201103151501.jpg

After several years and three printed collections, cartoonist Julia Wertz has announced that she’s finally retiring the Fart Party name for her comic strip. The name had been a constant source of bemusement for Wertz over the years — although it didn’t seem all that appropriate as the name of a comic strip about a 20-something young woman, it had the advantage of name recognition. But eventually it was time to move on, she explains.

Wertz has moved her comics over to juliawertz.com, where her strip will continue under the moniker Museum of Mistakes.

4022fb2e4abc9fb303c22068b8ea.jpeg

Semi-related: a profile of the seven ladies of the Brooklyn-based studio Pizza Island.

On the edge of industrial Greenpoint, in one tiny, sunlit room lined with computers and desks, sits a collection of some of the finest up-and-coming female graphic novelists, cartoonists and illustrators in New York City. They contribute to The New Yorker and Vice, The New York Times and The Believer alike. They publish zines, comic books and memoirs. They work quietly, with their heads down, but sometimes they share business tips or give each other input on their work. Also, they gossip. The name of the studio is Pizza Island.


Members include Wertz, Kate Beaton, Lisa Hanawalt, Sarah Glidden, Meredith Gran, Karen Sneider, and Domitille Collardey. They’ll all be participating in a group reading at Brooklyn Fireproof on Marsh 19th.

5 COMMENTS

  1. I’ll be honest: the name “Fart Party” was the sole reason I’ve been uninterested in Wertz’s work thus far.

  2. @Steve: Now you’ve got no reason not to! You’ve been missing out.

    I am certain Julia exhaled an equally effusive “fiiiiiiinallyyythankgoddd” as I did when retiring the moniker Brainfag.

  3. Kudos to Wertz from an old school Fart Party fan.

    But I find some irony in the fact that this story about Wertz – who has very publicly spoken about her problems finding affordable health insurance – is coupled with an advertisement (“Senator Rand Paul: Sign the right to work petition Obama fears) for the so-called Right to Work Committee.

    The link from the ad warns that unionizing leads to violent thuggery and other nonsense. Say what you want about our employer-based health insurance system (I don’t like it … health care should be a human right), but unions are one of the few reasons why workers still enjoy decent health insurance via their employment. Without unions, millions of workers across the country would have a benefits package that resembles those at Wal-Mart.

  4. @Steve–me, too.

    Then I read Drinking at the Movies, and discovered that she’s brilliant and interesting and wry. So now I have to go back and buy the Fart Party collections that I’d been avoiding like the plague.

Comments are closed.