Category Archives: Comics Herstory

Comics Herstory: Ariel Schrag

Posted on by

awkwarddefinition_medAriel Schrag broke into comics at an incredibly young age with the publication of her book, Awkward. The comic detailed her freshman year of high school, and Schrag sold copies of the comic to friends and family before it was published as a graphic novel. In the following years, Schrag would make a comic after each year of high school. Awkward was reprinted by Simon & Schuster with Definition, Schrag’s sophomore year comic, as Awkward and Definition. These were followed by Potential and Likewise.

The books deal with the usual high school challenges, but are also laden with a more existential anxiety as Schrag chronicles her crushes, love of science, and concert-going. Each story is an honest account of her life, chronicling the year with humor. Because it was written near the same time the events happened, this series is a different and unique sort of autobiographical comic. Many graphic memoirs are a retelling of youth from an adult’s perspective, and while writing at the time of living the memoir, so to speak, doesn’t guarantee a completely honest narrative, it is an important and different narrative.

She has been selected and nominated for a number of awards, including the American Library Association Rainbow List, an Eisner Award, a Lambda Literary Award, and New York Public Library’s Books for the Teen Age.

One of the central themes is also Schrag’s sexuality, as she came out as bisexual and then as a lesbian. As an adult Schrag wrote for seasons of The L Word and How to Make it in America. She still writes comics, both webcomics and print and, according to her website, is working on an anthology featuring her own work that will be a mix of old and new comics. She has written comics for a number of publications, including the New York Times. Her first novel, Adam, debuted in 2014. Potential has also been optioned for film and will be produced by Killer Films (which also produced Carol). Schrag has written the screenplay, and as a versatile writer, she is one to watch.

Comics Herstory: Rachel Pollack

Posted on by

gender_2Rachel Pollack is a versatile writer who is most known in the comics world for her writing on Doom Patrol, published by Vertigo in the 1990s. Outside of comics, Pollack writes science fiction, nonfiction, short fiction, and essays. She is an expert in reading tarot, and has published several books on the subject.

In Pollack’s run on Doom Patrol, she introduced a number of LGBT+ identifying characters and explored topics like menstruation, the generation gap, and sexual identity. Pollack was one of the first to write these kinds of themes and characters for a mainstream company. She also created Coagula, a transgender woman and lesbian who was one of the first transgender characters in comics and is still one of only a few trans superheroines. Pollack’s run on Doom Patrol ended with the book’s cancellation two years after she began writing it. She has said that her work on Doom Patrol remains one of her favorite projects.

In addition to Doom Patrol, Pollack also penned eleven issues of New Gods in 1995. Since her work in comics, Pollack has written numerous books about Tarot. She has collaborated with author Neil Gaiman, helping to create a Vertigo Tarot Deck. The deck featured cards drawn by Sandman cover artist Dean McKean. Gaiman wrote an introduction for the book that accompanied the set, the rest of which was authored by Pollack.

vertigo tarotMany of Pollack’s works are inspired by her experiences as a trans woman, and she has also drawn inspiration from many real-life people. One example of this is Coagula, whose real name Kate Godwin comes from author/actress Kate Bornstein and activist Chelsea Godwin. Pollack is Jewish, and writes many Jewish characters. Themes of spirituality are also present in many of her books, and she also writes extensively about the connection between transgender identities and spirituality. Pollack has taught tarot for much of her adult life, and most recently taught creative writing at Goddard College. Though her writing in comics is now considered something of a cult hit, Pollack was one of the first to write the subjects she did, opening doors for future characters, writers, and stories.

Edit 3/28/16: Rachel Pollack was also the first transgender woman to write comics for a mainstream publisher, which was a significant step for transgender writers and artists in comics.

Comics Herstory: Ruth Roche

Posted on by

68As an author and editor in the 1940s, Ruth Roche was a well-rounded woman. After moving to New York, she started as a writer at the Eisner & Iger Studio and was the business partner of Jerry Iger, a founder of the studio.

Eisner & Iger was a comics packager, meaning that they produced comics for publishers. The studio largely serviced companies entering the newly profitable comics market by creating comics on demand. They also produced their own comic strips. They also ran the Phoenix Features Syndicate. Throughout the Studio’s period of operation, many celebrated creators found a start, including Jack Kirby.

Like many female writers at the time, Roche was rarely credited by name for the books she scripted. However, she is recognized as the writer of Phantom Lady, Senorita Rio, Sheena Queen of the Jungle, Kaanga, Camilla, Ellery Queen, Brenda Starr, Aggie Mack, and Flamingo, a newspaper strip. Like many comics during that time, much of Roche’s writing was violent. She is thought to have scripted a horror comic as part of Haunted Thrills, initially titled “Out of the Grave,” a story that was later edited to conform to the Comics Code and reissued under the title “Fair Exchange” in the late 1950s. Also controversial was Phantom Lady, which featured heroine Sandra Knight running around in what was essentially a swimsuit and is an example of the “good girl art” that was prevalent at the time. Phantom Lady was denounced for its corrupt morals, having featured Knight tied up and in different situations that could be construed in sexual manner.

After Will Eisner left Eisner & Iger, Roche became Iger’s partner. Once a partner, Roche was named executive manager and editor of the company’s books. Roche also edited a variety of romance magazines under different pen names. She also edited Classic Illustrated comics.

Though Roche, like so many others, is largely uncredited for her contributions to comics, she was at the forefront of their presence in American media. Eisner & Iger was one of the first packagers, and it’s no small thing that she wrote, edited, and eventually became the head of the company.

Comics Herstory: Nell Brinkley

Posted on by

tumblr_inline_nurxfrljoz1tp7q4c_540Nell Brinkley was a prolific illustrator and cartoonist. In the early 20th century, she was recruited to the Hearst syndicate by founder William Randolph Hearst and editor Arthur Brisbane, moving from Denver to New York City in 1907.

By 1908, Brinkley’s illustrations had already made quite an impact on readers. She was widely recognized for her Brinkley Girls, illustrations that featured everyday women and working girls. These women quickly replaced Charles Gibson’s Gibson Girls, which were illustrations mainly featuring women who depicted the feminine ideal. Where Gibson Girls were always fashionable and depicted impossible standards, the Brinkley Girl was still feminine, but more independent.

Brinkley used the Brinkley Girls to get across a feminist message. One of her most iconic pieces, The Three Graces, features three women representing the three American ideals of Suffrage, Preparedness, and Americanism. They quickly permeated various forms of American media with mentions in music and in the Ziegfeld Follies (a theatre production).

Fans of Brinkley Girls would style themselves after the Girls with wild curls in their hair. They would also collect cards with their images. The reach of the Brinkley Girl was so high that Bloomingdale’s department store would hold Nell Brinkley Days, with advertisements featuring Brinkley’s work and Nell Brinkley Hair Curlers.

Her other works were serialized illustrations such as Golden Eyes and Her Hero Bill, Kathleen and the Great Secret, and Betty and Billy–Their Love Through the Ages. These titles were short comics that developed a story over the course of publication. One of her last works, published in 1937, was called Heroines of Today, and highlighted contemporary heroes. After this, she retired from the news business, providing illustrations mainly for books. Her lengthy career earned her the title the Queen of Comics before her death in 1944.

In addition to illustration, Brinkley was also a talented writer, covering stories for the New York Journal, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, and Harper’s Magazine. She famously covered several murder trials, providing both stories and illustration, another thing that put her in the public eye. Brinkley’s career diminished with the growing popularity of photography, which replaced illustration in newspapers. Her legacy has also been somewhat overshadowed by the Gibson Girls, despite the popularity of the Brinkley Girls. However, Brinkley’s work lives on as an early example of women in comics, and the feminist tone to her work encouraged women to work and fight for equality.

Fantagraphics collected her works from 1913 to 1940 in a book titled The Brinkley Girls.

Comics Herstory: Barbara Brandon-Croft

Posted on by

bbc_4As the first African-American woman cartoonist to write a syndicated strip, Barbara Brandon-Croft is yet another trailblazer. Her father, Brumsic Brandon Jr., created the comic strip Luther, which was about a group of inner-city African-American children and had an underlying theme of the struggle for racial equality. Brandon-Croft also developed an interest in drawing and completed a fine arts degree at Syracuse University. She then went on to work for Elan and Essence magazines, and did some illustrations for The Crisis, a magazine published by the NAACP.

In 1989, Brandon-Croft began publishing Where I’m Coming From through The Detroit Free Press, Detroit’s largest daily newspaper. Where I’m Coming From was nationally syndicated in 1991, and was published in more than sixty papers throughout the United States between 1989 and 2004. It ran for more than fifteen years before Brandon-Croft ended the strip in 2005 after a downturn in readership.

The comic itself featured a cast of about a dozen women, known as “the girls.” Each had a distinct personality; some were conscious of social issues while others were more conscious of men, but all contributed to the comic’s unique appearance and tone. One of Where I’m Coming From’s distinct characteristics is its lack of background. The characters appear against a blank panel.

The comic’s other distinct characteristic is the way in which the characters are drawn, as none have bodies. Rather than drawing an entire person, Brandon-Croft depicted each character with a head and a set of hands. She has said that it was a conscious decision to draw the characters as heads and hands only. Rather than define these characters by their bodies in a world where women are already defined by their bodies, each character is distinguishable by her distinct face and personality.

Where I’m Coming From is important for the insight it gives into being African-American in the United States, and for its social commentary. Though the comic wasn’t always politically focused, many of the points it made remain relevant today. It is also important because there is a distinct lack of African-American cartoonists in newspapers. Barbara Brandon-Croft is the only African-American woman to reach syndication, and to date there have only been a dozen African-American artists with syndicated comics.

Comics Herstory: Gail Simone

Posted on by

wonder_woman_circleGail Simone got her controversial start in comics by publishing a list of fictional women in comics who had been “fridged”–killed, depowered, or raped with no real consequence to the story but furthering the plot of their male counterparts. The site, Women in Refrigerators, is still live, though it isn’t regularly updated. From Women in Refrigerators, Simone went on to write You’ll All Be Sorry!, a weekly column for Comic Book Resources.

After writing a series of Simpsons comics, Simone entered the mainstream with a revamp of Deadpool. From Deadpool, she moved on to Birds of Prey, Wonder Woman, and Secret Six, among others. After Batgirl relaunched as part of the New 52, Simone took over writing duties. She also began writing Red Sonja in 2013 for Dynamite Entertainment.

With Birds of Prey, Simone wrote a dynamic team, establishing a trust-based friendship between Barbara Gordon and Dinah Lance. Though female characters are slowly becoming more prominent, the inclusion of such a healthy relationship between these two characters was a positive addition to DC canon. After leaving Birds of Prey, Simone began an iconic run on Wonder Woman.

Her writing on Wonder Woman was some of the best the character had seen in years, and gave Diana a retconned history that made more sense for the character. Simone struck an ideal balance between Diana as a warrior and a sympathetic character. She wasn’t the first woman to write Wonder Woman, but Simone still holds the title of woman with the longest run on Wonder Woman.

She writes women as the complex characters that they are, treating them with respect and breaking ground in terms of representation

Simone’s run on Batgirl was also an important one, giving comics its first contemporary transgender character with Alysia Yeoh. She was the most recent writer before the current team of Brenden Fletcher, Cameron Stewart, and Babs Tarr. Simone currently writes Clean Room for Vertigo. Her massive body of work is largely connected by one thing: her handling of female characters. She writes women as the complex characters that they are, treating them with respect and breaking ground in terms of representation. A polarizing figure, she has been an important contributor to the conversation about women in comics.

Comics Herstory: Wonder Woman

Posted on by

ico001177-_sx360_ql80_ttd_Elizabeth Holloway Marston wasn’t a comic writer, artist, colorist, or editor, but her impact on the genre was great all the same. Marston was a psychologist married to William Moulton Marston, who was also a psychologist and the creator of Wonder Woman. Elizabeth, though not credited as an author in William’s work, shared many of his discoveries.

Elizabeth is largely uncredited in the creation of Wonder Woman, even though both she and Olive Byrne (a former graduate student of William’s who shared an extended relationship with both him and Elizabeth) served as inspiration for the character. Wonder Woman’s appearance was based on that of Olive Byrne, while the idea for her actual creation was Marston’s. Wonder Woman possesses traits of both women, including independence, intelligence, and confidence.

William called Wonder Woman psychological propaganda for the type of woman after whom others should model themselves. In a 1992 article, the New York Times gave Elizabeth Marston the title of “Wonder Woman’s Mom” for her role in the character’s creation. After her death in 1993, her son Peter said that he has memories of Marston demanding that William write a female hero because there were too many men. Upon hearing about his idea for a new comic, Marston famously told her husband, “Fine. But make her a woman.”

Wonder Woman first appeared in All Star Comics #8 in 1941, and was given her own series with Sensation Comics shortly after. Dorothy Woolfolk (DC’s first woman editor) also contributed to the establishment of Wonder Woman’s character, guiding William through writing Wonder Woman’s weaknesses in an appropriate way (meaning, generally, featuring as little bondage as possible).

Wonder Woman was introduced into newspapers in 1944, in a daily strip written by William. DC also put Joye Hummel on writing duties, hoping that her more innocent stories would tone down the glaring bondage themes present in William’s writing. The daily strip only lasted a year, and was recently released in a collected volume by IDW.

Throughout Wonder Woman’s seventy-plus year history, women have always played an essential part. Women were present in her creation with Elizabeth Moulton Marston and Olive Byrne and in the creation of her character and presence in comics with Dorothy Woolfolk. Women have also been essential in establishing her character and turning her into a household name, and keeping her a feminist icon throughout the years, beginning with Joye Hummel through, more recently, Gail Simone. Until recently, Wonder Woman was the only female superhero to have her own television show. Her legacy as one of the most popular superheroines of all time will continue with Gal Godot‘s portrayal in Batman v Superman and Wonder Woman in 2017. 

Comics Herstory: Marie Severin

Posted on by

Screen Shot 2016-03-19 at 9.04.26 AMMarie Severin is a comic artist from New York. She first began her career as a colorist for Entertaining Comics (EC) in the 1940s when her brother, an artist, needed someone to color his work. Severin then continued working for EC as a colorist on several books. She became a pioneer in coloring, mixing and using all forty-eight available colors to create a wide range of colors in the final comic. Her fellow staff called her EC’s conscience, because she tended to downplay the often gruesome violence of EC’s books, muting the colors so it wouldn’t be so shocking to readers.

Severin returned to work in comics in the late 1950s, after the economic downturn had lessened. Her talent doesn’t lie only in coloring, and she was assigned to draw the Dr. Strange feature after starting at Marvel. She continued to both color and draw for Marvel, working characters like Hulk, Sub-Mariner, Iron Man, and Daredevil. One of her most notable Marvel legacies is co-creating Spider-Woman and designing her first costume in 1976. She has said that she draws “for the color of it” and was Marvel’s head colorist until 1972.

Throughout the 1980s, Severin worked in Marvel’s special projects, designing film and television tie-in merchandise. She worked at Marvel until 1996, when the company went bankrupt. However, Severin continued to work in comics coloring reprints of old EC comics. She worked into the mid-2000s, when she was well into her seventies.

Severin’s body of work is an important one, and she has won numerous awards for art and coloring. She has also spoken about being a woman in comics, and was inducted into the Eisner Hall of Fame in 2001. Colorists are often credited less than they deserve, but Severin set a precedent in comic coloring by mastering color mixing and using color to set the mood and tone of the story.

Comics Herstory: Lila Quintero Weaver

Posted on by

213-2505-sku_largetomediumimageLila Quintero Weaver was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, but moved to Alabama at age five. She grew up in Alabama during the 1960s at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. Weaver’s first book, Darkroom: A Memoir in Black and White is based on her experiences during this time. Weaver has said that she was influenced by other graphic memoirs, such as Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, and Craig Thompson’s Blankets.

However, Darkroom is entirely its own, and it is an important narrative about racism in the South from a perspective not usually seen, the perspective of an immigrant. An outsider’s view is both necessary and interesting, because as an observer, Weaver had not lived through any of the historical events or context of such a movement. As she has said, most people living in the South were victims or perpetrators, and the lack of history gave her a created a different impact as an observer.

Darkroom offers a unique look at racism in the Jim Crow South, but it is very much Weaver’s story as well. In the book, she takes notice of America’s inequalities while struggling to find a place in American society, where culture values differ greatly from the ones she knew in Argentina.

Weaver is a self-taught artist, and Darkroom showcases her many talents. The writing is fluid and the art, done in grayscale, complements the writing well. Together, they create a graphic novel that is relevant and useful for teaching this period of United States history.

So far, Darkroom is Weaver’s only graphic novel, though her second, titled That Year in the Middle Row, is slated for release in 2018. Weaver also contributes to Latin@s in Kid Lit, a blog that spotlights children’s and young adult literature that features Latino/a characters, themes, and authors.

Comics Herstory: Barbara Hall

Posted on by

black_cat_-1Barbara Hall became a prominent cartoonist during World War II before becoming a “hippie commune co-founder.”  Her family was Southern and had strict rules against befriending Northerners, but Hall eventually attended art school in California and moved to New York.

In New York, she would begin a career that contributed many notable female characters to comics. Hall was hired by Harvey Comics to draw the comic Black Cat, about stuntwoman-turned-lead-actress-turned-hero Linda Turner. After Black Cat, she worked on the strip Girl Commandos, about an all-women team that was based on Pat Parker, also known as War Nurse. The team, consisting of Pat Parker, Pat Parker’s friend Ellen, a Soviet photographer named Tanya, a Chinese woman named Mei-Ling, and radio reporter Penelope Kirk, fought Nazis as a team. None of them had superpowers. Hall worked on Girl Commandos until 1943.

Hall was also responsible for creating Blonde Bomber, also known as Honey Blake. Blake was a broadcast news camera woman and an expert chemist. She worked with cameraman Jimmy Slapso and appeared in several issues of Green Hornet. During this time, she signed most of her work “B. Hall,” because it wasn’t commonplace or widely accepted for women to be in comics. After Hall left Harvey Comics, artist Jill Elgin took over much of Hall’s drawing responsibility.

Screen Shot 2016-03-17 at 8.38.52 AMAfter her marriage to Irving Fiske in 1946, Hall and Fiske bought property in Vermont that would become the Quarry Hill Creative Center. Quarry Hill is the oldest alternative living community in the United States, and was created with the intent of becoming a creative retreat for writers and artists. Cartoonist Art Spiegelman and his wife Françoise Mouly maintained a friendship with many of the residents. Quarry Hill is still open as an alternative living community, run by Hall and Fiske’s daughter.

Hall continued with art and opened a gallery called The Gallery Gwen in East Village in the 1960s. She and Fiske eventually divorced. Hall remarried at the age of seventy, and would remain married to Dr. Donald Calhoun until his death. Hall died in 2014 at the age of ninety-four.

« Older Entries Recent Entries »