

The first time I ever read anything about
Marisa Acocella Marchetto was in the spring of 2006 when
USA Today health reporter Liz Szabo wrote a wonderful cover feature about the collision of cancer and comics, "
Laughing in the face of cancer."
Szabo spent most of the interview talking to creative types from the late Miriam Engleberg (
Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person) to Brian Fies (
Mom's Cancer) and Evan Handler (
Sex in the City,
Californication) about the surprising number of auto-bio works about fighting cancer with jokes. Surprisingly, Marchetto's
Cancer Vixen was barely mentioned, save for scant details about a fall release by Alfred A. Knopf.
Of course,
Cancer Vixen was the one book out of them all that really caught my attention, probably due to Marchetto's "ink-stained fingers" pedigree as a veteran cartoonist whose work has been featured in
The New Yorker, the late
Talk and
Glamour. Finally, after finding a copy -- it wasn't easy, even in Austin -- I understood why my Spider-Sense was tingling...
Cancer Vixen is about
so much more than cancer.
It's a pretty funny story about the life of a female cartoonist working in the trenches of the media capital of the world, a place where rejection is so commonplace that a .250 batting average for the week (three out of 12 cartoons accepted by a client like
The New Yorker in a given week) is
beyond outstanding.

At its core, however,
Cancer Vixen is a very warm and entertaining love story, an all-too rare occurrence in the world of graphic novels. As the love story begins to percolate -- marriage is in the air -- our heroine learns she has breast cancer. And that's when this smart 212-page story really takes off!
It's rare when a book so inspires the fan in me that I actually savor the experience of reading it late into the night, next to my warm Mrs. CEO. And laugh...
The first of this two-part interview is devoted to the comics side of our Cancer Vixen, while the second half, appearing on AOL's new breast cancer awareness and support blog,
United For Pink, discusses Marisa's post-breast cancer fight, the poor diagnosis for folks without health insurance and self-esteem.
Comics Alliance: It's been about a year since Cancer Vixen was released by Knopf, and I'm a bit disappointed, but not terribly surprised, the comics world hasn't embraced your wonderful book like it should have. Do you feel the same way?Marisa: A little. But I was nominated for Best Graphic Novel of the Year by the
National Cartoonists Society (NCS), which made up for it. Sorta. Why aren't you surprised, Wayne?