Originally published in Audrey magazine
Apr/May 2009

Angry Little Girls” creator Lela Lee releases of her fifth book and maybe - finally - a TV show

In a black and white three-panel drawing, a slightly bobble-headed girl and boy stare at each other. POW! A fist lands on the boy’s nose.

“Ouch! What’s that for?”

“That’s for all the stupid shit you’re going to do in the future,” the girl solemnly replies.

This is not a character from an earnest “Love Is…” comic strip in the Sunday paper. This is Kim, a quick-tempered Korean American with a foul mouth and Lela Lee’s original Angry Little Asian Girl.

First created by Lee almost 15 years ago when she was still a sophomore at UC-Berkeley, Kim and the rest of the Angry Little Girls represent those who are “disenchanted, crazy, fresh, gloomy and all around angry,” according to its website. The sharp and sassy comic strip has amassed a large following of teenage girls (and full-grown adults) over the years, and Lee’s appearances now garner crowds of dedicated fans who love her books, bags, and all things Angry.

But while dozens recently lined up to see her at a February book signing at UCLA for her latest book, “Angry Little Girls In Love,” Lee was once kicked off that same campus over 10 years ago for setting up shop at a book festival without permission and selling her then-unknown Angry Little Girls merchandise.

“It was mainly just a box of shirts out of the back of a truck,” says Lee, now a successful actor and cartoonist. “I was only two years out of college, spending money I didn’t have. I used my credit card to make 300 Angry Little Girl shirts and sold them for $20 [apiece] to my friends, like, ‘Will you please buy this? I don’t know why I made them.’” Hawking her wares at local festivals and fairs around the city, Lee was a mobile, one-woman street entrepreneur, equipped with a box of shirts and a lot of enthusiasm.

“I didn’t ask permission, I would just set up my table by the bathroom,” she says. That method earned her attention from a budding audience – and from security at a UCLA book festival, who asked her to leave. Chances are, neither she nor security thought she’d be back, years later, for a book signing as a bestselling cartoonist with an army of groupies who adore all of her Angry Little Girls.

The simplistic, yet biting and often hilarious illustrations were first created to vent her frustrations with the sexist and racist images she once encountered at an animation festival. “Five Angry Episodes” was the result, a short video comprised of a series of still drawings on butcher paper, starring Angry Little Asian Girl Kim and her equally disgruntled friends. Lee soon discovered that her work resonated with others more strongly than she could have ever imagined.

“It really struck a nerve with women who weren’t taught to be expressive, who were raised to just be polite and nice,” she says. After a screening at the American Cinematheque in Los Angeles, Lee, waiting nervously outside in the lobby, was approached by at least 20 people who told her that she had captured “exactly what [they were] feeling.” Thus, an angry little universe was born.

Together, the short film and Angry Little Girls t-shirts eventually gave way to the eponymous website, to which a new strip is added every week. Featuring Angry Kim, Deborah the Disenchanted Princess, Wanda the Fresh Little Soul Sistah, Maria the Crazy Little Latina, and gloomy Xyla, the first Angry Little Girls book was published in 2005. With an initial run of 15,000, it sold out four times over in its first two months. Now on her fifth book, Lee still doesn’t cease to get excited about her characters’ new quips and adventures.

“When I was drawing [the latest book], I’d get this feeling of mischievous glee, and that’s when I know I’m doing it right,” she says. “Love is actually very flawed, and a lot of relationships are flawed, and I wanted to bring light to that.”

Next to the very first book in the series, Lee says “Angry Little Girls In Love” is her favorite one. Her audience seems to agree. The Angry Little Girls Facebook page, which boasts almost 2,000 fans, contains only raves about the newest addition. “I love Angry Little Girls!” comments one reader. “Reading through the valentine [sic] book reminded me of when my husband and I were dating! We were totally cracking up!”

Traveling across the country for about half a dozen speaking engagements and book signings a year, such positive feedback is encouraging to the cartoonist, whose work is sometimes isolating. In real life, Lee sounds surprisingly reserved. The now-married mother of a toddler is modest about her work and uncomfortable with interviews. (“I think they are like having a root canal,” she later admits.)

“I work by myself, so I don’t really interact with people,” she says. “When I meet people at a book signing and they love this one particular comic or their sister is just like this one character, it’s awesome. It’s awesome that they like my work.”

Lee says she taught herself how to draw comics by checking out books from the Beverly Hills library, setting aside her initial college creation for two years while she honed her cartooning skills. During her junior year at Berkeley, she took time off from college to try an acting career in Los Angeles. But after taking a few classes and getting her feet wet in a few plays and student films, Lee returned to college – and cartooning – with fresh, angry material. (She would later return to LA and the acting scene as a series regular on the short-lived Sci Fi series, “Tremors.”)

“Some people [in the entertainment industry] think you’re not smart, that maybe you’ll sleep with someone for a part,” she says. “It’s tough navigating the industry for a young woman.”

That sense of being an outsider – of feeling ostracized, dissatisfied, or taken advantage of – shows up often in her work.

“Boy will be boys,” says Bruce, a recurring character who is in love with Kim (the same one who received a punch in the mouth).

“I do not accept your male appeal to biology,” she replies.

“I’m an idiot?” he offers after a pause.

“That I accept.”

Growing up, she says it was hard to find comic strips that reflected her reality. “[Comic strip characters] were all either boys or animals,” says Lee, who was a fan of “Peanuts” and “Calvin and Hobbes.” Though “Cathy” was one of the few female comic strips available at the time, the white, middle-class thirty-something title character was too far out of demographic for young Lela. “I never really related to her because she was already older than me.”

The only Asian girl in the middle of an almost all-white neighborhood, Lee says she was taught to bottle up her emotions. While she was in junior high, her strict Korean parents advised her to give up art and focus on her academics (which she did, until college). And when faced with annoyance or aggravation, “I was always told to ‘Just be nice,’” she says.

“Asian women aren’t allowed to talk back, or be in any way strong, I guess. But your body, your life, your relationships suffer [because of it]. It’s like this secret monster that becomes bigger than it needs to be.”

That “secret monster” is what fueled much of her early work, and is what makes her so beloved to her fans today. While Angry Little Girls has yet to be picked up for syndication in newspapers (not for lack of trying), the shared sentiment of displacement connects Lee’s audience beyond just Asian American or female readers.

Once I was at a speaking engagement at a college in the Bay Area, and there was this African American student who came up to me and said he liked the one where Wanda asks Kim, ‘Are you Asian or are you American?’ and she answers, ‘Neither, I’m just angry,’” recounts Lee. “And I thought, ‘Wow, he feels the same way I feel about being in between cultures and fitting in.’”

“It’s gratifying to find an outlet,” she says. “Once an issue that is angering is pointed out, and pointed out with irony and humor, it diffuses it and makes the situation less ugly and less big. My artwork really healed my pain, and I like that it’s helping heal others. It’s OK to be angry, and hopefully you’ll laugh about it too.”

In one of the most touching instances of that Lee has encountered, she recalls Jana, a woman in her thirties, who attended an Angry Little Girls event, but left early, looking tired. Lee says she remembers Jana coming back in a wheelchair on the second day of her scheduled appearance just to say, “Your book really helped me to battle cancer, because it allowed me to be angry.”

With such a devoted fanbase, it is unsurprising that Lela Lee has been approached to turn Angry Little Girls into a television show, time and again. And, one may finally be in the works, but only after a series of initial setbacks that has made her cautious about promising any information to the public.

Warner Bros. first contacted Lee over 10 years ago with the notion of turning Angry Little Girls into an animated show – the only catch was that they wanted to “take out the Asian girl and make it live action.” Lee said no. Instead, she decided to pursue publishing books in an environment where “the public was supporting me all the way. If I change [the characters] for a show, it’s completely changing my DNA, changing my work.”

Then, in 2005, the Oxygen network approached Lee with the same idea. And while rumor had it that Jennifer Love Hewitt and MAD TV’s Alex Borstein were initially attached to the project – Lee says Borstein drafted a script for the show – the drawn-out development slowly sputtered to a halt a few years later, which Lee chalked up to bad timing (Oxygen was acquired by NBC in late 2007). Which is fine, she says.

“When I hear a no, it makes me work harder. Adversity actually works in my favor, because I’m like a dog with a bone.” And besides, the network “wanted to change what one of the characters looked like and I nearly had a heart attack.”

So with the word out now that FOX is in talks with Lee to develop an Angry Little Girls primetime animated series, she is – understandably – keeping mum.

“I don’t know, I don’t want to jinx it,” she says. “Will talking about it jinx it? I don’t know. I don’t know if I can talk about it.” What Lee will reveal is that she and “The Simpsons” showrunner Josh Weinstein have been working on it for two months, and she is “very optimistic.” A friend of hers, she calls the work relationship with Weinstein a “natural matchup.”

And unlike the other networks before it, FOX isn’t asking for any changes – so far. With five books and a healthy line of merchandise, this time Lee has brand loyalty backing her up.

“It feels like they appreciate [Angry Little Girls] for what it is,” she says. “They’re leaving the title, the characters as-is,” quickly adding, “But it’s always risky.” Whether the pilot presentation will lead to a primetime slot alongside “Family Guy” and “The Simpsons” is uncertain, but Lee – and her fans – are keeping their fingers crossed.

“I just don’t want to disappoint [my fans],” says Lee, who receives at least three emails a month asking about a possible show. “I’m really reluctant to say anything other than I’m hopeful.”