Kate Worley
| Kate Worley | |
|---|---|
| Born | March 16, 1958[1] Belleville, Illinois, U.S. |
| Died | June 6, 2004 (aged 46) |
| Nationality | American |
| Area | Writer |
Notable works | Omaha the Cat Dancer |
| Collaborators | Reed Waller |
| kateworley.com | |
Kathleen Louise Worley (March 16, 1958 – June 6, 2004) was an American comic book writer, best known for her work on Omaha the Cat Dancer, a sexually explicit anthropomorphic animal comic book series about a female stripper. Worley was also a musician, and a writer and performer for the science fiction comedy radio program Shockwave Radio Theater. She died of lung cancer.
Biography
[edit]Worley was born in Belleville, Illinois on March 16, 1958.[2] After moving to Minneapolis, Minnesota in the 1970s, she became one of the early contributors the Shockwave Radio Theater there.[3][4]
While in the process of divorcing from her husband,[2] she and cartoonist and musician Reed Waller began a romantic and professional relationship.[5] Moving in together, they wrote songs and performed, both as a duet and with local bands, as well as being popular figures at Minicon and other science fiction conventions.[3]
In the mid 1980s, Waller and Worley began collaborating on Omaha the Cat Dancer, which had originated as a strip by Waller in the local fanzine Vootie,[2] before evolving into a nationally distributed comic book series published by Kitchen Sink Press. Four pages into issue #2, Waller suffered writer's block, and Worley offered "a few tentative suggestions about directions for the storyline, new characters, anything she could think of that might help...."[3] At his invitation, she became the series' writer, enhancing its characterization and themes.[3] In 1988, Waller identified them both as bisexual in the letters column of the series.[6][page needed][7]
Omaha went on hiatus when Worley and Waller were both injured in a car accident; this hiatus was greatly extended when they had an acrimonious parting, which made their attempts at working together difficult.[2] During this time, Worley wrote comics for various publishers, including Mulkon Empire for Tekno Comix, The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest for Dark Horse, Roger Rabbit for Disney, and a "Year One" annual issue of Wonder Woman.[2][8] She married comic book writer Jim Vance,[3] with whom she moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and had a son and daughter.[2]
In 2002, she and Waller reached a deal with Fantagraphics to reprint Omaha, with an additional 100 pages.[2] However, she was diagnosed with cancer, and she died June 6, 2004.[3] Vance and Waller would later complete the Omaha series together, based on notes left by Worley.
References
[edit]- ↑ "Kathleen L Worley, June 6, 2004". United States Social Security Death Index (registration required) at FamilySearch. Accessed April 4, 2013.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Gustines, George Gene (March 27, 2020). "Overlooked No More: Kate Worley, a Pioneer Writer of Erotic Comics". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved March 28, 2020.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Biography of Kate Worley". CatDancer Corporation. Archived from the original on May 2, 2010. Retrieved June 4, 2010.
- ↑ "Annotation of Shockwave Silver". Dave Romm. Archived from the original on February 5, 2012. Retrieved July 12, 2016.
- ↑ Waller, Reed (1995) [1987]. "Introduction to 'Omaha'". The Collected "Omaha" the Cat Dancer. Fantagraphics Books. ISBN 978-1-56097-161-0.
- ↑ Reed Waller (w, a), Kate Worley (w), Reed Waller (a). Omaha the Cat Dancer, no. 10 (May 1988). Kitchen Sink Press.
- ↑ Booker, M. Keith, ed. (2010). Encyclopedia of Comic Books and Graphic Novels. Vol. 2: M–Z. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood. p. 447–448. ISBN 978-0-313-35747-3. OCLC 705929520.
- ↑ "GCD :: Story Search Results". Grand Comics Database. Retrieved March 28, 2020.
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