Early writing Yronwode began writing while in her teens, contributing to
science fiction fanzines during the 1960s. She was a member of the Bay Area Astrologers Group, co-writing its weekly astrology column for an underground newspaper,
San Francisco Express Times. She produced record reviews on a freelance basis for the nascent
Rolling Stone magazine, and short articles on
low-tech living for the
Whole Earth Catalog and
Country Women magazine. While in jail for growing marijuana, she wrote about her experiences ("Letters from Jail") for the
Spokane Natural an
underground newspaper. With her mother Liselotte Glozer, Catherine co-wrote and hand-lettered the faux-medieval
cookbook, ''My Lady's Closet Opened and the Secret of Baking Revealed'' by Two Gentlewomen (Glozer's Booksellers, 1969). Describing herself as "one of those girls who took a look around at what the boys were doing", she quickly became an avid reader of
Marvel Comics'
Silver Age material, beginning with
Fantastic Four and
The Amazing Spider-Man.
Doctor Strange soon became her favourite, and when the initial series was cancelled in 1969 she gave up reading comics for several years.
Comics career Early comics work The 1974 revival of
Doctor Strange drew Yronwode back to comics. While unemployed in 1977, Yronwode created a
magico-religious index to the comic called the
Lesser Book of the Vishanti; she later published parts of it in various small presses and it is posted on her website in updated form. Marvel writers are said to have consulted it. She wrote a lengthy letter to the title in 1978, which took over nearly the entire column; Yronwode's address was printed in the column, and she received large amounts of fan mail, including a
marriage proposal. At this point she had separated from Paskin and was living alone in a
log cabin in
Missouri, so she wrote back to many of the letters and would keep in touch with many of the writers.
Fit to Print Also in 1980 Yronwode succeeded
Murray Bishoff as news reporter for ''
Comics Buyer's Guide and began a long-running column "Fit to Print," presenting a variety of industry news, reviews, obituaries, and opinion pieces. Tales of the Beanworld'' creator
Larry Marder credits her positive review for his title's success. Similarly, when
Dan Brereton received a poor review from Yronwode for an early project, he felt his "promising career in comics was over." The column, and her work with the
APA-I comic-book indexing cooperative, led to freelance editing jobs at
Kitchen Sink Press. She wrote
The Art of Will Eisner in 1981 and produced several other books for Kitchen Sink over the next few years.
Eclipse Comics . While working at Eisner's archives in December 1981, she met
Dean Mullaney, the co-founder of
Eclipse Enterprises, a
graphic novel publisher. Yronwode recalled that Eisner and his wife Ann "hosted a party for me with all these comic book men I was flirting with. All these men came up; they all wanted to meet Will. One of them was Dean Mullaney, the co-owner of Eclipse Comics, a small independent publishing house. He was the most flirtatious." As well as beginning a romantic relationship, the pair also began working together; Dean and his brother Jan were looking to expand beyond graphic novels to regular comics while retaining the
creator-owned ethos, and Yronwode's knowledge of comics and wide list of contacts saw her effectively become the company's editor-in-chief, starting with
Destroyer Duck. She was in the post unofficially for around a year; she and Mullaney also kept their relationship private to avoid accusations she had only gotten the job because they were lovers. Through a mixture of a booming industry, a growing creator-owned movement, Dean Mullaney's business acumen, and Yronwode's intricate knowledge of the market, the company published numerous award-winning titles, including
Scott McCloud's
Zot!,
Mark Evanier's
The DNAgents and
Alan Moore's
Miracleman, as well as importing numerous titles from the
United Kingdom and
Japan for the American market. In 1983, Yronwode won an
Inkpot Award, given for lifetime achievement in comics and related areas. Yronwode and the cartoonist
Trina Robbins co-wrote
Women and the Comics in 1985; the book was a history of female comics creators. As the first book on this subject, its publication was noted both by the mainstream press and the fan press. Yronwode was writing another non-fiction book, a biography of
Steve Ditko, but the work was lost when Eclipse's offices were flooded in February 1986. Yronwode covered the events - which included herself and Mullaney losing most of their possessions when their house also flooded - in
Fit to Print and
Penumbra columns. The events would be alluded to in a tongue-in-cheek framing sequence Yronwode wrote for
Miracleman #8. With the comic market contracting in the late 1980s, Eclipse developed a new line of non-fiction, non-sports
trading cards, edited by Yronwode. Controversial political subjects such as the
Iran-Contra scandal, the
Savings and Loan crisis, the
AIDS epidemic, and the
Kennedy Assassination, as well as
true crime accounts of
serial killers,
mass murderers, the
mafia, and
organized crime were covered in these card sets. Yronwode was widely interviewed in the media about her role in their creation. In 1993, Yronwode and Mullaney divorced, at which point the company's finances disintegrated, leading to bankruptcy for the company in 1995.
Legal cases During her time at Eclipse, Yronwode was involved in three court cases related to
free speech/
free expression under the First Amendment. • In the 1986
Illinois v. Correa obscenity case, which led to the founding of the
Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, Yronwode was an expert witness for the defense. • In 1992, the convicted
serial killer Kenneth Bianchi, one-half of the pair known as the
Hillside Stranglers, sued Yronwode for
USD$8.5 million for having an image of his face depicted on a trading card; he claimed his face was his trademark. The judge dismissed the case after ruling that, if Bianchi had been using his face as a trademark when he was killing women, he would not have tried to hide it from the police. • Also in 1992, Eclipse was a plaintiff when
Nassau County, New York, seized a crime-themed trading card series of theirs under a county ordinance prohibiting sales of certain trading cards to minors. The case, in which Yronwode testified and the
American Civil Liberties Union provided Eclipse's representation, reached the
2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. It ruled against the county, overturning the ordinance.
Claypool Comics Following the end of Eclipse, Yronwode joined
Claypool Comics. In 1998, she was joined at Claypool by Tyagi Nagasiva. They married in 2000, at which time he changed his name to Nagasiva Bryan W. Yronwode. Both Yronwodes continued to work for Claypool until that company ceased print publication in 2007.
Other work During the 1990s, Yronwode was a staff editor and contributor to
Organic Gardening Magazine and wrote ''The California Gardener's Book of Lists'' (Taylor, 1998). Other subjects she has covered include
collectibles, popular culture, the worldwide use of charms and talismans, African American
hoodoo, and other
folklore subjects. She runs the websites luckymojo.com, herbmagic.com, southern-spirits.com, and missionaryindependent.org, which deal with these and other topics, including comic books. She is the co-proprietor, with her husband Nagasiva Yronwode, of the Lucky Mojo Curio Company, an occult shop, spiritual supply manufactory, book publishing firm, and internet radio network for which she writes, edits, and produces graphic label art. She is on the board of the Yronwode Institution for the Preservation and Popularization of Indigenous Ethnomagicology (YIPPIE), a 501(c)3 not-for-profit foundation that archives the material culture of 19th and 20th century folk magic and divination. Since 2006, she has been a pastor at Missionary Independent Spiritual Church. Under the imprints of the Lucky Mojo Curio Company, Missionary Independent Spiritual Church, and YIPPIE, the Yronwodes edit and publish books by a variety of other authors as well as their own works. Extensive interviews with the Yronwodes can be found in Christine Wicker's survey of early 21st-century magical practitioners,
Not in Kansas Anymore, and in Carolyn Morrow Long's academic history of 20th-century occult shops,
Spiritual Merchants: Religion, Magic, and Commerce. ==Personal life==