Dori Seda

Who was Dori Seda?

Dorthea Antonette "Dori" Seda was an artist best known for her underground comix work of the 1980s. Her comics combined exaggerated fantasy and ribald humor with documentation of her life in the Mission District of San Francisco, California.

Seda was originally a painter and ceramics artist, graduating from in Illinois State University with a B.A. in art. To pursue her interest in comics, she took a job as a bookkeeper at the San Francisco publisher Last Gasp. Her first published comics work appeared in Robert Crumb's anthology magazine Weirdo in 1981. She was subsequently published in Wimmen's Comix, San Francisco Comic Book, Viper, Yellow Silk, Prime Cuts, Cannibal Romance, Weird Smut Comix, Tits & Clits, and her solo book Lonely Nights Comics.

A heavy smoker who suffered from emphysema, she may also have contracted silicosis from her ceramics materials. Seda died at age 37 from respiratory failure after catching the flu.

Her work has been collected in the book Dori Stories, which also includes memorial tributes, including the story "Dori Bangs" by Bruce Sterling, which imagines a future marriage between her and music critic Lester Bangs.