by Trina Robbins
Paperback - 142 pages (July 1999)Chronicle Books, $17.95 list. A history of women, from the Sunday funnies you read as a kid, the morning television shows (Wonder Woman!), all the way through to the underground comics of the 90s and today. Any grrl (or guy) who appreciates strong, hero-type chicks will LOVE this collection!
From Amazon.com:
This collection is in many ways an indispensable history of women in comics since the 1940s. Author Trina Robbins used to hang out in comics shops with her boyfriend, waiting impatiently, assuming that comics was essentially a boy's medium. Looking closer, Robbins realized there was a hidden history within the comics world, one that reflected cultural shifts in ideas about women--if you look at how women are drawn, you learn a lot about how women are imagined. Robbins edited the first all-women comic book, It Ain't Me, Babe, and her insider knowledge is clearly encyclopedic. Before the grrrl comics like Ellen Forney's Tomato or Jessica Abel's ArtBabe, there was 1943's Girl's Life, narrated by a cartoon teenager named Patsy Walker who wants nothing more than to become a beautiful movie star. Then there are Betty and Veronica with their impossible breasts, and Wimmin's comics of the early '70s, in which the drawings pulse with angry life, druggy and hopeful.
There is a lot of obscure and interesting information scattered throughout the book, from zines to Deep Girl to Mystery Date to Strangers in Paradise, and you'll definitely come away knowing much more than you started with.
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