Menopause: A Comic Treatment was an impulse borrow from the library. Partly out of joy: I was so happy I could go to the library again that my fingers got inordinately sticky. Partly out of desire for knowledge: menopause is something I need to know about and revel in! 

MK Czerwiec explains in her introduction that this comic collection about menopause was created because nobody had done one before. Any menopause comics she could find were about husbands complaining while their partners suffered. In 2020, it’s high time that older people with uteri got some laughs in and articulated their experience in the comic art form. Czerwiec’s mission reminded me of Ali Wong’s effect on stand-up comedy. Her Netflix specials “Baby Cobra” and “Hard Knock Wife” spring-boarded a new motherhood comedy subgenre, and her frank stories about her sexuality and genitalia brought the vagina on the level of the penis comedians keep talking about. 

And Czerwiec collects a damn good anthology. Gathering experienced and new voices, Czerwiec makes a point to include gender and racial minorities, people of different faiths, and varying disability and illness levels. A majority of the comics were what I was expecting—mourning over body changes and life stages; wondering if one is “less of a woman” without a period. The answer is no. And some people who have periods weren’t ever women. For someone like me going in pretty unresearched about menopause’s physical symptoms, they are thoroughly covered, with added commentary on the socio-political vectors. Some comics are more funny, like Carol Tyler’s “Invisible Lady” who embarks on a successful life of crime, or Czerwiec’s own “Burning Up” about burning off the give-a-shits. Others are more serious musings, like Ajuan Mance’s “Any Day Now,” which wonders how menopause can be such a non-milestone for those outside the hetero-normative sphere. Lynda Barry’s “Menopositive!” and Roberta Gregory’s “Bitchy Bitch in the End…for Now….” focus on how knowledge about menopause is talked around by families and mothers, instead of a direct conversation. “#crockpotrunner” by Ann M. Fox feels like an outlier, but it was a pleasant enough comic about listening to the capabilities and limits of the body. 

Bodies! We inhabit them. They change. It’s pain and joy. Overall, a very enjoyable, oft hilarious, oft serious collection. I’m adding Czerwiec’s other work to my TBR.