A short life of the author
Lynda Barry (born 1956) is one of the most original figures in American comics — an artist, writer, and educator whose work resists every category it’s placed in. Her comic strip Ernie Pook’s Comeek (1979–2008) was a fixture of the alternative weekly press for nearly thirty years, and her books — which range from graphic memoir to creativity manuals to uncategorizable visual-textual hybrids — have influenced cartoonists, writers, educators, and therapists in ways that no other comics artist has managed.
Life and Career
Barry was born in Richland Center, Wisconsin, and grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Seattle. Her mother was Filipina-American. She attended Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, where she was a classmate of Matt Groening (creator of The Simpsons). Groening encouraged her to draw comic strips, and she began publishing Ernie Pook’s Comeek in 1979.
The strip ran in alternative weekly newspapers for nearly thirty years, following a rotating cast of children and teenagers — particularly Marlys, Arna, and Freddie — through the joys and terrors of childhood. Barry’s drawings are deliberately rough, full of energy and emotion, and her writing captures the voice of children with uncanny accuracy: the specificity of playground hierarchies, the intensity of childhood friendships, the casual cruelties of family life. The strip was one of the most acclaimed in alternative comics, alongside Bill Griffith’s Zippy the Pinhead and Matt Groening’s Life in Hell.
The Good Times Are Killing Me (1988) — a novel about an interracial friendship between two girls in the 1960s — was adapted as an off-Broadway play. Cruddy (1999) is a hallucinatory road novel of adolescent violence and survival. One! Hundred! Demons! (2002) introduced what Barry calls “autobifictionalography” — illustrated essays about her childhood that blend memoir and fiction with paintings and collage.
What It Is (2008) — winner of the Eisner Award — is her masterpiece and her most influential book. Part memoir, part creativity guide, part visual collage, it explores the nature of images, memory, and artistic creation. It is used in writing programs, art therapy practices, and schools worldwide. Picture This (2010) and Making Comics (2019) continued this pedagogical project.
Barry has been a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she holds the Chazen Family Distinguished Chair in Art. She was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2019.
Key Works
- The Good Times Are Killing Me (1988)
- One! Hundred! Demons! (2002)
- What It Is (2008)
- Making Comics (2019)
Collecting Barry
Ernie Pook’s Comeek collections (Real Comet Press, later Drawn & Quarterly) are the foundation of any Barry collection. What It Is first edition (Drawn & Quarterly, 2008) signed brings $50–$150. The Good Times Are Killing Me first edition (Real Comet Press, 1988) is scarce, $75–$250. Barry signs at events and lectures. Her original art — densely layered, mixed-media pieces — commands $500–$5,000+ when available. The MacArthur Fellowship (2019) elevated market interest across her bibliography.