Nina paley the stork & fashion

In 1988, at the tender age of 20, I left my hometown of Urbana, IL, for Santa Cruz California to fulfill a naive dream of becoming a new-age, crystal-wielding hippie. Instead I became a cynical cartoonist.

Nina's Adventures, my semi-autobiographical, often experimental, not-quite-underground alternative weekly comic strip, first appeared in the Santa Cruz Comic News and soon spread to the LA Reader, Comic Relief Magazine, the Funny Times, and the San Francisco Examiner.

Nina paley the stork & fashion

I also created two solo "alternative" comic books for Dark Horse Comics, and various shorter pieces were published in anthologies by Last Gasp, Rip Off Press, the feminist Laugh Lines Press, and Kitchen Sink Press.

My weeklies were published in two paperback collections, Depression is Fun and Nina's Adventures, and appeared in a large Japanese artist volume, Jarebong.

Nina's Adventures was a labor of love, but it didn't pay the rent.

After 7 years I succumbed to courtship by ma