Girls With Slingshots: A Remembrance

Danielle Corsetto

So today, one of my favorite webcomics–and one of the most prominent webcomics of the last decade–ended. At 2008 strips, the decade-and-plus-old Girls With Slingshots by Danielle Corsetto ended this morning. If you’ve never heard of it, I’d highly recommend it. It’s a smart, knowing and incisive comic about a group of adults and the trials of life. The title characters (who, to disabuse you of any notions, never use slingshots) are Hazel, a bitter, booze-loving writer and her best friend, the fun and compassionate Jamie. I should warn, though, if you’re averse to this kind of thing, the strip deals with sex and sexuality quite frankly, honestly and openly. If you’re not turned off by that, you can start reading here.

I discovered GWS (to use the common acronym) my sophomore year of college which was great in some ways (a stable circle of friends, employment, my discovery of Adventure Time) and really hard in others (a very tough foreign language class, jerk bosses). Because of all the stress of that year, I was seeking out and consuming webcomics like peanuts. At my peak, I was keeping up with something like 45 comics (55-60 if you count all the newspaper comics I was reading online).

I don’t think it’s any exaggeration to say that GWS kinda broadened my horizons. When you’re raised in a Christian bubble and surrounded by conservatism, you tend to not know a lot about how the average person works, lives and loves. GWS taught me about that and a whole lot more. For that, I’m grateful.

The things I admired the most about the strip were its broad and endearing cast of characters (such as McPedro, the talking, mustachioed cactus), its commitment to diversity and inclusion, its slight but fun satire of the writing world, Corsetto’s gorgeous, ever-improving artwork and her respect for the comics medium while also taking it to new territory,

In a 2011 interview with The Washington Post’s Alyssa Rosenberg (although then she was at ThinkProgress), Corsetto mentioned that she drew inspiration from syndicated strips like Zits or Luann or Foxtrot. That influence was always telling: most of the strips were the standard 4 panels and, aside from the subject matter, a lot of the pacing would have been perfect in a newspaper format.

The photo at the top of this article is Corsetto herself from when I met her at San Diego Comic-Con last summer. I know I never blogged about it or posted my pictures, and that’s my fault. But I figured I should share that photo and tell you the story of how I met Ms. Corsetto,

This was on Sunday, the last day of Comic-Con and I was running around Artists’ Alley, trying to meet and/or buy stuff from all my favorite webcomics people who were there (I bought a Dark of the Moon-era Decepticon toy just so David Willis could sign it). Corsetto, at the time, was in the middle of a nationwide tour she did last summer to celebrate GWS’ 10th anniversary. She had mentioned online that she’d be in San Diego that weekend, and I was lucky enough to catch her in the brief window of time she was at the booth for Topataco (which puts out her books and that of several other creators).

I didn’t have any money to buy anything from her, but we talked briefly, mostly about how awesome the current run of guest strips by Molly “Jakface” Němeček was (they were indeed awesome and you can read Molly’s awesome webcomic Woo Hoo! here). I remember her being really nice, although obviously frazzled. Given how crazy Comic-Con is in general and how busy she herself was, the fact that she was so approachable was really heartwarming.

It’s not as if Corsetto’s going away anytime soon, thankfully. Next month, Graybles Schmables, her third entry in the line of Adventure Time Original Graphic Novels put out by BOOM! and drawn by Bridget Underwood comes out. And on Monday, GWS will be rerun from the beginning with brand-new coloring (by Corsetto’s talented colorist, Laeloo) and commentary. In addition, Corsetto has also teased some new projects. I’ll keep following her on Twitter and I can’t wait to see what she does next.