“The quickest way to drive yourself insane is to work at home,” says Julia Wertz. Which is why, in January 2010, she and a few other cartoonists formed Pizza Island, an all-female cartoonists’ collective based in a Greenpoint studio. The six members will be speaking on a panel at this weekend’s Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art’s annual festival, a historically male-heavy event featuring small presses, independent comics, and emerging artists. No doubt they will be stressing the joys of working en masse: “Getting inspired by what the others do,” says Lisa Hanawalt, “getting input on things I’m struggling with and, most important, making a lot of really stupid jokes.” We asked each for a self-portrait and to give thoughts about their co-Islanders.

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