9 Outstanding Female Comedians Funnier Than Amy Schumer

Seriously, you can do better than Milk, Milk, Lemonade.

Kristen Schaal
Comedy Central

It’s been a rough few years for comedy, but at long last the Amy Schumer bubble is on the verge of bursting. Schumer’s rise was fast and came from nowhere—much like the majority of her sex jokes—but certain events have pushed her out of the spotlight in a curt and emotionless way—not unlike the majority of her sex jokes.

Schumer’s dominance didn’t bode well for female comedians with more to talk about than tired tropes of hooking up and 'that time of the month'. But like an airborne virus, her limited scope dominated the landscape, forcing others to fall in line or risk irrelevance.

It got to the point where Schumer was held on a proverbial pedestal and those outside the comedy world wondered why more female comics weren't exactly like her. As if it wasn't hard enough being a female in a male-heavy business, this unwarranted fascination forced women with unique voices to live up to an arbitrary archetype.

Then, joke stealing allegations and Amy’s Comedy Central series hiatus happened all at once, finally opening the public ear to the variety of voices that have always been there despite recent trends unnecessarily sidelining them.

9. Maria Bamford

Kristen Schaal
Netflix

Maria has been in the comedy game for a long time, yet is only now receiving the attention she deserves. For years she’s utilized a slew of quirky voices and off-kilter, sometimes even dark and demented characters to entertain audiences the only way she knows how. Comedy equals pain, and pain equals comedy is something that Maria instinctively knows. And if you’ve seen her act, you’ll know that is quite true.

Over the years she’s used her vocal instrument to become a tiny giant in the voice over business and has appeared in over a dozen live-action films showing off various sides of herself, all toeing the line of discomfort. However, it wasn’t until her show Lady Dynamite premiered on Netflix in 2016, that audiences truly witnessed the extent of her talents.

Part autobiographical and part absurdist sketch comedy, Lady Dynamite is a brutally honest, yet hysterical look into her personal struggles with bipolar disorder and all the other struggles of everyday life.

Contributor
Contributor

Gregory is a freelance/fiction writer, voice over artist, blogger, writing instructor, and foppish socialite currently living in the greater Buffalo, NY region. In another life he was the head writer and a featured performer in the improv group The Human Touch. His YouTube channel is called the Writers Lounge and is about... well, writing.