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Considered by many to be one of the most influential cartoonists ever, Julie Doucet created an iconic body of work in the ten short years she solely devoted herself to her trailblazing comic-book series Dirty Plotte. Her comics are densely inked and detailed with a pulsating neurosis from a decidedly female point of view that set the comic-book world on its head when the series debuted. Doucet returns to comics after a 5-year hiatus with a reworked edition of her dream journal My Most Secret Desire, complete with never-before-published material.

My Most Secret Desire is considered to be Doucet’s most innovative work, exploring the longings, pressures, and exploits of the feminine subconscious. Nightmarish tales of pregnancy, menstruation, sex changes, and boyfriends haunt Doucet’s nocturnal psyche with a feverish and surreal pitch.

From the Kirkus review: a pioneering female comics artist, Julie Doucet became famous in the late ’80s and early ’90s for her unapologetic portrayals of female sexuality and desire and her explosive, chaotic drawing style. In works like Dirty Plotte (“plotte” is French slang for a part of the female anatomy), and Lift Your Leg, My Fish Is Dead, Doucet blew the sometimes-clannish world of male graphic-artists wide open, using material from her own life to examine the female psyche.

In My Most Secret Desire, Doucet once again explores her own unconscious for material. It is an unconnected series of hectic dreams Doucet has experienced, in which she turns into a man, gives birth to struggling kittens, goes bra-shopping during the Apocalypse and launched into deep space with only her mother’s cookies to keep her company.

“I am not the type of artist who can self-analyze herself,” says Doucet. “I don’t feel I exposed myself too much. There are things I would absolutely never talk about. And I won’t tell you what they are!” This version of My Most Secret Desire is in fact a re-worked reissue of a dream journal that was published in 1995, and is being heralded by fans as a triumphant return after a five-year hiatus from comics.

“Actually, it is not a break. I quit,” notes Doucet, who’s spent the intervening years working on woodcuts, sculptures and writing. “After 12 years of comics, nothing but comics...The thing is that to be able to live off my comics I had to work quite a lot, so I didn’t have any energy to do anything else, art-wise, not even having a sketchbook. [And] I got very tired of the all-boys crowd.”

Drawn & Quarterly, hardback, 96 pages, published June 2006