Donna Barr (born August 13, 1952) is an American comic book author and cartoonist. She is best known for The Desert Peach and Stinz.

Life and education

Donna Barr was born in Everett, Washington, and is the second child of six. She had earned a bachelor's degree in German from Ohio State University in 1978. Barr had enlisted in the United States Army and served from 1970 to 1973. She was a school trained teletype operator who was an E5, or Sergeant. Because of this position she was not sent into war. Donna Barr had met her husband Dan during her time in the army. She now lives in Clallam Bay, Washington with her husband.

Works

Barr works in pencil, ink, watercolor, and silkscreen. Pfirsch ("Peach") Rommel is a colonel in the German Afrika Korps. According to Barr, some of the themes within The Desert Peach are "Love, Honor, Death and Tea, Surfing, fascism, obnoxious pilots and boyfriends, birth, love, hate, revenge, rape, child-murder, slavery, tribal customs, insanity, drug-use, prejudice, racism, death-camps, warfare, love-at-first-sight, homophobia, bad relationships, feminism, horse-training, camel-theft, fashion, marriage, euthanasia, grandchildren—etc., etc., etc." Donna Barr explains her process of creating The Desert Peach as, "I usually do a rough on scrap paper (junk mail has lots of blank backs!), happily cutting and pasting, then I copy the whole thing (so the back is clear), rearrange the copy backwards on the back of the final paper, slap in some lettering guides, flip it over on a light table, and use it as a rough guide while I ink. No penciling, and no erasing".

Her work has been translated into German, Japanese, Italian, and Croatian. Barr has created a series of handmade ornate, stitchery-covered bound sketchbooks, called the Black Manuscripts. Seattle's Cartoonists Northwest's Toonies in 1998, London Comics Creators Guild's Best Ongoing Humor Series in 1992, and the Washington Press Association's Communicator of Excellence for Fiction in 1997 and 1998. Barr appeared at the Cartoonists Northwest Association 2016 event and received a Golden Toonie Award.

References

  • AfterDead
  • Interview at Rational Magic
  • Interview at WashingtonRuralHeritage.org
  • Toonopedia The Desert Peach
  • Webtoons The Desert Peach