Written by Secret Headquarters
Carol Lay grew up among the theme parks of Southern California. Despite the coasters and cartoon characters, it was pretty unremarkable. At UCLA she discovered the world of sex, drugs, rock'n'roll and Zap Comix. Underground comics made their début on the Carol Lay scene and her path was set. Lay's work began appearing in magazines published by Last Gasp and Rip Off Press, but they didn't quite pay the bills.
While drawing her own cartoons, Carol took random illustration jobs, including lettering for mainstream comics by DC and Marvel. Uninspired, she began her own Story Minute comic strips. Soon her work could be seen in papers throughout the US as well as Hong Kong and Japan.
Lay's Goodnight, Irene is a collection of strips from her Good Girls comics, published by Fantagraphics in the 80s and 90s. Goodnight is a satire of the lovesick women of early romance comics with an unusual twist. Irene was accidentally abandoned by her parents in an African jungle, to be found and raised by a Bongodian tribe. Years later she's discovered by a group of explorers and brought back to the US, where the assumptions with which she was raised, including her ideas of beauty and social decorum, are no longer in place. A feminist flip on The Emperor's New Clothes, Goodnight, Irene is a fierce, romantic and surrealist tale of a woman trying to find her voice - and her body - in the material world of 1980s America.
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