![]() ![]() With a third of the book devoted to Brinkley, we get to see the most famous of female cartoonists evolve beyond the Gibson style into an Art Nouveaux and then Deco fine line work and precision. Their focus on social interactions and fashion come through as expressions of feminine power and personality. But she shows so much about how these women helped define the post-WWI era, or at least mass media’s aspirational version of it. Since this is more a history in reprints than a history with reprints, Robbins shows more than tells. With The Flapper Queens: Women Cartoonists in the Jazz Age, however, she gets the chance to reprint satisfying helpings of Nell Brinkley (fully 50 pages!), Eleanor Schorer, Edith Stevens, Ethel Hays, Fay King and Virginia Huget. Her Pretty in Ink history of women in the field remains the major work, because she has waged a lonely battle for including this talented minority of comic artists.īut Pretty in Ink had to cover so much ground, we didn’t get to dwell deeply into any artist or group. Robbins was among the only female artists in an underground comics movement famous for its misogynist art. ![]() For the most part, cartooning was a man’s game in the 20th Century, and so has been the writing of its history. Trina Robbins is an under appreciated national treasure, alas, for some of the same reasons the cartoonists she presents here have been overlooked by too many comics histories. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |