Abstract
Dori Seda was an alternative cartoonist who put out much of her fiction in the 1980s. She was at the forefront of a wave of autobiographical comics that began to proliferate throughout comic book stores in the eighties and early nineties. Her work often dealt with the controversial subjects like the libido of an aging woman or the swinging scene of San Francisco or the socially unacceptable ways dogs act around their owners, and her later art often called for political action. Dori Seda passed away in a car accident after 1988. Though some scholars have written about how influential Dori was on the field of autobiographical comics, no monographs on the woman exist. This thesis attempts to rectify that issue as it offers not only substantial historical, philosophical, and sociological perspectives on the woman’s comics but also crafts a mostly linear portrait of her life and death significantly based on previously unpublished archival material.