richardf8 | Whatever Happened to Diane DiMassa?

Turns out, according to a new interview in Bitch Magazine, she's been doing Fine Art while working at various artistic jobs. And she's ramping up to once again sic her delightfully deranged alter-ego, Hothead Paisan, upon the world again.

Hothead Paisan turned me onto comics. Sure, I read the newspaper strips on a daily basis, chuckled at Dilbert (which was way funnier when Adams was working in the Belly of the Beast) and suffered along with the family in For Better Or Worse as their pets died. But I had read maybe three comic books in my life. And two of those were "History of Electronics" comic books that Radio Shack used to give away back in the days when they didn't suck. Superhero comics didn't appeal to me, with their contrived McGuffins and improbable solutions. And the insipidity of Richie Rich or Archie comics was not to be tolerated. But with Hothead Paisan, I connected. The therapy project of a pissed off New York dyke wrapped its tendrils around my soul, said "Yes, there is a LOT to be pissed off about, and you are not alone."

It also said that comics were a medium capable of communicating truths, opening eyes, and effecting change. What a refreshing change from those parallel pastiches of prepubescent power fantasy know as the DC and Marvel universes. It was sharp, it was aware, and it was inspiring. Among my responses to it was to pick up a pencil and try to do something really lame and derivative - what if Dilbert went nuts like Hothead? - nothing ever came of that, thankfully, but there it was. So why did this affect ME, a heterosexual white male, so much? Because, to use a term DiMassa uses to describe her target market, my antennae are just a little bit sharper than most. And the real explanation is fforthcoming from DiMassa herself as she confides to Bitch that she "always considered Hothead nore as social commentary than as queer commentary."

And indeed it is so. Perhaps most important is that DiMassa understands that you can't speak Truth to Power, so she kicks Power in the nuts, Bobbitizes it and rips its spine out through its asshole, and the DC/Marvel heroes stand impotent before her as she stuffs them back into a sewer.

How has she influenced my current work? First and foremost, she is raison d'etre. She sowed the notion in my head that if I didn't like something, art was a good way to respond to it. HaNozri owes its existence to this notion. Secondly, Cujo owes some of her attitudes as well as her physique to Hothead. If my characters had head-hair, hers would be Hothead's pony-tailed mullet. Thirdly the Legend of Bess story-line was inspired by a three-book story-arc of DiMassa's in which Hothead avenged the rape of a woman who did not see justice in the courts. DiMassa did not quite satisfy my need for catharsis inasmuch as it was Hothead and not the victim herself that got to do the spine-ripping (though the spine-ripping was the victim's idea). Don't look for any direct parallels though; I do my own writing.

So at this point I am looking forward to new Hotheads, and really pleased to see Diana back among us.