friday, july 16, 2010 TV PREVIEW


‘D.C. Cupcakes’ The reality show had a rich chance for cultural commentary about the fetish objects boutique baked goods have become. Instead, it serves up little that viewers haven’t seen before. C4


Style ABCDE C S THEATER


One night only? Not even. Poor ticket sales mean “Dreamgirls” will skip D.C. leg. C2


GALLERIES


‘See something? Say something!’ The richness of Metro Lady’s caution wasn’t lost on Gery De Smet in his sharp, sardonic Katzen exhibition. C8


RELIABLE SOURCE


Paul Wharton:


‘Housewife’? The stylist and TV personality says “D.C. is the place to be these days.” Hmm . . . C2


3@washingtonpost.com/discussions Carolyn Hax tackles your questions about life. Noon • Lisa de Moraes chats about the world of television. 1 p.m. AMERICA’S NEXT GREAT CARTOONIST FAMILY PHOTO


THEN AND NOW: Robyn Deane, once known as Bob, was married for 17 years to a sister of Gov. Robert F. McDonnell’s wife, Maureen.


COURTESY OF OLIVIA WALCH SARAH L. VOISIN/THE WASHINGTON POST


A fight for relative progress


Governor’s former in-law puts a familiar face on Virginia’s LGBT issues


by Anita Kumar


richmond — Robyn Deane, dressed in a red raincoat, jeans and heels, glanced at her handwritten notes be- fore peering at the crowd gathered outside Virginia’s Capitol to promote the rights of gay and transgender state workers. For years, Deane, a man who is in the process of becoming of woman, had considered revealing her lengthy but largely unknown connection to Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R). She had told no one that this would finally be the moment she went public. “I am father to three of the present


governor’s nephews and nieces,” she announced to the more than 100 peo- ple trying to shield themselves from the rain. “Whoa,” someone muttered. “I’m also uncle to five of his chil- dren, so that puts me kind of close,” Deane continued. “He is my former brother-in-law. . . . He witnessed the impact that all of this coming out can have on one’s life. He had a front-row- center seat.” Deane’s declaration was the first step in her second coming out, this time as an activist attempting to lever- age her past association to McDonnell to promote a cause that has become dear to her: the advancement of gay and transgender rights. In particular, Deane wants Virginia and national lawmakers to pass legislation that pre- vents discrimination in the workplace on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. She also wants to per-


deane continued on C8 AMERICA’S #1 COMEDY! PLAYING NOW © 2009 UNIVERSAL STUDIOS And the winner is ...


Young Va. woman tops comic contest with triumphant ‘Quest’


by Michael Cavna A


fter three months of comic plot twists, the final panel has arrived. The Washington Post put out the call in May in search of “America’s


Next Great Cartoonist,” and 500 aspiring comic artists responded. Now that readers, judges and celebrity critics have waded through talking gators and flaming manatees and dead pets — “Oh my!” — the final five cartoonists have been culled to one. Amer- ica’s Next Great Cartoonist is . . . Olivia Walch, a college student from Fair-


fax Station whose single-panel comic, “Imo- gen Quest,” received the most votes in both the first and second rounds of reader voting. She is the youngest of the 10 finalists, and the only woman. A rising senior at the College of William


and Mary, Walch turns 21 this weekend. Her first birthday present just came early. “This contest has opened up a whole new world for me,” enthused Walch, a math and biophysics double-major who says she’s eager to come up with the requisite month’s worth of new strips for publication in Style in Au- gust. She also admits that, yeah, she’s pretty stoked about winning the $1,000 prize, too. Walch’s winning entry is a gag-cartoon comic that relies heavily on metahumor. In “Imogen Quest,” her whimsically rendered people seem to be deconstructing the accept- ed notions of a comic strip even as they are populating one. Walch says she tries to figure out what the


natural punch line of her cartoon might be — then she veers in another comic direction en- tirely. Many readers responded positively to her playful metacomedy: She received more than 1,000 votes in each of the two rounds of voting. In contest polling in June and July, readers


submitted nearly 8,000 total votes. The work of the 10 finalists was critiqued by a dozen top comics-industry professionals, including


winner continued on C7 O


Science major delights in discovering a most rewarding sideline


by Michael Cavna


livia Walch ordinarily would have seen the announcement for a car- toon contest. As an avid comics-and- crosswords reader, she misses little


in the middle of the Style section. Except that in May, while The Post was announcing its contest for “America’s Next Great Cartoon- ist,” Walch happened to be sitting obliviously at Oxford, temple-deep in Waugh. Walch, a rising senior at the College of Wil- liam and Mary, was completing a semester abroad. The math and biophysics double ma- jor recalls being in Oxford University’s Eve- lyn Waugh Room, reading the great writer’s works and sitting beneath an imposing painting of Waugh himself when comic inspi- ration struck. Her dad, back in Fairfax Sta- tion, had told her about the contest. “You should do it!” he urged. Walch had been seriously drawing car- toons for only three years — topical cartoons for William and Mary’s campus paper, the Flat Hat — but she decided she’d give the con- test a shot. She created a cartoon called “Imogen


JAHI CHIKWENDIU/THE WASHINGTON POST


“I’ve never seriously sat down and considered being a


syndicated cartoonist.” — Olivia Walch


on washingtonpost.com


ONLINE DISCUSSION Olivia Walch will answer questions live on video at 1 p.m. Friday. To chat,


explore Walch’s work and see photos and video of the winner in her home, visit washingtonpost.com/greatcartoonist.


Quest” specially for the contest, and she was floored when it won. “I’ve never seriously sat down and consid- ered being a syndicated cartoonist as my ca- reer,” says Walch, a native of Princeton, N.J., whose family moved to Virginia when she was 11. “In my mind, I’ll go on to a doctorate in science and perhaps mathematics. But this contest has opened up a whole new world.” When Walch received the news she’d won, she was as on-the-go as ever in pursuit of her studies. Reached Tuesday evening in New York, she was taking a break from a computa- tional cell biology class at a Cold Spring Har- bor molecular biology lab. Thrilled, she im- mediately called her mother and father, whom she calls “the most supportive parents in the universe.”


Did she inherit her cartooning talent from walch continued on C7


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