letting us know that. Yeah.

Kathleen (47:42.609)
Yeah. Yeah.

But that's lovely. yeah. So you see how the inspiration, how it's inspired and hopefully we'll see that between storms in Gaelic soon as well. So that's going to be amazing. That's going to be incredible. yeah. That's all. Aeros work. Fantastic.

Cal MacDonald (48:02.415)
Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (48:02.814)
great, great. That's amazing that you, yeah.

Cal MacDonald (48:13.456)
just checking. Kimberly had a whole heap of questions. I'm just, we're probably not going to get right into most of them. Sorry Kimberly. Yeah, she's this quite good one. What advice would you give to someone trying to create their own spaces that are unapologetically woman-centered but are still inclusive?

Kathleen (48:14.222)
yeah.

Nicola Streeten (48:17.135)
Okay.

Nicola Streeten (48:32.486)
What advice? What was the question? What advice? definitely, definitely do it. Definitely, whatever space, whatever form you're doing, set up a club. Definitely. But do it with a friend. think it's that as soon as, and this is another thing that I learned from reading up on feminist strategy and activism is, you know, another.

Cal MacDonald (48:34.191)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Kathleen (48:45.915)
Mm. Mm.

Kathleen (48:55.312)
Mm.

Nicola Streeten (48:58.704)
thing we're told is you have to do everything yourself, this individual, this neoliberal individual stuff. But it's wrong. There's more power if you do, and it's more fun if you do stuff with people who are interested in the same thing. So yeah, think it's just nice. And it's even an online space is valid. And I think you just need it for a couple of friends. I'm not sure if it...

Cal MacDonald (49:03.183)
Yeah.

Kathleen (49:04.079)
Yeah.

Kathleen (49:07.931)
Hmm. Hmm.

Kathleen (49:14.853)
Hmm.

Kathleen (49:23.825)
Hmm.

Kathleen (49:28.507)
Mwah.

Nicola Streeten (49:28.55)
If Kimberly is a create, did you say Kimberly, you're a creator? Is Kimberly a maker of something?

Cal MacDonald (49:32.752)
No, she's not a creator. She's just very, she's just interested and obviously she's a feminist herself. So when we told her you were on, she had these questions for you.

Nicola Streeten (49:39.961)
Yeah.

Excellent, excellent. think creating spaces is, you know, it's easier than ever now. But it's nice to have some sort of focus. And I think, you know, if you're interested in feminism, it's quite, you know, you might choose a really famous feminist text or recent feminist book for a book club that could be online. And then you're going to gather people to

Kathleen (49:42.948)
Wuh.

Nicola Streeten (50:13.126)
kind of discuss it. I think I've been to.

Kathleen (50:14.258)
So Kim, start it online and we will join.

Nicola Streeten (50:20.024)
Yes, yes, yeah.

Cal MacDonald (50:20.644)
Yeah. Build it and we will come.

Kathleen (50:21.923)
Yeah. I'm thinking of, there are so many stories that could be told and there's that sort of therapeutic process as part of creating. And I know you said when you spoke, when you worked on your biographical book, you'd sort of worked through the grief, but there must have been some kind of...

Nicola Streeten (50:25.188)
Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (50:45.274)
Hmm

Kathleen (50:51.001)
I don't know, sort of emotional and mental coming to terms with it again through the writing or is that sort of getting really too personal, sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nicola Streeten (50:56.933)
Well...

No, no, it's not personal at all. And it was the biggest question I was asked when it was published was, was it a cathartic experience? And I, and that was because I'd asked been asked that so many times during the making, and I was looking up what cathartic means. And, and it's also the way we understand cathartic is within a framework of Freud, Freudian, Freudian framework so that we understand

Kathleen (51:05.403)
Mmm. Mmm.

Kathleen (51:14.353)
Mm.

Yeah.

Kathleen (51:26.544)
Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (51:28.56)
Catharsis is what happens after a trauma when you're with the therapist and the therapist's job is to take up all your trauma in that privacy of the therapy space and then you become better and you're popped out to carry on in the work. what's his name? Aristotle definition of catharsis or theorizing around catharsis is that

Kathleen (51:35.252)
Okay.

Kathleen (51:39.121)
Hmm

Kathleen (51:44.251)
Yeah.

Kathleen (51:53.137)
Mmm.

Nicola Streeten (51:55.483)
they used to have the plays, the tragedies in Greece. So you as an audience would go and watch a tragedy and you, the catharsis would be in the audience through seeing the play. So you would test your, in the way that when we watch a film or read a book, we cry. And so I thought, yeah, well, it was catharsis for my audience. Yeah, and I, because when people ask me, was like a,

Kathleen (52:08.113)
True. Yeah.

Kathleen (52:18.989)
It is in that way. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (52:25.35)
It was kind of like I was a victim and I was doing it as a sort of therapy, but I'd done the therapy, but I think you have a point. And I think now that people have a point that it packaged my story very neatly into something that now, another few decades on, I remember the book as the experience. it's really odd how things, and perhaps it was.

Kathleen (52:31.24)
Hmm. Yeah.

Kathleen (52:39.408)
Mm-hmm.

Kathleen (52:47.376)
Yeah, yeah, there's that relationship, yeah, yeah.

Nicola Streeten (52:51.494)
in some way, but certainly when I was working on it, I wasn't, I didn't cry at all. I wasn't emotional. I was just thinking, this is an amazing artwork or what am I doing? And, and, and preempting all the questions like, yeah, plus the intellectual idea of, of wow, that, you know, and playful, which yeah, I, yeah.

Kathleen (52:58.084)
Hmm.

Cal MacDonald (53:03.365)
Right.

Kathleen (53:03.95)
Yeah, yeah, yes, the process, the art, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Cal MacDonald (53:18.768)
It's quite true because recently I've got a few extra comics of mine. One of them is that Palestine comic by Joe Sacco. It just shows you how versatile comics are. He's doing investigative war reporting through the medium of comics. You can just do anything with them.

Kathleen (53:21.712)
Amazing.

Kathleen (53:28.312)
Yeah, yeah.

Nicola Streeten (53:34.094)
Yeah.

Kathleen (53:34.564)
No.

Nicola Streeten (53:36.452)
Yes, yes, absolutely.

Kathleen (53:37.648)
Yeah. And I think we've had a few more autobiographical graphic novels recently and I can't even remember names. I was thinking of the Joe Sakura, but there's that other one and I just cannot remember. I know I ordered it. I know I read it. I cannot. Just terrible. But yeah, they're not the exception anymore. Thank goodness. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (53:54.787)
Ugh!

Nicola Streeten (54:02.274)
No, they're certainly not. they're not. next week I'm in conversation with Kate Evans. Do you know Kate Evans work? She did threads and she did Rosa, but she's just brought out, and I was chatting to her because we're gonna do any, she's just brought out this book, a biography of Jane Austen. I tell you, and she was saying, she was saying, you know, like when you're at,

Cal MacDonald (54:13.328)
the bell.

Kathleen (54:14.01)
Nah, yeah.

Kathleen (54:18.971)
to it.

Kathleen (54:25.194)
how lovely! Ohhhh!

Cal MacDonald (54:27.706)
No, no,

Nicola Streeten (54:32.218)
these comics, there's like thought bubble and you have your comic on the table and everyone just goes, having to clue what your comic's about. She's saying, wow, this has been fun. Cause everyone knows Jane Austen and everyone goes, whoa, yes, please. I'll have seven copies. I know, I know, right. And it's so brilliant. She's, she's an activist as well. So she came into comics through activism. Her first graphic novel was about

Kathleen (54:34.926)
Yeah.

Kathleen (54:39.663)
Yeah.

Kathleen (54:47.308)
thinking yes Christmas presents for I don't know how many people

Kathleen (54:56.141)
fantastic.

Nicola Streeten (55:01.766)
the tree protest, the road protest when she lived in the trees. So she lived in trees. so, but so, but again, it's like, wow, you think there'd be no space. It's not, it's not an adaption of a Jane Austen novel, but it's the biography you'd think that there would be no need, but it's a really great and it and it's got footnotes. So I mean, it's got endnotes so you can

Kathleen (55:05.602)
yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Kathleen (55:17.655)
No. No.

Nicola Streeten (55:28.91)
It's a resource. It's an academic resource. You could cite it. Yeah.

Kathleen (55:30.478)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That just looks amazing. Yeah. wow. it's just, yeah. Yeah. It's sort of getting me thinking about all these creative ideas. I just cannot draw. It's just, it's the only thing holding me back.

Cal MacDonald (55:34.618)
Yeah, cuz...

Nicola Streeten (55:53.029)
Well, of course you can, and that's back to that. That's back to that. No one ever boasts about not being able to write, but everyone always boasts about not being able to draw. And it's a funny way round. Of course you can draw.

Kathleen (55:54.256)
Yeah.

Kathleen (56:00.224)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Cal MacDonald (56:11.278)
Do you have any final questions here Kathleen?

Kathleen (56:14.897)
I don't know. I'm just about to. This is what I tend to do. I tend to order books while I'm talking to people. And then.

Cal MacDonald (56:22.176)
Yeah, I was just going to say John's phone is pinging like, we've got some more bookshelves needed by the end of every interview she's on with a creative.

Kathleen (56:30.968)
Yeah, yeah. It's just three books ordered already, you know, and then I mount a cowl afterwards. you made me buy these books.

Cal MacDonald (56:37.848)
I don't think it's, it's not as bad as the Una McCormick show. I think the Una McCormick show was awful. Like you were every five minutes you were, I could see you ordering another book.

Nicola Streeten (56:41.939)
You see? Yeah.

Kathleen (56:44.893)
nice. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, know. Every time she knows when I'm sort of looking a bit down like that, yeah, I'm just ordering. Yeah. So, no, it's just been fascinating to talk to you and I just think, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. No, it's been an honor. Honor. Thank you.

Cal MacDonald (56:56.848)
Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (56:57.03)
You

Cal MacDonald (57:00.418)
Yeah, and I think we could have we could have gone on for hours I think at this point. All right. Okay, no problem. Are you ready for some silly quickfire questions to cap off? Okay, if you had to be trapped in one comic book world for a week, which one would it be?

Nicola Streeten (57:09.424)
Thank you very much.

Nicola Streeten (57:14.884)
Go ahead.

Nicola Streeten (57:22.094)
If I had to be what?

Cal MacDonald (57:24.048)
trapped in one comic book world for a week, which one would it be?

Nicola Streeten (57:25.487)
well, I think I'm going to say comic graphic novel. My friend, Simone Lea has just brought out the second Fluffy book. Do you know Simone Lea and Fluffy? Go on. That's another one, Kathleen. Go on, buy a copy quick. I haven't got my... my mind's gone bad. But anyway, it's a fantastic world. It's about a little rabbit who lives with a bachelor and it's...

Cal MacDonald (57:42.604)
I don't know that one. Sorry. Go on, it.

Kathleen (57:46.734)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Cal MacDonald (57:56.88)
What?

Nicola Streeten (57:57.921)
It's just brilliant and I'd like to be in that in Fluffy's world. Fluffy Pulcino. So if you go on Instagram, Fluffy's got his own Instagram.

Kathleen (58:05.046)
They look amazing. Yeah.

Cal MacDonald (58:10.48)
Okay, Kathleen, I'll ask you that one. Which comic book world would you live in for a week?

Nicola Streeten (58:10.488)
account. Yes, that's a good question for Kathleen.

Kathleen (58:11.538)
yeah.

Kathleen (58:20.416)
no no no, this is just so hard.

Kathleen (58:27.415)
Now I'm gonna have to think too deeply about that. Can I say Dr Seuss? I know it's not a graphic novel but I would love to live in a Dr Seuss kind of world for a week. Okay, picture books. You're not, you're not, yeah I'm still putting that, yeah.

Cal MacDonald (58:31.536)
Okay,

Nicola Streeten (58:31.61)
How about you, Kel?

that would be great.

Cal MacDonald (58:41.466)
Yeah, I was tough.

Nicola Streeten (58:41.958)
They look quite stressful, some of them.

Cal MacDonald (58:48.816)
For me, it's the comics that my dad gave me when I was little, the Dan Dare comics. I just always, those kind of very boys own adventures. I know what we've been talking about and me saying that's maybe a bit out of it. But it's just, I have a nostalgia because those were the things my dad shared with me and it kind of got me introduced to comics. So, what is one creative tool you could never live without? Like a pen or a...

Kathleen (58:53.903)
yeah, Dandy. Lovely. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah.

Nicola Streeten (59:05.766)
Cal MacDonald (59:18.22)
or copy or what is the one creative tool you could.

Nicola Streeten (59:18.243)
Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (59:23.182)
I really, really like these pencils. are back to tools. are called Palomino Black Wing Pencils. it's yeah, it's like slicing through butter. Yeah, really nice.

Cal MacDonald (59:27.184)
Right.

Kathleen (59:31.599)
Their reputation precedes them, yes. Are they really that good? a good pencil. Okay.

Cal MacDonald (59:36.666)
don't know.

Cal MacDonald (59:41.552)
What because?

Nicola Streeten (59:42.007)
no, actually, I've got more. now you get me. I've got more. These are, this is Emma Burleigh was one of our team who's a watercolourist. She was with ladies to LD comics and she was like, but it's these Japanese watercolours. And look at the packaging even. They are like nothing else. They're like a mix between kuretake they're called.

Cal MacDonald (59:45.168)
You

Kathleen (59:59.993)
wow, look at that!

That's just beautiful.

Nicola Streeten (01:00:11.364)
And it's like a mix between gouache and watercolour. They're slightly thicker and they are, yeah, pure heaven to you. that's... Yeah, Kathleen, you can start. Yes, you can paint. Kathleen, you can skip the drawing. They're straight into beautiful watercolour sploshy.

Kathleen (01:00:16.033)
Yeah, it is gorgeous. yeah.

Cal MacDonald (01:00:17.398)
dear. Yeah. no, we saw you looking down there Kathleen. We know what's going on.

Kathleen (01:00:22.448)
Oh no, I know, I can't, I can't even draw. I can't start. Yes, yes. I can do it. With those, yes, with those I can, I can.

Nicola Streeten (01:00:36.162)
You can do it.

Cal MacDonald (01:00:38.114)
Okay, Kathleen, what's the one creative tool you couldn't survive without? Like when you're planning all this Ocon stuff, what's the one thing you can't do without? I know you do love an oogoo.

Nicola Streeten (01:00:43.686)
you

Kathleen (01:00:44.207)
Just...

Just notebooks. I have more notebooks than I could, you know, than I could ever use in several lifetimes. But if I see a good notebook, and it's not just, it's got to be the cover, it's got to be the right size, the paper's got to be like so, and it's got to sort of have a sort of, yeah, can go mad, mad with notebooks, yeah. They inspire one, yeah. What do you do?

Nicola Streeten (01:01:04.454)
you

Cal MacDonald (01:01:10.618)
Yeah, I love those old fashioned, the leather bound notebooks which have the bit you tie around them. I just, I like, I keep them for just scribbling things down and that kind of very kind of rough paper inside them. just, there's something about that feeling when you scribble. Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (01:01:18.208)
yes!

Kathleen (01:01:18.255)
That's it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah

Yeah, yeah.

Nicola Streeten (01:01:26.554)
Mmm.

Kathleen (01:01:26.787)
That, that set, that course. Yeah, yeah. It's a texture to it, isn't it? That paper. Lovely.

Cal MacDonald (01:01:33.1)
Yeah. All right. Right, if there was a new superhero who was based on you, what would their useless power be?

Nicola Streeten (01:01:41.414)
Ooh, ooh, dear. And you super, what would their superpower be, did you say?

Cal MacDonald (01:01:50.01)
What would their most useless power be, even?

Kathleen (01:01:52.161)
useless, useless,

Nicola Streeten (01:01:52.711)
Most useless power! Oh, the most useless power. Oh, I know! Uh, most useless now, do I know? Gosh, this is a tough one, Cal. Can... Do you want to go first? Yeah.

Kathleen (01:02:06.435)
Yeah. Yeah, let's make Carl go first and then, yeah.

Cal MacDonald (01:02:11.696)
I hadn't thought of this myself. I know what my quiz writing I would say would be their useless power. Writing these geek quizzes. I don't know. I've had some very strong opinions hurled at me at the last quiz night. I'll tell you that. There were some of those tables where it's given me less than complimentary remarks at times.

Kathleen (01:02:15.055)
Ha ha ha ha ha!

Nicola Streeten (01:02:20.548)
What about?

Kathleen (01:02:20.676)
But it's not useless!

Nicola Streeten (01:02:24.794)
on.

Kathleen (01:02:29.294)
Ha ha ha!

Nicola Streeten (01:02:38.79)
What about being able to put on duvet covers? That's quite useless, isn't it? Or maybe it's quite useless. They're all so useful. Yeah, no one else can do that. In my own.

Cal MacDonald (01:02:45.552)
What

Kathleen (01:02:45.579)
You see again, I think that's quite useful. yeah. No, no one can. It takes me 20 minutes. You know, it's just... Right.

Cal MacDonald (01:02:48.878)
No, then...

Cal MacDonald (01:02:57.572)
Being able to iron a fitted sheet properly. that's actually like, that's so impossible. It would be useful.

Nicola Streeten (01:03:00.954)
I was going to say ironing, that's

Kathleen (01:03:07.599)
I'm just thinking you are on sheets.

Cal MacDonald (01:03:11.566)
Yes.

Nicola Streeten (01:03:14.32)
It's a useless, it's a useless, useless superpower.

Kathleen (01:03:15.721)
Yeah.

Cal MacDonald (01:03:20.528)
No, no ideas Kathleen.

Kathleen (01:03:24.836)
eating chocolates

Nicola Streeten (01:03:29.222)
Drinking whiskey and eating crisps. yeah.

Cal MacDonald (01:03:29.616)
No.

Kathleen (01:03:32.057)
Drinking whiskey.

Kathleen (01:03:36.599)
Yeah.

Cal MacDonald (01:03:38.32)
So next question, which non-comic celebrity past or present would you most like to see write a graphic novel?

Nicola Streeten (01:03:49.363)
Kathleen (01:03:49.699)
So what celebrity past or present would you most?

Cal MacDonald (01:03:52.462)
Yeah, who's a non-comics celebrity that you would like to see write a graphic novel. Pastor President.

Kathleen (01:03:56.079)
Yeah. Oh, good luck to see! Ooh. Ooh!

Cal MacDonald (01:04:02.14)
this is an easy one, Brian Blessed. I would love to see what kind of comic he would write.

Kathleen (01:04:06.991)
it would be insane, wouldn't it?

Cal MacDonald (01:04:09.299)
This would be...

Nicola Streeten (01:04:09.626)
what's her name? That amazing actress. I'm just having to do some Googling because I can't remember names. Kathy, who am I thinking of? Kathy Bates, someone like that. That would be good.

Cal MacDonald (01:04:17.806)
Yeah

Kathleen (01:04:17.987)
Yeah.

Kathleen (01:04:29.225)
yes, yes, Kathy Bates, she would, yeah, she would come up with a doozy, wouldn't she?

Cal MacDonald (01:04:29.579)
yes,

What's the one? Is she the one that... Yes, that's what everyone thinks of her, smashing that guy's ankle.

Nicola Streeten (01:04:36.656)
She was the one in misery.

Kathleen (01:04:38.614)
Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (01:04:40.782)
Is that her? Yeah. Yeah. I think it's someone like that. Or who's the other person I'm thinking of?

Kathleen (01:04:43.008)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kathleen (01:04:49.294)
She'd be amazing.

Cal MacDonald (01:04:52.858)
Another good one would be Christopher Lee, he would write the stories that guy has to tell would just be unreal.

Kathleen (01:04:57.099)
yeah, yeah.

Nicola Streeten (01:05:03.142)
Actually, maybe even Stephen King or has he already done a comic?

Cal MacDonald (01:05:07.472)
I think he has done. It sounds like something he would have done. I'm pretty sure he's had a hand in writing a comic. It feels like something he would do.

Kathleen (01:05:07.963)
That's a good house.

Nicola Streeten (01:05:09.894)
an abduction of one of his... yeah doesn't it? I bet he mustered. Yeah yeah doesn't it just?

Kathleen (01:05:16.358)
he must have. Yeah.

Cal MacDonald (01:05:20.912)
And at the very least some of his books have been made into comics, I know that.

Nicola Streeten (01:05:24.578)
Yeah, must have been.

Kathleen (01:05:26.03)
Stimp must be, yeah.

I'm going to say Jane Goodall just because she's passed recently and I suddenly thinking yeah that would be yeah yeah yeah that's a good question yeah

Cal MacDonald (01:05:31.375)
Okay.

Nicola Streeten (01:05:35.259)
yeah!

Cal MacDonald (01:05:36.55)
Alright, yeah.

Nicola Streeten (01:05:38.87)
yes! That would be great!

Cal MacDonald (01:05:40.236)
All right. On that track, David Attenborough will be another one. One of the most beloved people on the face of the planet.

Nicola Streeten (01:05:45.69)
Yeah, really good question. yes.

Kathleen (01:05:51.01)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, that would be amazing.

Nicola Streeten (01:05:54.426)
Yeah.

Cal MacDonald (01:05:57.871)
Okay, next one. What's your favorite fictional mode of transportation?

Nicola Streeten (01:06:07.238)
fictional. Some sort of fictional. Would that be the telephone box like the doctor who the tardis? Wouldn't it? I think that would be nice to me. I'll take that.

Kathleen (01:06:18.22)
Mmm.

Cal MacDonald (01:06:23.344)
The contardus? Yeah. Yeah, all right.

Kathleen (01:06:23.577)
Tortoise? Yeah, yeah!

Yeah, because I'm thinking of an airship and I know you used to have blimps and airships but not anymore but I love that whole steampunk idea where people would... I'd just love to travel by airship. Yeah, is that acceptable? Thank you. Thank you.

Cal MacDonald (01:06:37.134)
Alright.

Cal MacDonald (01:06:43.856)
Yeah, that's acceptable. mean, for me, it's very predictable. You know me, Cathy Enterprise. You know me. So you knew that one was coming there.

Kathleen (01:06:49.907)
Yeah, of course. Yeah, of course.

Cal MacDonald (01:06:55.586)
Okay, this is one just for Nicola. If you had to change the name of Ladies Do Comics to something completely ridiculous, what would it be?

Nicola Streeten (01:07:04.944)
Well, actually, we did change it from Ladies Do Comics in about 2017 to LDC because that was from Charlotte, that was the legacy of Charlotte Bailey's time because she decided it was too ridiculous having Ladies Do Comics because it was too loaded and it was too... And so she pointed out that DC Comics, she said, what does DC Comics, what does the DC stand for? And none of us...

Kathleen (01:07:16.643)
Hmm.

Kathleen (01:07:24.791)
Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (01:07:35.107)
new then and and she saying there we are so LD comics it doesn't matter what it stands for but it's more grown up and it's more it's a better brand for us it's it's so so that that's responding to that we had a lot we had quite a bit of stick about the ladies do comics and it was annoying because it was just like when we started it was just like for fun and it wasn't

Kathleen (01:07:35.79)
I don't know. Yeah.

Cal MacDonald (01:07:35.792)
All right.

Cal MacDonald (01:07:44.408)
Yeah. Okay.

Kathleen (01:07:47.372)
Yeah.

Kathleen (01:07:58.03)
Yeah. Yeah. It was for fun. Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (01:08:01.755)
So again, it was like as we got bigger and more well known, people started to like pick up on it and yeah, yeah, yeah, as if we were some multinational corporation.

Kathleen (01:08:08.94)
scrutinize all that yeah yeah and it's just no yeah the pressure

Cal MacDonald (01:08:16.048)
Okay, last one. If you can only eat one food while drawing, what would it be?

Nicola Streeten (01:08:26.118)
avocado without a beat you see yes

Cal MacDonald (01:08:28.916)
okay. All right. That's talking from experience, is it?

Nicola Streeten (01:08:33.402)
Yeah.

Kathleen (01:08:38.318)
Impressive. It's hard, hard to follow that. I'm gonna say hummus. Hummus. Yeah. Yeah. If, as long as I can have something to eat it with, but I could use it with a spoon.

Nicola Streeten (01:08:43.565)
Yes.

Cal MacDonald (01:08:51.984)
For me, it's gonna show my Polish girl, Cabanos, if you know what Cabanos is. Does anyone have a clue? If you know what a pepperoni stick, it's like that, but actually edible and nice to eat.

Nicola Streeten (01:08:59.418)
No.

Kathleen (01:09:00.619)
No.

Kathleen (01:09:06.67)
As opposed to. Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (01:09:06.968)
Nice.

Cal MacDonald (01:09:09.804)
I suppose it just been horrible and tasty, plastic about it's like this long thin strip of kind of sausage meat. That's just, it's something like, it's something like what Bill Tong, if you, Kathleen, but if you got it in long thin strips and you just sit there kind of, and it comes to that and you can just sit there. It's like, I've heard like the pole and the truck drivers, they just have a long strip and they can just while they're driving, just nibble away at it to pass the hours.

Kathleen (01:09:12.174)
Yeah, Oh, yes.

Nicola Streeten (01:09:19.333)
Yum.

Kathleen (01:09:21.472)
Yeah, building like dried. Yeah, knowing, knowing it away.

Kathleen (01:09:34.894)
I'm

Nicola Streeten (01:09:36.484)
Wow.

Kathleen (01:09:37.71)
It's like a bone for dogs, but you know, just like, yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah.

Cal MacDonald (01:09:42.562)
Yes, yeah. All right, so that's thankfully you'll be relieved to know that's the end of the quick fire.

Nicola Streeten (01:09:49.926)
Thank you.

Cal MacDonald (01:09:53.296)
All right, so Nicola, if people want to reach out to you if they've got any further questions, can they get a hold of you somewhere?

Nicola Streeten (01:10:00.397)
Absolutely. I'm on Instagram, Nicholas St. Reton. So Nicholasst.reton is the best way to message me. Happy to receive.

Cal MacDonald (01:10:06.045)
yeah.

Kathleen (01:10:12.995)
Mm.

Cal MacDonald (01:10:13.936)
Kathleen, have you got any final thoughts there?

Kathleen (01:10:18.126)
No, not at all, but just thank you. I'm just going to busy myself finishing all these orders that I'd started, but just I suppose I will ask what's the next exciting thing you have coming up? Whether it's a comic or...

Cal MacDonald (01:10:33.251)
yeah.

Nicola Streeten (01:10:34.874)
Well, yeah, I've stepped down from LD Comics. Officially, I take myself off the board at the end of October. And so that's after 15 years. And I've been working sometime on a book called Yield that is set in Black Mountain College, which was...

Kathleen (01:10:40.706)
Mm-hmm.

Kathleen (01:10:44.578)
Mm-hmm.

Kathleen (01:10:49.96)
Wow.

Nicola Streeten (01:11:02.168)
an alternative art school in North Carolina in the 30s till the 50s. And my great uncle was one of the founding faculty members. but I'm, I'm fictionalizing history, but also putting myself in there as the researcher thinking about the uncle I only knew as an old man. And it's so it's fictionalized as a love story, really, or

Kathleen (01:11:06.208)
Mm-hmm.

Kathleen (01:11:12.664)
Wow.

Kathleen (01:11:19.596)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kathleen (01:11:24.803)
Mm-hmm.

Nicola Streeten (01:11:31.664)
forbidden love story. That's me.

Cal MacDonald (01:11:34.78)
and I just see there is one important, there's one important quick fire question. I keep forgetting this. Would you ever consider visiting the Outer Hebrides?

Kathleen (01:11:35.776)
Wow, really exciting.

Nicola Streeten (01:11:45.628)
gosh, yes, you bet.

Kathleen (01:11:47.214)
Yeah, yeah

Cal MacDonald (01:11:47.6)
All right, I couldn't forget that one carefully.

Nicola Streeten (01:11:50.95)
yeah, that would be amazing. Maybe in a slightly warmer month.

Cal MacDonald (01:11:56.368)
Then the whiskey doesn't taste so good. If it's not cold outside the whiskey won't taste. It's got to balance out like that. Alright.

Kathleen (01:11:57.753)
Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (01:12:00.806)
Oh yeah, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right. Yeah, yeah, maybe in March I'll come up. Something like that would be good, just before the turn. I'd love to, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I'll let you know when I arrive. All right.

Kathleen (01:12:01.283)
Exactly, exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Cal MacDonald (01:12:09.36)
Well, we look forward and we'll welcome you warmly here. All right. All right. So thanks, everyone, for listening. And wherever you are, give us a like, subscribe and review. Wherever you listen to us, it really helps us out a lot. And again, big thanks to Nicola for taking the time out to speak to us. And thanks to Kathleen for joining me tonight. And we'll see you all very, very soon. Goodnight, everyone.

Kathleen (01:12:14.84)
Yeah, it'd be amazing. Excellent! Yeah.

Nicola Streeten (01:12:39.952)
Good night.

Kathleen (01:12:40.408)
Good night. Thank you.

Cal MacDonald (01:12:42.978)
and