<
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/19/opinions/trina-robbins-death-comics-feminist-icon-schwartz/index.html>
"Traveling between New York and Los Angeles in the 1960s, Trina Robbins
hobnobbed with rock stars like Jim Morrison and Joni Mitchell, who even sang
about her in “Ladies of the Canyon.” “Trina takes her paints and her
threads/And she weaves a pattern all her own,” sang Mitchell.
Robbins, arguably the most influential female comic book artist in history,
died on April 10 in San Francisco following a stroke, at age 85. As a
groundbreaking artist, writer, editor and activist, she helped reshape comics
into a more inclusive place for women, as well as other underrepresented
voices.
Together with Art Spiegelman, Harvey Pekar and Robert Crumb (with whom she
would clash) she helped redefine what comics could be, as well as by and for
whom. Born in Brooklyn in 1938 to Jewish immigrants from Belarus and raised in
Queens, Robbins grew up reading comics but drawing fashion. By her mid-twenties
she’d found success as a dress designer, opening her own boutique in the trendy
East Village in 1966.
Robbins started dabbling in comics around 1969, creating a handful of strips
for the newspaper “The East Village Other,” as well as designing the iconic
costume for the horror-camp heroine Vampirella for Warren Publishing.
It wasn’t until she moved to San Francisco in 1970 that she became a dedicated
comic book artist. She joined the burgeoning underground “comix” scene, which
eschewed superheroes in favor of real-world topics like sex, drugs, racial and
economic inequality, systematic injustice, urban decay, environmentalism and
politics.
But comics were a boy’s club, an industry that had always been male-dominated
and by the 1960s had become male-oriented (this wasn’t always the case), even
in the indies. So together with cartoonist Barbara “Willy” Mendes, in July 1970
Robbins published “It Ain’t Me, Babe,” a one-shot anthology that was the first
comic completely made by women. The cover read “womens liberation,” above a
protest march of comic icons like Olive Oyl, Wonder Woman, Mary Marvel and
Little Lulu.
It reportedly sold 40,000 copies, a massive hit for an independently produced
comic. With the publisher’s encouragement, Robbins then co-created “Wimmen’s
Comix” in 1972, the first comic book series edited, written and drawn entirely
by women. Published more or less annually, it was also the longest running,
lasting until 1992.
Unflinchingly feminist, the series included landmarks like “Sandy Comes Out,”
the first explicitly lesbian story in comics."
Via Kenny Chaffin.
RIP,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
