Transcript for the Piece Audio version of Women Who Can Fly: Trina Robbins and Superheroines
Trina Robbins? comic book collection overflows from a tall, circular magazine rack. It spills out onto bookshelves and several filing cabinets in a back room of her San Francisco flat.
(Fade up ambi of squeaking rack, then down and under short dialogue)
Elizabeth: Wow?how many comics do you think you have?
Trina: I?ve never counted them?I have no idea.
Robbins helped write and edit the first all-women comic book, ?It Ain?t Me, Babe,? in 1970. Her prolific work also includes a comic about the women garment workers who died in the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, and a Wonder Woman graphic novel about spousal abuse.
There's a lot of topics that women deal with that men are not interested in. But in underground or small press women's comics, they talk about abortion, they talk about menstruation, they about birth control. These are things that women talk about.
Girls are not fond of overly muscled guys with thick necks and giant chins punching each other into bloody pieces in outer space. They are not fond of comics in which the heroine has breasts that are bigger than her head, and runs around in thong bikinis and spike heel boots. This isn?t what girls like.
Girls like to read about other girls. It doesn?t mean that there can?t be boys in the story. But they like girls to be the main character, because they are girls. I think they like stories with ? personal interaction. Where people care for each other. Where people have emotions. Where characters do more than just fight for five pages.
Robbins says that when there?s a book she wants to read that no one has written yet, she has to write it herself. One of those projects is the Go Girl comic book series, which she writes in collaboration with artist Anne Timmons:
Go Girl is a teenage girl whose mother was a superheroine. And her mother called herself Go-Go Girl. And wore a little white cute go-go outfit, and white go-go boots. But then she got married, and her husband felt threatened by having a wife who could fly. So she stopped flying. But of course, if you have that kind of husband, the marriage isn?t going to last anyway. And it didn?t. But after that, she was busy being a single mother, and trying to support them. So she simply never flew again.
What she didn?t know was her 15-year-old daughter, Lindsay Goldman had inherited her mother?s ability to fly. And was already flying in secret. But then when her best friend got kidnapped, she had to put on her mom?s costume, which fit her perfectly? and become a superheroine to rescue her friend. And she became Go Girl.
Robbins sits on a wicker couch in her living room. Her curly, shoulder-length hair frames her face like a red cloud. She reads an excerpt from the Go Girl series:
This is my take on ?it?s a wonderful life?. And I call it ?A Day in the Wonderful Life.? And it starts with Lindsay Goldman just looking out the window and sighing, and saying, having a birthday right around Christmas time is the pits! Everyone is too busy preparing for the holidays to even remember my birthday!
And her mom is baking, and she runs down and says, ?Hey, Mom! Want to go for a spin? Let?s wear our costumes, and fly down to the park!? And her mom says, ?Not now, honey. Can?t you see I?m busy??
So she leaves. And a day in the life of a superheroine, of course, is rescuing people. There?s a girl on a bike, and she?s about to get hit by a truck. And Lindsay?s flying overhead and sees her, so she rescues the little girl. The bike, of course, is a wreck. And the little girl says, ?I?m okay, but look what you did to my bike!? Lindsay flies off annoyed, and says, ?That?s right?don?t thank me, just blame me for your bike. Grr!? But meanwhile, she doesn?t hear the truck driver, who was really freaked out, say, ?Thank you, GoGirl!?
I love GoGirl! ? I can?t wait to read Go Girl to my granddaughter.
Like GoGirl Lindsay Goldman, Trina Robbins is Jewish?but she doesn?t make a big deal about it:
Do you ever talk about Lindsey being Jewish in your series?
Never! She's a girl. Lindsey is a girl who happens to be Jewish. I mean, her best friend, Haseena, is black? but she isn't the ghetto kid who's always going ?Yo.? I mean, they really do stereotype black teenage kids in those comics. Haseena is a good student, and her father is a lawyer. You know? And I also have an Asian girl -- Heather Wu. And Heather is an air head. Not all Asian girls are brilliant. She's a nice kid, though. They're all friends. But I like to break stereotypes, you know?
I'm Jewish -- but you wouldn't know it to look at me. But I can't escape being a woman. That you have to -- you look at me, and you know that I'm a woman. So that's more important.
Robbins says that there are many women cartoonists who have inspired her. One of them is Lily Renee, who fled Vienna as a teenager to escape the Nazis.
Lily Renee drew comics in the 40s. And she?s a beautiful, sophisticated, intelligent woman in her 80?s, living in Manhattan?s Upper East Side. I've written about her in my books. She was so good. Her work is gorgeous. It?s very dashing, and very stylish. And very pretty. Probably the best one she did was called Senorita Rio. And it was about a Brazilian nightclub entertainer who is actually a counterspy fighting Nazis and bad guys in Brazil.
Superheroines like Wonder Woman, the mysterious Catwoman, and Trina Robbins? own Lindsay Goldman come from a long line of strong women. Robbins wrote about a number of them in her book, ?Eternally Bad: Goddesses with Attitude.? Take this example from the beginning of time:
When God made Adam, before he ever made Eve, he made Lilith. But of course, that just wouldn?t do. Lilith was just strident and pushy and bitchy, and all those things they call feminist. She was the world's first woman, and the world's first feminist. So Lilith got annoyed with Adam, and she called out the holy and ineffable name of God, and flew away.
Another flying woman, and another husband who was intimidated by it. I think all through history, men have been intimidated by women who fly.
HOST OUTRO:
That piece was produced by Elizabeth Chur in San Francisco. To find out more about Trina Robbins and the GoGirl series, visit her website at trinarobbins.com. That?s
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