I picked up this book after reading Jill Lepore's THE SECRET HISTORY OF WONDER WOMAN. Margaret Sanger was WW co-creator Olive Byrne's aunt, and Sanger's feminism and activism heavily influenced the series. WOMAN REBEL seemed like a good option for a quick-and-dirty run down of Sanger's life story.

And that's what I basically got. After some garbled professor-speak of an introduction, the actual comic portion illustrates eruptive, formative moments in Sanger's life. While this method of storytelling packs a a lot of life events into a short amount of pages, the plot suffers for it and gives the the impression that Sanger never finished anything, just jumped to the next thing as soon as any project started sinking. I lost sense of who Sanger was as a person. At the end, she seemed more remote than ever, an unflagging, fundraising robot for birth control. It made me more eager than ever to read /her own/ words, to stop learning about her through somebody else's lens.

Bagge includes a biographic timeline of Sanger's life in the back matter, and in some senses it feels like I should have read this first. The timeline is much more comprehensive than the comic, with Sanger's relationships and how various projects ended more clearly outlined. Bagge also pauses to explain his own relationship with Sanger and why he decided to illustrate her adventures, which was illuminating and inspiring. I have no idea why it's hidden in the back.

Overall, I got what I came for: I know more about the chaotic whirlwind of Sanger's life, have a better feeling for the immense, herculean task birth control accessibility is, and am inspired to read Sanger's work. I would recommend WOMAN REBEL to anyone who wants to know more about the birth control/feminist movement, but to play with reading order. Skip the introduction, read Bagge's back matter, AND THEN read the comic. You're going to have a better experience that way.