Catherine Yronwode

Catherine Anna Yronwode (née Manfredi; May 12, 1947) is an American writer, editor, graphic designer, typesetter, and publisher with an extensive career in the comic book industry.

She is also a practitioner of folk magic.

Catherine Anna Manfredi was born in 1947 in San Francisco.

Her father was Joseph Manfredi, a Sicilian American abstract artist, and her mother, Liselotte Erlanger, a writer, was an Ashkenazi Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany.

She is a cousin of the composer Franz Reizenstein and the economist Otto Eckstein.

Manfredi grew up in Berkeley and Santa Monica, and traveling abroad.

She attended Shimer College in Illinois as an early entrant, but dropped out.

Returning to Berkeley, she sold the Berkeley Barb underground newspaper on the streets and catalogued rare books for her parents' bookstore.

Yronwode began writing while in her teens, contributing to science fiction fanzines during the 1960s.

She was a member of the Bay Area Astrologers Group, co-writing its weekly astrology column for an underground newspaper, San Francisco Express Times.

She produced record reviews on a freelance basis for the nascent Rolling Stone magazine, and short articles on low-tech living for the Whole Earth Catalog and Country Women magazine.

While in jail for growing marijuana, she wrote about her experiences ("Letters from Jail") for the Spokane Natural an underground newspaper.

In 1965 she left urban life for rural places.

With her mother Liselotte Glozer, Catherine co-wrote and hand-lettered the faux-medieval cookbook, My Lady's Closet Opened and the Secret of Baking Revealed by Two Gentlewomen (Glozer's Booksellers, 1969).

Describing herself as "one of those girls who took a look around at what the boys were doing", she quickly became an avid reader of Marvel Comics' Silver Age material, beginning with Fantastic Four and The Amazing Spider-Man.

Doctor Strange soon became her favourite, and when the initial series was cancelled in 1969 she gave up reading comics for several years.

The same year, she and her then-partner Peter Paskin created the joint name "Yronwode" and all of her subsequent work has been published under that surname.

She generally styles her name in lower case, as "catherine yronwode."

or even "cat ⊕ yronwode" (pronounced 'iron-wood').

The 1974 revival of Doctor Strange drew Yronwode back to comics.

While unemployed in 1977, Yronwode created a magico-religious index to the comic called the Lesser Book of the Vishanti; she later published parts of it in various small presses and it is posted on her website in updated form.

Marvel writers are said to have consulted it.

She wrote a lengthy letter to the title in 1978, which took over nearly the entire column; Yronwode's address was printed in the column; she received large amounts of fan mail, including a marriage proposal.

At this point she had separated from Paskin and was living alone in a log cabin in Missouri, so she wrote back to many of the letters and would keep in touch with many of the writers.

Yronwode began a career as a freelance magazine writer while also continuing to contribute to fanzines.

In 1980, Yronwode began work at Ken Pierce Books, editing and writing introductions to a line of comic strip reprint books.

Titles included Modesty Blaise by Peter O'Donnell and Jim Holdaway, Mike Hammer by Mickey Spillane, and The Phantom by Lee Falk.

Also in 1980 Yronwode succeeded Murray Bishoff as news reporter for Comics Buyer's Guide and began a long-running column "Fit to Print", presenting a variety of industry news, reviews, obituaries, and opinion pieces.

Tales of the Beanworld creator Larry Marder credits her positive review for his title's success.

Similarly, when Dan Brereton received a poor review from Yronwode for an early project, he felt his "promising career in comics was over".

The column, and her work with the APA-I comic-book indexing cooperative, led to freelance editing jobs at Kitchen Sink Press.

She wrote The Art of Will Eisner in 1981 and produced several other books for Kitchen Sink over the next few years.

While working at Eisner's archives in December 1981, she met Dean Mullaney, the co-founder of Eclipse Enterprises, a graphic novel publisher.

Yronwode recalled that Eisner and his wife Ann "hosted a party for me with all these comic book men I was flirting with. All these men came up; they all wanted to meet Will. One of them was Dean Mullaney, the co-owner of Eclipse Comics, a small independent publishing house. He was the most flirtatious."

As well as beginning a romantic relationship the pair also began working together; Dean and his brother Jan were looking to expand beyond graphic novels to regular comics while retaining the creator-owned ethos, and Yronwode's knowledge of comics and wide list of contacts saw her effectively become the company's editor-in-chief, starting with Destroyer Duck.

For around a year she was in the post unofficially; she and Mullaney also kept their relationship private to avoid accusations she had only got the job because they were lovers.

When Yronwode officially took over as Editor-in-Chief in October 1984, Dean Mullaney moved over to the role of publisher.

She quickly became the public face of the company at conventions and other events, and began a column called Penumbra that was printed on the inside cover of all of Eclipse's comic books, while continuing to write Fit to Print.

Penumbra would mix promotion of Eclipse's titles with industry musings and other topical comment.

She remained outspoken, often criticising the editorial and business policies of both Marvel and DC Comics.