Broken Frontier

Trina Robbins is a central figure in the women’s comics scene, occupying numerous and often overlapping roles as artist, author, pop historian, curator, chronicler, lecturer, collector, and networker.  She has published a number of books, including From Girls to Grrrlz - A History of American Women's Comics from Teens to Zines (1999), and The Great Women Cartoonists (2001).  Robbins curated the exhibition She Draws Comics in Vienna, and co-curated She Draws Comics for MoCCA in NYC.  For the exhibition’s catalogue, she invited 28 women comics artists to create a comic book together, from a script drafted by Robbins.

Robbins just returned from Sweden, and Broken Frontier checked in to get her insights on current issues affecting women in the industry – and vice versa!

BROKEN FRONTIER: You just returned from Sweden.  What did you do there?

TRINA ROBBINS: I lectured at the comic school in Malmo, gave a PowerPoint slideshow and talk about Wonder Woman, and was interviewed at a women's bookstore in Stockholm.  I also met and spoke with – and looked at comics by – some very talented and cool young women.

BF: You were critical of the Masters of American Comics museum exhibition that featured what it called "the most innovative and influential American comic artists," yet included no women on its roster.  Can you tell us a bit about which woman or women you would have included?

TR: Nell Brinkley, Rose O'Neill, Grace Drayton, Tarpe Mills, Dale Messick.  At least those five!

BF: In what ways have these women been influential?

TR: Most of them were, in their day, household names, as famous, or more famous, than many of the men in the show.  Rose O'Neill, Nell Brinkley, and Tarpe Mills were the subject of many newspaper articles in their time.  Brinkley had at least 3 popular songs written about her, and you could buy products with her name on them, like Nell Brinkley hair curlers. 

The difference is that, especially in the case of Nell Brinkley and Dale Messick, but also in the case of Rose O'Neill and Grace Drayton, it was women and young girls – especially young girls – who collected their printed work, copied them, pasted them into scrapbooks and often colored them in.  Rose O'Neill first appeared for many years in women's magazines, only in the 1930s doing traditional Kewpie comics for newspapers. 

Things that are liked by predominantly females are considered by males to be trivial.

BF: You have also curated museum exhibitions.  In fact, I just got my copy of She Draws Comics a couple of weeks ago, and I've already read it a dozen times.  The variety of styles from the 28 women contributors is dazzling.  It ends, in both positive and ironic tones, with the observation that women comic artists have seen small improvements. 

What would you say are the major trends affecting women in the industry today, for better or worse?

TR: I'm glad you liked  – I'm pretty proud of it myself.  Nothing like it has ever been done before.  I think, regarding women cartoonists and women-and-girl-friendly comics, the industry is improving.  It's still a Boys' Club, but much less so than it used to be, and there are more women drawing comics today than ever before. 

Trouble is, most of them are either self-published, published over the internet, or published by very small independent presses, meaning they're not getting the distribution or making the money that male mainstream cartoonists get.  Another version of the woman's 75 cents to every man's dollar.

Of considerable importance is the fact that manga has helped and is helping to change the minds of the industry that used to insist girls didn't read comics.  Obviously, when there are comics that they like to read, girls will read comics – in droves.

        

BF: What would you advise young girls – and boys – who dream of becoming comics artists?  What books would you give them to read?

TR: The advice is to not give up, and not believe anyone who tells you you can't do it.  Rejected by a big publisher?  Then self-publish!  Books to read?  I guess there are many books out there telling you how to draw comics.  Beware of the ones that just show you how to draw like the author draws!  Better to read some good graphic novels, like Maus, Persepolis, The Tale of One Bad Rat, Fun Home, Stuck Rubber Baby (I could go on!), and see how many different styles there are out there, and how good they all are.

BF: Let's talk about women in underwear.  It's only a feeling, and I admit that, but I feel that there is a preponderance of women stripped down to bras and panties in the pages of comics published by DC and Marvel.  Yet in She Draws Comics, women are mostly fully clothed, which is the more normal state of affairs. 

Am I wrong in thinking that the difference lies in the settings, where women artists are drawing their characters in more realistic ones, while the mostly men who draw for DC and Marvel are drawing their characters in fantastical settings?

TR: I love that: "Let's talk about women in underwear!"  Actually, after not looking at mainstream superhero comics for quite a few years, I've only recently started looking at some DC titles, like Catwoman and Birds of Prey, and found to my amazement that things have changed and many (not all!) of the superheroines are now as covered as the men. 

Ironically, one of the most distressing in terms of stripped women is Wonder Woman.  Her breasts keep growing and these days she's falling out of her strapless top, while her shorts have shrunk.  Long gone is anything remotely resembling Amazon love and compassion, replaced by grimaces and vicious fight scenes.  I still haven't taken a closer look at Marvel, so can't tell you if they're headed in a similar direction as DC.

As for realism vs. fantasy, the subject matter of She Draws Comics is realism, but I'm always running into women who draw fantasy, especially when it comes to manga.  I think rather than chalking it up to fantastical settings, we have some guys drawing their own personal sexual fantasies when it comes to how they draw women.

BF: Is this a matter of dollars?  Would Vertigo titles, for example, sell as well without the near-nudity of the women?

TR: Actually, some of the best-selling Vertigo titles (I'm thinking of the Sandman titles and Fables) also sell well to women, and don't feature nearly naked babes.  So you'd think they'd notice.  And I think they do, that's why the women in Birds of Prey are dressed more normally.  But they still want to cater to the fanboys with other titles.

BF: In your view, what are the top priorities for women comics artists working today?

TR: Get your work out there, keep at it, don't isolate yourself – meet other women (and men) who are drawing comics.  At the risk of sounding woo-woo, follow your bliss… but I'd tell that to anyone!

BF: What is next for you?

TR:  As you may know, I also write books that have nothing to do with comics, because I'm a historian.  But what they have in common is that they're always about women.  I don't see that changing much in the future.  I'm working on a history project now that I can't talk about, because it's bad luck to talk about a project until you sell it. 

But I'll never stop writing comics, because I love writing comics (following that bliss!), and I hope that Anne Timmons and I can continue to work on GoGirl! together until we're thoroughly sick of her, which will be a long, long time in the future. 

And as an example of combining history and comics, Anne and I (I call us the Stan Lee and Jack Kirby of girls' comics) are working together on a comic about Beat woman artist Jay DeFeo, for a TPB comic anthology on the Beats.

Trina Robbins is on the web at www.trinarobbins.com.