GGotS Event Review: Drink & Draw Like a Lady

By Eden Miller

For all I know, Drink & Draw Like a Lady is still going on (although it was due to wrap up just about now), but I left at about 10, having spent much too long on a bus and feeling exhaustion setting in.

But while I was there, it was awesome.

On one hand, asking a bunch of comic-book creators and readers to be social with each other is kind of an odd thing; people usually don’t create comics (or read them, for that matter) because they’re extroverts, after all.

But on the other hand, if you want to know why Drink & Draw Like a Lady is an important thing, I offer this little story that one of the attendees shared: As a game of exquisite corpse on a napkin traveled the room, one woman remarked that she hated playing that sort of thing with men because she’d work really hard on her part and one of the guys would invariably draw a penis or something and that would just completely ruin it for her. I didn’t get the impression that she was a prude, but I saw her point. This event gave women creators a safe space to be themselves.

(In fact, one boyfriend got politely but firmly escorted out.)

Admittedly, I am not the most outgoing person, but fortunately, a few people did reach out, and after that, the conversations flowed nicely (and the free-pouring wine helped, of course). I loved meeting the people there and talking comics and anime with them.

There was the fair share of pros — creators, who in my mind, are more or less famous — but I was delighted to find that almost everyone I talked to was just getting started in comics. They were just beginning to draw them, or had one in mind, or just loved the medium and wanted to be a part of this event.  Most of them came after reading about the event online somewhere (Twitter was mentioned several times) and many just came solo. I think that was pretty awesome; it’s often a challenging thing to go be social on your own, and I’m glad these women did it.

The event was moved to 192 Books for a variety of reasons, but a major one is that last year, DDLL overflowed its allotted space. Even though the space was bigger, it still happened. Someone joked that we should get the 69th Regiment Armory, where MoCCA Festival is held, to let us have a huge sleepover in the space. Although we all know that’s unlikely, I think as Drink & Draw Like a Lady continues to grow, we’re going to need a ballroom soon enough.

Thanks to Hope Larson for putting this on and to Lucy Knisley for getting the space. I’d also like to say “HI!!!” to Claire Folkman, Ashanti S. Freeman, and Mariam Garibov, all of whom I met tonight. (And yes, there were lots and lots of other awesome women there, but these were the only ones I managed to properly exchange information with.)