Good afternoon (morning in the US),

Enjoy some stories about women being on other women’s teams.

As you know, I love stories about female friendship, and MariNaomi has written a memoir in comics form about her complicated on-off relationship with a childhood friend. Really hitting a lot of my KPIs here. She also – this is quite frightening – asked that friend for permission and collaborated with her, to an extent, on the project:

I asked Mirabai’s permission. She knew I wasn’t going to write a book that was just about how great she is. I try to see and consider all sides when I tell a story, though ultimately I am telling my own side of things. Of course, my request made her a bit nervous (was I going to expose all her secrets? Make her out to be a terrible person?), but I tried to calm her fears by showing her the comics as I made them. […] To Mirabai’s credit, although she noted that not all the events in my book played out as she remembered, she didn’t insist I change anything.

https://catapult.co/stories/the-making-of-a-comics-memoir

On to more formal teams, Petra Herrera was a hero of the Mexican revolution who made her own all-women fighting brigade when she did not get a deserved promotion. Obviously a proportionate response, so I hope you enjoy reading her story – the way it is written is a bit grating but she doesn’t get a lot of coverage on the internet so I’m taking what I can get here. The art notes are a good read, though:

Her crowning achievement was to sack the city of Torreon, which […]  gave Pancho Villa access to heavy artillery, a half million rounds of ammunition, armored rail cars, the works. And yet, Herrera […] received no promotion to general afterwards. In response, Herrera said “I’m out.” She left Villa’s forces and made her own — an independent all-female brigade. By the end of the war, it was estimated to comprise around 300-400 women, down from (possibly wild) estimates of 1,000 at its peak. She looked after her women like a mama bear armed to the teeth. She wouldn’t let men sleep in her camp, and enforced that rule by staying up late and using any wayward male soldier that tried to get in as target practice.

http://www.rejectedprincesses.com/princesses/petra-herrera

Happy Friday, team players!

Alex.