Dirty Plotte by Julie Doucet (No. 96)

Dirty Plotte #1-12 (1991-1998)

by Julie Doucet

REVIEW BY BART BEATY:

(from The 100 Best Comics of the Century!, The Comics Journal #210, 1999)

Of all the autobiographical cartoonists to have emerged onto the scene in the 1990s, perhaps none has come so far or accomplished so much as Julie Doucet. Her most recent work, and her first lengthy story, My New York Diary, was a tremendous accomplishment, managing simultaneously to vastly expand her reach as a cartoonist while at the same time sacrificing none of the charms of her earliest work.

Dirty Plotte began life as a fairly crude little mini-comic featuring stories of self-abasement, destruction and debauchery. Before long Doucet had transformed her work into a full-sized American-style comic book without changing its thematics and tone. The earliest issues of the series have a ferocious intensity about them, but the savagery is tempered by a sometimes whimsical sense of humour and an approach to confessional story-telling that is equally self-depreciating and self-aggrandising.

With My New York Diary in the tenth through twelfth issues of Dirty Plotte, Doucet came into her own for the first time. The story of a woman adrift in a new city while caught in a relationship gone not dreadfully but pitiably wrong is evocative and genuinely moving while at the same time it maintains the artist's distinctive visual look, albeit toned down a notch. By de-amplifying her work Doucet has, ironically, given it more resonance.

I'd say that Julie Doucet is one of the most promising young cartoonists working today except for the fact that Dirty Plotte demonstrates that that she has accomplished a great deal in comics already. So let's just say that Doucet is one of the best cartoonists working today and leave it at that.

REVIEW BY DAN CLOWES:
These are among the most personal and powerfully intimate comics ever made. In their obsessive, utterly-fearless precision they draw us fully into Doucet's private dream-vision, a gleefully-nihilistic, rageful and tenderly melancholic perspective on a dark and complicated world, the panels so dense with raw anthropomorphous energy they seem more like living organisms than lines on paper.

REVIEW BY ROBERT CRUMB:
Okay, she's not a comic story-teller in the "normal" sense, but her personal vision is honest and compelling... I find her completely sincere, incapable of "structured, linear narratives", sure, but her "stories" are like powerful dreams... I admire her work and sympathise with the crisis she's going through... Her struggle is to continue to draw under the magnifying glass of recognition at a young age, when one is still developing and not so sure of how to get along in the world... I'm happy to see that, while she's drawing less than before (I'm sure she's close to being burned out by the constant barrage of demands for her talents from all sides), it's as good as ever... I thought her latest Dirty Plotte was great! I hope she can make it through the ocean of bullshit that she has to cope with... Even if she has to back off and quit drawing for a while... I hope she's tough enough to survive...

READ THIS BOOK:

Dirty Plotte: The Complete Julie Doucet was published in 2018 by Drawn & Quarterly, which received Eisner and Ignatz Award nominations that year for Best Archival Publication. It collects the entire 12-issue comic book series, including the acclaimed My New York Diary, as well as rare comics and previously unpublished material; a reproduction of the first Dirty Plotte mini comic; essays about her comics legacy and feminist influence by curator Dan Nadel and academic Martine Delvaux respectively; an interview by comics scholar Christian Gasser; and personal anecdotes from Jami Attenberg, Adrian Tomine, and more!

FURTHER READING:

Julie Doucet Official Site

Julie Doucet at D&Q
Essay: Dan Nadel's 'The Julies'