Alternative comics Obituary

Diane Noomin Tributes – Updated

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D. D. Degg September 11, 2022 1 minute 0 comments

Update: The New York Times Obituary:

One of Ms. Noomin’s most startling and moving pieces was a 1994 story called “Baby Talk: A Tale of 4 Miscarriages,” in which she wrote of her own miscarriages, of the ignominies and the cruelties she endured at the hands of medical professionals as she kept trying to conceive.

“Diane treated her comics as a kind of exorcism,” Mr. Griffith said in a phone interview. “There were things inside her that had to get out. DiDi was an amalgam of all the parents, all the housewives in Canarsie when she was growing up, the person she was afraid she might become, so in order to deal with that she took control.”

She and Mr. Griffith were fixed up by Mr. Spiegelman, who invited them to dinner, though he doesn’t remember his reason for doing so — and in any case the match didn’t “take” until they met again at a New Year’s Eve party a few months later (she thought he was standoffish, he thought she was too beautiful and out of his league).

The original September 9 post:

Diane Noomin, the pioneering underground cartoonist whose work inspired generations of women artists, died at her home in Hadlyme, Connecticut, on September 1, 2022. The cause of death was uterine cancer, according to her husband, Bill Griffith. Noomin was 75 years old.

“I’m devastated by the loss of someone so alive, so funny, so complicated, so important to me, so beautiful,” said Griffith, Noomin’s partner for nearly 50 years.

The Comics Journal obituary for Diane Noomin is up.
It includes a number of memories from friends and colleagues.
Most importantly from husband Bill Griffith:

On a purely personal level, I’m devastated by the loss of someone so alive, so funny, so complicated, so important to me, so beautiful. I can’t really say much about that now, it’s too raw. I can barely accept that she’s gone.

But I can talk about what it’s been like to live with Diane for 49 years as fellow cartoonists…

Legacy.com also has a page for Diane where friends and fans pay tribute.

Diane Noomin was incredibly important not just for feminism and comics but for the voices of real women telling raw, honest stories. I’m eternally thankful for her work.