N. Leigh Dunlap’s Morgan Calabrese is an underground strip that owes most of its visual style to Garry Trudeau — it has the dry-witted talking-heads appeal of the early Doonesbury. Dunlap is a more evocative draftsman than Trudeau is, however; she’s looser, sketchier, more suggestive. Her protagonist, a young, insecure, hot-tempered lesbian named Morgan, is an everyman in the tradition of the great comic strip characters. Like them, she even has a neat visual flourish that instantly identifies her — a slouch-hat that she never removes. I think she’s a character on par with Popeye, or Li’1 Abner, or Charlie Brown. If she weren’t a lesbian (and therefore controversial), she’d probably be worth millions in merchandising by now....
She also has a sense of humor about the more benign aspects of lesbian feminism as well. An early strip details Morgan’s frustration with one of the teammates on her softball team, who’s against the idea of umpires because they’re “hierarchical- patriarchal.” “And another thing,” this woman continues, “what’s all this ‘opposing team’ crap? Women, they are our sistersl”

Morgan Calabrese is a nearly perfect blend of wit and wisdom, which makes it something of a miracle when you consider its political content. It’s certainly the truest comic strip about gay people I’ve seen, because it gives us gay people as they are; it doesn’t dress them up as TV characters or idealized paragons. Morgan has trouble with monogamy — she drifts from lover to lover. Phil comes to see sexual activity as liberating, even in the age of AIDS. Lesbians gather and exalt in their political power. These are not the kinds of images straight people are going to find soothing in a comic strip. But N. Leigh Dunlap’s disarming humanity is bound to win them over. It’s a strange thing to say about a cartoonist, but she keeps her characters vital and likable by not allowing them to become cartoons.