by Alex Dueben
“I’m doing everything I’ve always wanted to do.”
– Trina Robbins
Trina Robbins is a legend among people who read and study comics. She’s a cartoonist who was active in the San Francisco underground in the ’70s and ’80s where she contributed to many publications including the East Village Other, It Ain’t Me Babe and Wimmen’s Comix. In recent decades she’s worked more as a writer on books including Go, Girl! and Chicagoland Detective Agency, in addition to working on Wonder Woman, Xena and The Spirit.
Robbins’ other claim to fame is that she is one of the great comics historians. In books like A Century of Women Cartoonists and From Girls to Grrrlz she writes not just thoughtfully and passionately about many cartoonists whose work has faded from consciousness, but she also reshapes our perception of comics past. In the book The Brinkley Girls, which she edited, the work of the artist Nell Brinkley was brought together, showing her incredible drafting skill and demonstrating why she was one of the most popular and important illustrators and cartoonists of her time.
This spring Robbins’ multi-pronged careers move forward in earnest. Her latest graphic novel for kids, Chicagoland Detective Agency, is being released and she’s contributed a short story to the anthology Chicks in Capes. In addition, Robbins is launching a comicbook starring the classic detective Honey West. However, her major historical and long-time passion project is Miss Fury, a collection of the comic strips written and drawn by Tarpe Mills from 1944 to 1949. A Hitchockian thriller set at the end and in the aftermath of World War II, the series follows the saga of a socialite who at times dons a panther suit to creep through the night to foil Nazis, smugglers, and gangsters. Marla Drake is the grandmother that Buffy Summers and Sidney Bristow didn’t know they had, and now she’s being reprinted for a public which is much more interested in, and open to, heroines who find themselves neck deep in intrigue, action and soap opera.
Read our exclusive interview with Trina Robbins on SuicideGirls.com.
