'Strip Joint'.
Carol Lay grew up in California, where she had a pretty dull and isolated childhood. In 1970, she went to the University of California in Los Angeles, where she discovered sex, drugs, Frank Zappa and Zap Comix. She graduated in Fine Arts and started drawing comics herself, which were published in underground comix magazines by Last Gasp and Rip Off Press, and later by Kitchen Sink Press and Fantagraphics. In the late 1970s, she met other struggling cartoonists, like Matt Groening and Byron Werner. To earn a living, Lay worked as an advertising illustrator and did various jobs for mainstream comic companies such as Western Publishing, DC Comics ('The Oz-Wonderland Wars') and Marvel Comics.
'Story Minute': 'Misfortune Hunter'.
Lay eventually quit the advertising industry, to be able to do more of her own work. After doing five pages of comics for the L.A. Weekly, she decided to make her own weekly comic. This became 'Story Minute' (1992), which has since been published in Hong Kong and Japan as well as in the US. Many of the 'Story Minute' strips have been collected in the books 'Strip Joint' and 'Joy Ride'. Lay's work is featured in The Village Voice, Entertainment Weekly, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, Mad Magazine and Worth Magazine. Since 2010, she has also been drawing stories featuring Matt Groening's 'The Simpsons' for Bongo Comics. Lay has made commercial comics for Mattel and provided storyboards for music videos and feature films ('Top Secret', 'Back to the Beach', among others).
On 16 June 2012, Lay was one of several cartoonists paying tribute to Matt Groening's 'Life in Hell', after its final episode appeared in print. In 2019, Lay contributed to Diane Noomin's 'Drawing Power: Women's Stories of Sexual Violence, Harassment, and Survival' (Harry N. Abrams, 2019).
'Simpsons Comics' #190.