Heroine addiction

Trina Robbins charts the ups and downs of women in comics

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

If anyone's got a say on the image of women in comics, it's Trina Robbins. Hot-shit inkslinger (find her Sax Rohmer adaptation Dope), pioneering publisher (1970's It Ain't Me, Babe was the first women's anthology) and pathologically well-informed historian, she knows her turf back to front. From the pre-suffrage woman-as-cute-child to the freewheelin' flappers of the '20s, from the career girls of the '30s to the Wonder Women of the war years, Trina paints an arc that leads to an arguable "high point" in the '50s.

Mirror: Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't girls' comics outselling boys stuff in the '50s?

Trina Robbins: The first love comic, Young Romance, published in 1947, sold over a million copies an issue. This is astronomical! Inconcievable by today's standards! It's a fact, though, that the message was, a woman wouldn't be truly satisfied until she found the right man, settled down and had babies.

M: When did things switch over?

TR: Towards the end of the '50s, television was taking readers away. A lot of companies folded and when the dust settled, those remaining retooled towards superheroes. What happened was, young hippies and college students really liked it and the pop art explosion happened too. We used to read this stuff and go, "Wow, man! Psychedelic!" Adults were reading them, and this was a first.

M: Then came the undergrounds, which you were involved in.

TR: Really, it's a fashion started by Crumb who was kind of the king, the tastemaker. He specialized in incredibly misogynist stuff, rape and mutilation and beheadings. Immediately I said this was anti-woman, and that was all the guys needed. These guys from the early '70s were so threatened by feminism. They did not invite me--or any of the other women--into their books. By 1972 though, there were enough of us to get together and form the Women's Comic Collective and publish Women's Comics, the longest running such comic, until '92. I know that we influenced a lot of the next generation of women's cartoonists. Today, there are tons. The problem is that none of their comics are mainstream. The average comic store doesn't carry them.

M: The average comic store is hardly a welcoming environment for women...

TR: There's a term for those women who go into comic stores: drag-alongs. They go in with their boyfriends and they're miserable, uncomfortable and they just want to go. The first thing they see is these life-size cutouts of giant-breasted babes. I would call it an adolescent boy's sexual nightmare. The women are hyper-sexualized but these boys are so afraid of women that these women are just scary and violent--pushing young boys further into fear and loathing of women.

M: Any hope on the horizon?

TR: There won't really be an improvement until these women can support themselves doing what they do, until they have distribution. I will now go on record as saying comic stores are my enemies. I know this won't make me a lot of friends but I can't help it--I always say what I feel. :

Trina Robbins presents a slideshow lecture at the Senate Room, DL-200, of Concordia's Loyola campus on Monday, March 27, 7pm, free

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