Strumpet Launch!!!!

Honorary Strumpet Stephen Betts.

The scene! Twas hectic.

Strumpet Editor Ellen with ace cartoonist Barnaby Richards.

Editor Jeremy Day with contributor (and past Whore of Mensa) Maartje Schalkx.

Bad boys love the Strumpet!!!

The wonderful Amneet Johal and J. Homersham.


Thanks to everyone who came, and to all of our Kickstarter supporters! Issue 2 is in the organizing stages now...in the meantime keep your eyes peeled on the blog for all the news!

Come to the Launch of the Brand-new Strumpet!

Come to the launch of the first-ever issue of the Strumpet, an anthology of new comics work by exciting women artists from the United States and United Kingdom.


Fun starts at 7pm in the ground-floor party room of the Miller Pub, 96 Snowsfields, London Bridge/Borough, in lovely London town. We'll be showing the Strumpet's favourite films, listening to some of her favourite music, and enjoying the company of the UK-based artists (and, who knows, perhaps the spectral aura of some of the US artists!) Come early for cupcakes, come late for some high-quality drunken revelry.


Check out a full preview of this issue on our website - see you there!


If you are a Kickstarter contributor and would like to pick your copy up at the launch, please let us know and we'll have it ready for you to take away! Thanks so much to everyone who helped us reach our goal!


Some more Strumpet news - we will have advance copies of The Strumpet at Leeds' fab Thought Bubble convention this coming weekend, 19-20th November. Come say hello - we'll be sharing a table with David O'Connell and the ink + PAPER crowd, and Ellen will be appearing in the Comics Economics panel from 2:30-3:20 on Saturday, chaired by We are Words and Pictures' Matthew Sheret. Loads more info - plus a full programme - is available on the Thought Bubble website.


See you soon!

Kripa Joshi, now in The Strumpet!

Miss Moti enjoys a night out on the town, and meet up with lots of intriguingly disguised characters, in this page from the new Strumpet.


We are so pleased to welcome Kripa Joshi, the creator of Miss Moti, to our very first issue.

Kripa speaking at Laydeez; she's in front of a photo of her extended family in Nepal.




Kripa recently knocked everyone dead at the October meeting of Laydeez do Comics, London's premier spot for discovering new cartoonists (of both genders!)

Kripa with London comics folk John Miers, Megan Donnolley and Mike Medaglia.


At Laydeez Kripa discussed her Nepalese heritage and how her travels around the world - notably to New York, India and London - have influenced her work.

Even more wonderfully, Kripa agreed a few months back to create an image for us Strumpets to use as a Kickstarter incentive. If you love fairytale princesses and knights errant on a mission, then you might want to grab this print for your very own. It's not too late - although we've reached our goal the terms of Kickstarter are that we have to stay open for business until the day we promised - that's 11th November. Which means you're in luck! Check out our Kickstarter today.


Thanks for reading!

New Interview! The Strumpets speak to PIKALAND!

An exciting interview with 8 of our artists is now up on fantastic illustration site Pikaland!


Thanks so much to the amazing Melanie Maddison for taking the time to explore our fevered imaginations.

The Return of MARDOU

One of the things that I'm most excited about in this first issue of the Strumpet is the fact that MARDOU, originator of the Whores of Mensa and one of our favourite cartoonists, is BACK with an 8 page story.


This story is vintage Mardou: subversively funny and vibrantly drawn (highlighted with her trademark zip-a-tone), offering a look into a gratifyingly unusual mind. Mardou rocks!


Are you a Mardou fan? Maybe you're a devotee of Kripa Joshi, Lucy Sweet or Megan Kelso? If you are - but especially if these are new names to you - may we suggest a pre-order? For a mere $10 you get a signed copy of the Strumpet air-mailed to you anywhere in the world, complete with a set of three buttons on a hand-stamped backing. Check out our Kickstarter page for more details - we could really use your support!


Thanks for reading!

The Strumpet Lives!

Ellen Lindner's cover for the first issue of The Strumpet.


Strumpet Issue 1 will début at this year's Thought Bubble Festival, 19-20 November in Leeds. We'll be launching the comic on 24th of November at the Miller pub in London Bridge. And we have a group of contributors to drool over: Kripa Joshi, Patrice Aggs, Tanya Meditzky, Jeremy Day, Mardou, Ellen Lindner, and...MEGAN KELSO!!! And more! AIEEE!!!!!


Right now we're taking pre-orders over at our Kickstarter page - if you want to be one of the first to reserve a copy of Issue One for your very own, I suggest you act quickly!


Kickstarter is brilliant - it's easy to use, fills the gaping distribution hole left by Diamond, and enables us to keep all of our titles in print (as well as pay for extra expenses like contributor copies, review copies, and postage). So please, have a think, and pre-order at the level you're comfortable with. All of the prizes are fab - and you'll be making a band of Strumpets very, very happy.

Strumpets Ahead!

Hi everyone,
It's been a long, crazy summer here in Whores of Mensa HQ. We've been working on a secret project - the relaunch of our beloved collective as a brand-new annual.


Why the upheaval? No one likes upheaval!!!


Well, a lot has changed for us over the course of the seven years we've been publishing comics as WoM: personal stuff and professional stuff.

Our last issue made us think really hard about what we wanted to do, as a collective. It was great printing regular work by the three of us, but having so many fantastic guest artists for our blockbuster fifth issue felt like something we'd like to do again.


Over our travels in New York and Portland, we met so many great lady cartoonists. We got excited about the possibilities of bringing female creators from the USA and the UK together for a fun cultural exchange - an exchange that, due to the failure in the personal jet-pack market and the total washout of the transatlantic Tube system, could perhaps most easily happen on paper and on the internet.


To whit, we're creating a publication, and soon a website, that will take some small steps (or maybe even some big ones!) towards that goal. And it's called...


...THE STRUMPET.


Whores of Mensa will not be going away - thanks to the generous lift given to our fifth issue by our Kickstarter supporters, we've printed 400 copies of our Party Issue - the most ever of any single WoM issue - and it's still very much in print.
It'll be sold right alongside the Strumpet, keeping the WoM flame alive (if you're coming to the party late you can get your own copy here). We're also hoping to put together a book collecting all of our best work from our seven year stretch.


Many thanks to our intern Elliot Baggott for his hard work on our new logo!


Very soon we'll be taking pre-orders for our first issue of the Strumpet, and we're planning a London mega-launch in late November to which you'll all be invited. But in the meantime, please let us introduce one of our newest artists, the amazing Lisa Rosalie Eisenberg of Portland, Oregon.


We met Lisa when we bought Cut Your Hair 3, which is about her epic travels in China. We love her work and we think you might, too!





And here's a sneak peek at Lisa's story...

We'll be back soon with more Strumpets....stay tuned!