This Portland Artist Launched a MAD Magazine For Women

Friday Hangs—a local illustrator, filmmaker and puppeteer—is striving to keep alive a love of print in a publication world that has increasingly turned digital.

With her newly launched art and culture magazine, Friday, she also plans to move beyond the misogyny she sees in her favorite humor magazines.

"There's something really special about holding a magazine in your hands," Hangs told WW. "Smelling the paper. Sitting down with something other than a screen in front of your face. My favorite magazines growing up were humor magazines like MAD and National Lampoon, but it always confused me that women were the butt of many of the jokes within their pages."

Friday, Hangs' newest endeavor, is a quarterly print-only magazine that aims to showcase a women-centric curation of local art and writing. Issues will include interviews with "artists, interesting and weird people," a Hunk of the Month column, comics, illustrations and other off-beat content.

"I really get a lot of joy and inspiration out of watching people be people and the absurdities of everyday life," Hangs says. "People are so funny when they don't mean to be."

So far one issue of Friday has been published, and the second issue comes out next month. Hangs is hoping that funds raised through a Kickstarter campaign will help front the printing price of future issues, allow her to compensate contributors and get the publication on shelves at local stores.

She sees Friday as filling an important niche in Portland's independent art and publishing scene.

"The DIY zine-makers of yesterday have stepped up their game and are producing exciting and groundbreaking publications," Hangs writes on the magazine's Kickstarter page. "Even with all this progress, I have found that there's still a need for a female-run magazine that taps into the lowbrow, raw art and weirdo scene with an unbridled curiosity in the oddities of modern and past life."

Through her Kickstarter, Hangs' goal is to raise $10,000. Early contributors get their pick of issues of the magazine, shirts, pins, and, of course, a beach towel printed entirely with butts.