Beyond Persepolis: a bibliographic essay on graphic novels and comics by womenThis paper provides a brief history of women and independent comics, tracing the medium's development from the 1970s underground comix movement to the present day. In the early years of independent comics, many of the women creating them were consciously reacting to an overwhelmingly male-dominated profession. There was a high degree of shock value in these early works. As time went on the comics still tended towards the autobiographical, but storytelling gained importance.