Stepping Into "Jane's World" with Paige Braddock

“I really wanted to go to art school but my parents were afraid I'd turn into this flaky artist, so they made me go to a state school so I'd get a well-rounded education,” says Paige Braddock, who became a comic book artist.

She is the creator of Jane's World—a comic now in its 24th volume that is also available online and has been translated into French, Spanish, Italian and Swedish. It will be featured in upcoming exhibits in Madrid and Milan and one currently running in San Francisco. It has been nominated for an Eisner Award, the Golden Globes of the comic book world.

The motley cast of characters that populate Jane's World are a diverse bunch with intricately intertwining stories. Jane herself is someone who is easy to identify with, particularly if you have a healthy touch of self-deprecation. “People can more easily identify with a likable loser than someone who's perfection incarnate,” Braddock says.

Before the books, when Jane's World was still a strip, Braddock says the main character “wasn't gay enough for gay papers but she was too gay for straight papers.” Braddock had to hustle for the few spots available in alternative newspapers, facing intense competition that put her up against the likes of Alison Bechdel. “Even though she and I are at opposite ends of the lesbian spectrum,” Braddock says, pointing out that “I'm slapstick and she's more political.”

“There isn't enough lesbian slapstick out there,” says this resident of Sebastopol, a small town about 50 miles north of San Francisco. “What I'm doing is sort of a backlash against how serious Northern California lesbians are.” Seen this way, Braddock should be getting an award for her community service.

Other Jane's World characters may be serious but Jane is the antithesis to stereotypical lesbian staidness.

According to Braddock she's not the typical dyke: she isn't politically correct, hates vegetarian restaurants, eats donuts, and doesn't understand women. “She's a vehicle for poking fun at all those strains in our culture—but not mean-spirited, just clueless.”

Braddock says a reviewer recently referred to Jane as “the lesbian heir to the hard-luck Charlie Brown, somehow always winding up as the punchline in her own comic book.” Of all the Peanuts characters the too-obvious choice for comparison with Jane would be queer icon Peppermint Patty. But Jane is more of a Charlie Brown who just happens to be a lesbian.

Braddock had never considered the Charlie Brown-ishness of her character, and the analogy struck her as not only apt but an amusing coincidence. Unbeknownst to the perceptive reviewer who drew the parallel, Braddock spends her days at Peanuts headquarters. She is senior vice president and creative director for Charles M. Schulz Creative Associates.

For nearly seven years Braddock worked full-time for the Schulz studio and spent her nights and weekends immersed in Jane's World. But this year she cut back to three days per week at her day job in order to devote three full days to working on her books. Apparently she manages to squeeze in some rest on the seventh day, but she completes twenty pages of drawings per month.

In addition to the books, new panels are available online daily.

People sometimes conflate artist and subject, addressing Braddock as if they were talking to Jane. Braddock admits that Jane embodies one facet of her personality. But it shouldn't take long for most fans who meet their hero's creator to realize that, while Jane is goofy and often oblivious, Braddock is whip smart with a delectably dry sense of humor.

Braddock says Jane “gets to be the voice inside my head that I sometimes silence.”

She adds: “You know when you hear someone say something that's really dumb? Or sometimes you want to say something that politically incorrect and just run with it and you censor yourself? Well, Jane's uncensored.”