Trina Robbins, Superstar Part 1 with Alex Grand and Jim Thompson

Alex Grand and co-host  Jim Thompson interview the illustrious Trina Robbins, underground women's comic pioneer, comic book historian, and defender of social justice as we discuss her life and times from her childhood in the 1940s, Sci-Fi Fandom in the 1950s, her underground comics work in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as her mainstream comics work in the 1980s. Various topics include Steve Ditko, Wally Wood, Harlan Ellison, Stan Lee, Roy Thomas and more! Edited & Produced by Alex Grand.  Music - Standard License. Support us at https://www.patreon.com/comicbookhistorians

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• 10:31 (Cont.) Trina Robbins, Superstar Part 1 with Alex Grand and Jim Thompson

Transcript

Alex Grand: Welcome again to the comic book historian podcast. I’m Alex Grand and I’m here with Jim Thompson. Jim, how you doing today?

Jim Thompson: Hi Alex, Good

Alex Grand: Great to see that face of yours again. So we have a special guest today. We have Trina Robbins who is a seminal figure in comics history and definitely a giant as far as 20th century Comic Books and a 21st Century Comic Book Historian. And so Trina, thank you so much for joining us today. Jim, take it away.

Jim Thompson: Hi Trina.

Trina Robbins: Hi!

Jim Thompson: I wanted to start at the very beginning with when you were born, where you grew up. Could you tell us a little bit about that?

Trina Robbins: In Brooklyn? I grew up in Queens.

Jim Thompson: What did your father and your mother do?

Trina Robbins: My mother was a school teacher who taught me to read it the age of four, which is the most wonderful thing anyone has ever done for me except of course give birth to me, which she also did. My father had been a tailor, but he had Parkinson’s disease and for most of my memory, he couldn’t sew. Well, he did sew at home but he couldn’t sell professionally anymore. But he was also a writer. He wrote in Yiddish and those days they were lots of Yiddish language newspapers in New York and he wrote for them. He wrote articles for them. And as you, I’m sure you know he wrote a book.

Jim Thompson: Yes, he was also a chicken farmer, Huh?

Trina Robbins: No, he wanted to be a chicken farmer. Toms River, New Jersey. As I later found out was a hotbed of Jewish chicken farms and he did own land there and he wanted to move there and open a chicken farm. But of course it was really pretty impossible us since my mother really supported the family and she was a teacher and you know, she could really not, you know, commute from Toms River, New Jersey to Queens where she taught. So really all that I remember is that he had a book on chicken diseases and it was color, these diseased chickens in full color with bright red stores. And I was fascinated. I used to pour over that book. I was fascinated by the pictures.

Jim Thompson: Oh that’s interesting. You mentioned you being an early reader and I’ve noticed that in most of the intervviews we’ve done with comic creators, Alex got it with Jim Steranko and also with Rick Marshall. They all comment on being extremely early readers. Do you think that has something to do with an early attraction to comic books as well?

Trina Robbins: I don’t know, but smart kids are usually early readers and smart kids read comics, so there’s a connection.

Alex Grand: there you go. I like that.

Jim Thompson: I like that too. That’s good. Which brings me to my next question. When did you start reading comics and what comics were you reading?

Trina Robbins: Well, at first my mother brought them home. You had to cross two streets to get to the corner candy store. That, sold the comics, so when I was too little to cross the two streets on my own, my mother would bring comics home for me. They were the nice little kid comics, you know, like gold medal. Was it Gold metal that did those great comics? Well, you know what? They printed Pogo and they printed animal comics. Was it gold medal? Someone telling me please,

Alex Grand: Gold Key did that, yes Dell then Gold Key.

Trina Robbins: Yes. And they had great comics for kids and my mother approved of them because in the letter and in the speech balloons, they used caps and small letters rather than all caps. And as a teacher she really didn’t like the idea of the speech balloonss that were all caps because that was not proper. So the first ones I read were gold key comics that my mother approved of.

Alex Grand: do you mean Dell comics?

Trina Robbins: Was it Dell not Gold Key?

Alex Grand: Probably Dell because Gold Key was more of a sixties transformation of Dell comics.

Trina Robbins: Oh Yeah.

Alex Grand: And I remember Dell, they were very wholesome and they had that slogan. Dell comics are good comics. So that’s the generation of comics you were probably reading.

Trina Robbins: Yes, I remember that they had animal comics and Our Gang comics, they definitely had Pogo.

Alex Grand: Oh that’s great.

Jim Thompson: Our gang was also Walt Kelly, just like Pogo was.

Trina Robbins: Yeah. So I was reading Pogo, I was reading Walt Kelly at an early age. Yes.

Alex Grand: So was that in the fifties then or later?

Trina Robbins: Forties

Alex Grand: In the forties right? Yeah, in the forties there you go.

Jim Thompson: Yeah. That would have been before you graduated, after that at some point to the Atlas comics. Millie the Model and those… you weren’t reading those first.

Trina Robbins: Yeah. They weren’t Atlas they were Timely. That was when I finally was old enough about 10 I guess maybe nine or 10 old enough to cross the two streets and buy comics on my own with my allowance and basically I would buy any comic that had a woman or a girl on the cover in control, not tied to a chair and being rescued, but in control as the protagonist of the comics.

Alex Grand: I love that.

Trina Robbins: I was never interested in the male superheroes. I found them unbelievably boring.

Jim Thompson: You were a great lover of Captain Marvel.

Trina Robbins: Yes. He was the only male superhero I liked and he was of course Mary Marvel’s brother, which is how I met him because first I met Mary Marvel. He was trying in such an accessible way, really CC Beck that clean, clean, accessible styles, very warm and very funny

Jim Thompson: and you later became friends with CC Beck didn’t you?

Trina Robbins: I did and I treasure. I treasure that friendship.

Jim Thompson: That’s wonderful. Can you tell us a little bit about him as a person?

Trina Robbins: I met Him in 1977 my first San Diego comic con and he was so lovely. He had brought a guitar and I remember him singing these. They were supposed to be kind of like off color, baudy, bauy ballads, but they were really very tame of course, and they’re very sweet and very funny and we just made friends and he had a circle of fans that he corresponded with and I became part of that circle.

Jim Thompson: You’ve never gotten to draw Mary Marvel or do any work except for the occasional cover or something. Would you have liked to have gotten to do something with those characters?

Trina Robbins: Oh, back in the days when I drew, I would have loved to have drawn Mary Marvel. Sure.

Alex Grand: and did you bring a lot of that May Marvel and Millie the Model into your Misty Comics that you did in the eighties like would you say a lot of that was influenced into there? Or, or was it more your own life experiences that would go into that?

Trina Robbins: Oh, Misty was definitely an offshoot of Millie the model because she was Millie’s niece that was continuity that got it into Marvel Comics. But Mary Marvel in the nineties and early 21st century. I collaborated with Ann Timmons on a series called Go Girl. It was about a teenage blind heroine and she’s very influenced by Mary Marvel. I see.

Jim Thompson: Now you were also doing the kindly girls. There was also, um, uh, Katy Keene as well. Correct?

Trina Robbins: Katy was not Timely. We know everyone who is now a certain age. All the women loved Katy Keene. I mean, this is an interesting connection, but I actually have been taking Yiddish classes. They’re not classes, but there’s senior Yiddish classes and they’re not just senior Yiddish classes, but they’re senior LGBT Yiddish classes at the LGBT senior center. You know, it’s a great class and everyone’s friends and I will start talking about, we’ll get off topic. Right. And somebody started talking about the old comics that they remembered. The teacher started, he liked the little king. He talked about how to solve those little king. And we started talking about comics and I mentioned Katy Keene and all of the women went, Oh, Katy Keene. Yes! Every little girl in the forties and fifties loved Katie Keene through the sixties the early sixties

Alex Grand: That was a real cultural phenomenon with women readers at the time. That’s great

Trina Robbins: Girl readers. Sure. Women read it too.

Jim Thompson: And you were attracted also to the paper dolls aspect of it as well. Do you think that’s when you started to think about fashion was partly because of or in connection with those?

Trina Robbins: I always loved paper towels. I made my own, I had brown paper grocery bags filled with my paper dolls and I would constantly design more clothes for them and they were always in the same pose. I would redraw the jaws as I got better at drawing, but they would always be in the same pose so they could wear all the clothes I had designed for them.

Jim Thompson: We were talking about the paper dolls, and the clothing. And so you were interested in the fashion aspect of these comics as well? That’s correct?

Trina Robbins: yes.

Jim Thompson: And what about other women in comics at that time? I know you have a great love for fiction house.

Trina Robbins: Yes, they published during the war and afterwards to really in the late forties they published more women cartoonists than any of the other companies. And that’s during the war when everyone was publishing women cartoonists, all the comic book companies because the guys were off fighting. They still published more than any of the others and the best. These women were great.

Alex Grand: So were you reading Fiction House as a kid or did that come later when you were doing research?

Trina Robbins: You know, as soon as I could discover comics, I was buying. I loved their Jungle comics. I was a huge Sheena fan. I was into Jungle comics. My mother was a little alarmed because you know, the girls were kind of sexy, but you know, by today’s standards, by today’s standards, they’re just pretty girls. You know, you’ve seen that girl comics and how horrendous they are. But even though my mother was alarmed, she never censored me.

Jim Thompson: Now this opens you up to a lot of different genres too cause fiction house was great at covering a lot of different,

Trina Robbins: My God there’s Science Fiction titles Planet comics. Yes.

Jim Thompson: You know, I have been looking at other companies during the same period that I’m finding a lot of women, surprising number of women in Ace and in Harvey and some of those as well.

Trina Robbins: Timely comics!

Jim Thompson: And Timely comics. Yes. Who was working at Timely?

Trina Robbins: Oh Wow. Starting in 1944 with the first Miss America magazine, which as you know was a girl’s mag that also had comics in it. You had Miss America and also Patsy Walker originating in 1944 drawn by Pauline Loth, also drawn by Christopher Rule, who in my opinion is one of the greatest, greatest cartoonists who ever lived. And I, you know, I guess it’s a very small Christopher Rule appreciation society, but I certainly belonged to it. So that was 44 then in 45 Ruth Atkinson drew the first year of Patsy Walker comics. See originally Patsy Walker was in Miss America comics as a one, just one comic in the magazine and by 45 she was so successful that they did Patsy Walker comics, that’s when they started Millie the model comics and Ruth Atkinson drew the first year of Patsy Walker, she drew the first Millie the Model comic book. And also in that first year of Patsy Walker drawn by Ruth Atkinson. It would be three Patsy walker stories drawn by her. And One Patsy Walker story contributed by Fran Hopper. That was practically an all woman deal there.

Jim Thompson: And why did that change? What caused women to almost virtually disappear from a lot of these companies.

Trina Robbins: Guys came back from the war and they wanted their old jobs back. That’s exactly what happened. But they were still, you know, like the timely teen titles from the late forties and fifties I was, I loved them and you know, they were drawn by guys at that point, but they were still, they were vibrant and alive and exciting and, and about teenage girls. And really that continued, it started falling apart in the 60s just about when Marvel, you know, started it, it’s superhero renaissance and they just devoted themselves because the superheroes were doing so well. They devoted themselves to the superheroes and threw the girl titles under the bus.

Jim Thompson: I’m going to skip ahead just for a minute just because of what you’re saying. You had given up comics for a while, but you came back in terms of EC comics because of your love for the Science Fiction books and because of Mad now, they did not have very many women working for them, correct?

Trina Robbins: No they didn’t, Marie Severin was the colorist and that was it.

Alex Grand: Just as far as the Scifi. So you were saying you were reading Planet comics and then also you’re reading the EC Comics and you got involved with Scifi fandom. Right? In the later fifties there was a Hugo award nominated fanzine Habbakuk. Am I saying it correctly?

Jim Thompson: Yes.

Alex Grand: Would you have had considered yourself a Scifi fan by this point?

Trina Robbins: Oh yes. I discovered Science Fiction and about 14 and except for what I had to read for school, I would say that from 14 to about 18 all I read was science fiction.

Alex Grand: Oh, I see. What was it about science fiction that you liked? Was it about like the technological aspect or was it more like they would put social things within a fantastic setting, social discussions in a fantastic setting. What, what was it about Sci-Fi that drew you to it?

Trina Robbins: Well, really it was everything. I mean it was mind opening. I was the only kid, well maybe one of two kids in my school who read science fiction, you know? And they thought we were weird. You know, science fiction was, was just weird. Kids read that stuff. I mean it was completely mind opening the concept. I mean, now there’s so corny and we know them so well. You know what, if you go back through time and, and marry, your husband or your father or whatever, they’re so obvious now, but they were just mind blowing in those days, cause they were new. Discovering Bradbury, you know? And like, again, it’s, you know, we, we know this stuff now and it’s old hat, but at the time, you know, wow, what if the Martians were big eyed wonderful people. But then we came and we destroyed them with our diseases. Wow. You know, I mean this was amazing stuff to me cause it was new.

Alex Grand: Yeah, that’s great. How did you get involved with the Scifi fanzines? Was it through like fan letters of comics? How did that happen?

Trina Robbins: My two best friends I met through a letter to a science fiction magazine when I was 14 I just wrote a letter saying, you know, are there any other fans you know in Queens and I, I’m 14 and I’m blonde and I have green eyes and it’s two boys immediately called me by my friends David and Marty and they became my best friends, teenagers my age and we would meet and David, David’s father had fixed up the basement with like a ping pong table and stuff, hoping that David would, you know, be a regular boy and play ping pong, but we never used the ping pong table and we just hung out and talked about science fiction.

Alex Grand: Oh that’s great.

Jim Thompson: Yeah. You started it, you said when you were around 14 it’s probably not a coincidence that your mom asked you or told you to stop buying comics the year before that approximately.

Trina Robbins: Yes.

Jim Thompson: So, so science fiction came up partly because you weren’t allowed to read comics anymore?

Trina Robbins: No. No. You must’ve said weren’t allowed. I mother simply said to me, you’re in high school now. You’re a teenager, comics are kids stuff. Why don’t you stop reading comics? She never, never, my parents were very permissive, but I simply went, oh yeah, okay. You’re right. And stopped reading comics

Jim Thompson: and then you came back when people showed you Mad Magazine and the EC stuff.

Trina Robbins: No, I didn’t come back to comics. I just came back to Mad comics. And you see that’s different, you know?

Jim Thompson: Yes. And then Wally Wood was one of your favorites, you later got to meet him, what in the late sixties?

Trina Robbins: yes.

Alex Grand: What was your impression of Wally when you met? Was he a nice guy?

Jim Thompson: Woody was a very nice guy. He had a studio where younger people, you know, young guys were assisting him and I could have it at that certain point. I moved to San Francisco in 1970 if I had stayed and not, you know, I could have been part of that group that I couldn’t have, you know, three lives and one of them would be Woody’s assistant.

Alex Grand: That’s amazing. Before that, before you moved, your first comics, were for the East village Other, an underground newspaper in New York City and they published the Goth Blimp works, which was a comic you worked on in 69. Was this your intro to underground comics? Tell us about that.

Trina Robbins: Well, I was still living in Los Angeles in 66 when someone showed me the East Village Other. Every major city at that point and college towns too had one underground newspaper in L.A, ours was the L.A. free press, and I did hang out with the L.A. free press crowd and I even did one four panel comic for them. But then someone showed me east village other and they had comics and the comics were, well the word entrepreneur comics didn’t exist yet. I called them hip comics. We talked about our culture of counter culture rather than short haired superheroes punching each other out. You know, it was something I could in particular, I’ve never forgotten. There was this one full page comic called gentles trip out and it was signed Pan Zika. It was totally, totally psychedelic. It didn’t really have a story or anything. It was just very psychedelic. And I thought, this is what I want to do. You know, like, like two years later when it was in New York, I met Pan Zika who turned out to be a woman. So this was really maybe my first major comics influence was a woman.

Jim Thompson: Trina, I wanted to go back to the earlier years just for a little bit. We were talking about comic books, but we haven’t talked about comic strips. And I know that you were also an avid reader of comic strips during this time. We haven’t talked to you about your family’s politics, but my understanding is they were a fairly liberal family, living in a community of more conservative people.

Trina Robbins: Very left wing family, living in an extremely bigoted right wing neighborhood.

Jim Thompson: And in fact, you had to sneak out to read Hearst newspapers, is that correct?

Trina Robbins: He wouldn’t allow the Hearst newspapers in the house, because they were fascist rags and of course they were fascist rags, but they had great comics. Hearst had great taste in comics.

Jim Thompson: So you would actually go out and take someone else’s in the mornings and read it and then put the newspapers back.

Trina Robbins: Oh, that was the Daily News, no the Journal American was the Hearst paper and they had the best comics. And I would read that over the houses of my friends when I was visiting my friends, I would read their Journal Americans, the Daily News really only actually had terrible comics, but they had Brenda Starr. That was the only one that I was interested in, the Daily News and my landlady subscribed to the Daily News. So I would go downstairs and pick up the paper when it landed at her door and bring it upstairs and unfold it and read Brenda Starr and then refold it and put it back down in front of my landlady’s door.

Jim Thompson: So you were reading comic strips that did have some political commentary like Barnaby and Pogo were two of your favorites?

Trina Robbins: Yes. Well, of course, Pogo ran in the Post, which was left wing and Barnaby ran in. Someone has to write a book about this really interesting newspaper called it. It went through three changes. First it was the PM, then it was the Compass, and then it was the Star. But they all had the same really, really, really good writers, really classic writers and really good taste. and, and they always folded because they wouldn’t take advertising because they were so pure. And that was what my father brought home. He brought home the pm when it was the star, I think not the pm or the compass, but when it was the star, it carried Spirit Sunday strips the Spirit. And they had like the best comics. You know, Barnaby? Yes. Barnaby was just amazing. And I think it might’ve been the compass that Walt Kelly was actually the art director on, but it was one of those. But so there’s this amazing phenomenon of this newspaper that went through three name changes in three different owners. It was always really the same newspaper. And why hasn’t someone written a book about this?

Jim Thompson: You know you mentioned Eisner, you were also a tremendous fan of the Spirit.

Trina Robbins: I loved the Spirit’s Sunday sections. Yes. God, yes.

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Jim Thompson: And they had great women characters too, didn’t they?

Trina Robbins: They did. His women were so strong. Even if the Spirit was the protagonist, there was always a strong woman in there and they were great characters

Jim Thompson: and such a variety at the time they had such individual personalities. So then as we said, you have gotten into Science Fiction and you were hanging out with some new friends, but also because it was a community, you were invited to New York and were part of a group that also included older men that were inviting basically the 15 year old girls to come and join and talk about science fiction.

Trina Robbins: I met these people at at a local convention at an a New York comic con, maybe not comic con, Science Fiction Con. Probably my first Science Fiction Con and they were all these people and they were, yeah, they were all older guys in their thirties and Marty, my friend Marty and I, we were like 15 we were invited to hang out with them and it was kind of, well nice. A little weird, you know, because I mean nobody tried anything, I promise you that. But there was a lot of innuendos running around, you know, I didn’t get it. They went over my head. I didn’t know what was going on.

Alex Grand: Were you reading science fiction digests and pulps too?

Trina Robbins: Yes, yes, yes, yes. The pulps were great, but I also read a fantasy and science fiction then Galaxy.

Alex Grand: Galaxy, yeah. Okay. That’s cool. Were you able to like tell, you know if that was a Wally Wood picture or …

Trina Robbins: Woody was so recognizable. First of all, he was the first artist, cartoon artist I was aware of because in those days nobody was credited. But what he would sign his strips, you know, with that fancy gothic Wood so I knew what was by Wally Wood.

Alex Grand: Oh that’s cool. Interesting. So then with the Scifi conventions with these older guys and stuff. It was not just about comics, it was also about pulps and magazines and just the genre in general, it sounds like.

Trina Robbins: Yes.

Jim Thompson: You met Harlan Ellison around this time?

Trina Robbins: At a science fiction convention in New York. Yes. And the two of you became friends. I dated him he was five years older than me. First thing he did when he met me, was ask me how tall I was and then when it turned out that I was shorter than him, he asked me out. I was 16 and he was 21

Jim Thompson: so what was he like as a 21 year old? Was he the same as he was later in life?

Trina Robbins: Harlan has always been the same as he always has been. Yes. Yes. He had just sold his first book, which was, I think the original name was Rumble, but then they, when they reprinted it, they gave it a classier title, uh, something about the city. I don’t remember exactly, but it was the book where he talked about running with the teenage gang and disguise and he insisted it had really happened, but I didn’t really believe him.

Jim Thompson: And you reconnected with him later in Los Angeles when you came out there?

Trina Robbins: Yes. Out there. Yes. He was in my carass somewhere. Wherever I went there was Harlan.

Jim Thompson: You have a tiny movie connection with him too, correct?

Trina Robbins: Yes, that awful movie, The Oscar, which even Harlan agreed was the worst movie ever made. He had a character named Trina, played by Edie Adams, and he said he had based it on me. So Edie wanted to meet me since she was going to be playing the character. So we met her at the studio for lunch, and she was wonderful. And I don’t think the character was the least bit like me, but that’s okay.

Alex Grand: But the name is there.

Jim Thompson: So you stayed involved in science fiction, you finished high school and then you went to college for 1 year.

Trina Robbins: I dropped out of two very good colleges. Yes.

Alex Grand: Were those in New York?

Trina Robbins: Queens College and the other was Cooper Union that was in Manhattan. Cooper Union was the art school.

Alex Grand: What year was that when you left there? Cooper Union.

Jim Thompson: Oh, that would be the late fifties

Alex Grand: oh, okay. Okay, I got Ya. So then in the 60s then you’re working mostly in the, well, the East village Other and all that was 69

Trina Robbins: 66. And almost immediately was published in the East village Other.

Alex Grand: what prompted your move to San Francisco in 1970

Trina Robbins: the underground comics scene. It was just a new art form. It was very revolutionary. The idea that you could do comics that were not Spiderman or Batman, you know, that were counter culture. It was a brand new art form and it was very exciting and it was very vigorous and very alive. The comic books are coming out of San Francisco and that’s where, where they were coming from. So it was like the Mecca of underground comics and, and they was a. I call it a lemming like migration of underground cartoonists from New York to San Francisco during starting around 1969 through 1970 and 71

Alex Grand: right. That all kind of coincides with the movement of the late sixties like Woodstock and all that stuff. Right. That’s how it is that all that all just kind of goes together doesn’t it?

Trina Robbins: Yes it does.

Alex Grand: Yeah. And then at that point you worked on a San Francisco based underground publisher. It Ain’t Me Babe and a comic of the same name, which was an all woman comic book. Is that correct?

Trina Robbins: Oh, kind of a little bit ish. It Ain’t Me Babe was the first in those days we didn’t call it feminism yet. We called it women’s liberation. It Ain’t Me Babe was the first Women’s Liberation newspaper in America. It came out of Berkeley of course, and I saw maybe the first or second issue, I don’t remember it, but a very early issue and was very excited and contacted them and wound up drawing for them roughly every three weeks we would have paste up night and we would just, I would do little spot illustrations right there and you know, for the articles. And I also drew the comic for the back page and I did covers also.

Jim Thompson: You had an easier time working with underground newspapers then you had with underground comics.

Trina Robbins: You know, what happened was women’s liberation happened around the same time as women’s liberation underground comics, was still a very small group of people, but entrepreneur comics started getting ,and it was all guys. You have to understand that the women, it was me and one other woman, Willie Mendez, and the comics suddenly took a turn, I would say around 69 took a turn for the extremely misogynistic and you have to understand that there was no comics code in underground comics. These guys could draw whatever they wanted and what was coming out of their ids was an amazing hatred of women, really vicious, violent, misogyny. I had gotten turned on to what we called Women’s liberation and I think even if I haven’t gotten turned on to women’s liberation, I would, you know, still reacted the same way because this stuff was horrifying. I objected to it and the guys were extremely threatened by women’s liberation. My God, they were so threatened it was ridiculous. So basically I was shut out. I mean, there was a boys club and I was definitely shut out.

Alex Grand: This was driven by Robert Crumb then? This kind of shift of the ID toward those kinds of comics?

Trina Robbins: Well, I hate to pick on Crumb, but it was kind of, you know, because he was, he really, you know, he was a brilliant artist and a brilliant cartoonist. He kind of became the God, the god of underground comics. Right. And what he did was sacrosanct, you know? And if you dared to criticize him, you were burned at the stake in the, in the marketplace.

Alex Grand: Did he know about your objections to it ?

Trina Robbins: Of course he did.

Alex Grand: He did right? And then did he give you any interpersonal reaction to it or was it more systematic with the underground comics and just the people that were in it?

Trina Robbins: Well, he always said that, well, I’m being honest and this is what is in my head and I’m just showing it on a slate, but in that doesn’t really make it, you know, racists are honest too, you know?

Alex Grand: Right, right. I can get that.

Jim Thompson: You actually lived with his sister for awhile.

Trina Robbins: She was my roommate, yes.

Jim Thompson: Right after your child had been born and she had a young child as well.

Trina Robbins: They moved in when I think my daughter was about nine months old.

Jim Thompson: And how long did y’all live together?

Trina Robbins: Oh, we probably less than about a year. But it wasn’t a good living situation because unfortunately, her son who was just a little bit older and bigger than my daughter Casey. He wasn’t mean to him. She wasn’t horrible to him or anything like that. She never abused him, but she practiced their kind of benign neglect. She just kind of left him alone to wander around the house and get into things. And, and I think he was reacting. He felt, I mean, because she wasn’t really giving him active love. He was reacting very badly. And really the most rage filled baby I’d ever seen him, he took on my daughter who was younger and smaller and it just was a bad living situation. So we finally split up. I always really liked Sandy and try and try to make friends with her.

Jim Thompson: And you included her story somewhat in a comic you did later on?

Trina Robbins: I love the way you’re asking these questions, you know, because you’re getting them all wrong. Even though you’ve read my book and you know everything. In 1972 I did the story of Sandy becoming a lesbian. Sandy comes out and I didn’t know it at the time, but it turns out it was the first comic about an out Lesbian ever drawn.

Jim Thompson: What did I get wrong? I thought I was getting it pretty right.

Trina Robbins: Oh, but that’s okay.

Alex Grand: Nice try Jim. Nice try. haha. So, you know, I’m curious. Tell us about 1973 Berkeley comic con. You made some paraphernalia for that event.

Trina Robbins: I guess I did some T-shirts, is that what you mean?

Alex Grand: T-Shirts! Yeah. Okay, cool. And tell us about that.

Trina Robbins: Oh yes, I did do things for the comic con. That’s right, yes, well, it was great. Women’s comics had started in 72, two weeks after we started women’s comics, we discovered that there were these two women in Southern California who are also doing an all woman book and their’s was a much more outrageous title than ours. It was called Tits and Clits. We didn’t know about each other and yet here within two weeks of each other. You know, two different groups of women from either side of California. We’re producing these all women comics. Really? I know that it’s still early, but I mean was it the water? Was it something in the water? You know that we all, we all met in 73 and got along beautifully. You know that was Gwen Shevely and Joyce Farmer

Jim Thompson: You also did a women’s comic based out of France as well, correct?

Trina Robbins: Oh, I contributed, see that’s what I mean about how you’re getting them wrong. You did an all woman on based out of France. Sounds as though I edited an all woman French comic and of course I have not, I contributed. I contributed to Anna Na, which was the French. I’ve been told that they were inspired by women’s comics, that it was the French equivalent to Women’s Comics, but it was really so much better because all the European artists were better than us.

Jim Thompson: How long were you actually in France for an extended period of time?

Trina Robbins: We had something called the postal system so that you can mail them the art. You don’t have to go to France with delivery by hand.

Jim Thompson: Okay, but you were in France at some point

Trina Robbins: In 73 yes, I did. And visited. Actually I did not visit them at 73 I visited them in 77 when I went to Europe with my daughter, my seven year old daughter.

Jim Thompson: Okay, and you met a lot of the great French artists the time.

Trina Robbins: Yes. Yes. I stayed with Jean Pierre Dionnett, the publisher of Metal Hurlant and his wife, Jonique who was the editor of Anna Na.

Alex Grand: Oh, nice. Yeah, 70 sounds like a really interesting time. Now, did you go back to New York? I remember at the cartoon Art Museum, we chatted a bit that you went to Marvel and you met Stan Lee with your daughter in 74

Trina Robbins: I would go back to New York periodically. They were fantastic airline deals in those days where you could go round trip for $199 things like that. And I would stay with friends often. I would stay with Flo Steinberg who was a very dear friend.

Alex Grand: Oh really? That’s great. Yeah. Cause she did her own underground comic, Big Apple Comics in 1975?

Trina Robbins: yeah.

Alex Grand: Yeah. That’s, that’s awesome. That’s a cool car. I didn’t know about that connection between you two. Tell the audience about when you met Stan Lee with Marvel and he introduced you to comics, like Night Nurse and things like that. Tell the audience about that scenario.

Trina Robbins: Actually, I met Stan Lee in 1966 when I came to New York from Los Angeles. I visited marvel to do a write up on them for the L.A free press and they were great. I mean they were just very welcoming. You could never do that now, you know, you’d have to make appointments. But I just walked in and said, hi, I’d like to interview Stan Lee, you know, of Marvel Comics to write about Marvel for the Los Angeles free press. And, and I was made welcome and Roy Thomas took me to lunch and Stan was great, you know, it was really a remarkable time.

Alex Grand: So then was this kind of your personal introduction then to the Marvel people was around this time then?

Trina Robbins: Yeah.

Alex Grand: And then Denis Kitchen. Yeah, he published a few magazines under the Curtis publications for Marvel. The Comics Book. Which was the mainstream marvel underground magazine. Kind of a conflicted category. But you did some excerpts because when I was researching you a bit I, I got some of those and I read through them and you had some Panthea comics that were in there.

Trina Robbins: Yes I did.

Alex Grand: Yeah. So tell us about like what are you doing those from San Francisco or were you in Manhattan doing those?

Trina Robbins: I was in San Francisco, again, I call your attention to the United States postal system. So there you go. We didn’t have to be there. That was amazing. I mean because they were paying $100 a page, which was incredible for us underground cartoonits. We were happy to get $25 a page if we even got paid.

Alex Grand: Right? Yeah. The Panthea, I read that and it’s just the origin story of Panthea was just something else cause I guess a woman or a girl was kidnapped into the Wild or she was lost in the wild and then she grows up and makes love to a lion or?

Trina Robbins: Her plane crashes. She’s the only survivor, she’s a baby girl. She’s brought up by a lion and becomes his mate who is part lion part woman.

Alex Grand: Yeah. What a what an origin story. I’ve never read anything like that before. So definitely got my attention. So then what was your impression of the comics book? Why did that not last more than three issues?

Trina Robbins: I really don’t know why it didn’t last more than three issues. I thought it had four issues.

Alex Grand: There was three under Curtis, then he put together four and five. I think he on his own. Denis kitchen did.

Trina Robbins: Okay. You know, you can get the collected comics book and published the entire comics book. I don’t know why it didn’t last. It’s too bad. It was great while it was going on.

Alex Grand: But it was fun. And then you mentioned the tits and clits underground comics and you worked on that in 1977 or you contribute and worked on that?

Trina Robbins: I was a contributor.

Alex Grand: Yeah. Yeah, she did in 1977 and the mission seemed to be underground, but as sexuality from a woman’s perspective was different. Right from the late sixties early seventies from the male sexual perspective.

Trina Robbins: Yes. Oh I’ll say.

Alex Grand: And I looked at some of those pages and they’re very classy. Did you feel that that magazine achieved the goal of adequately viewing things from the reverse approach? Gender wise?

Trina Robbins: To a certain degree, yes. I mean the guys didn’t want to talk about women’s sexuality. You know, the same thing with women’s comics. I mean we dealt with subjects that the guys would not be the least bit interested in talking about, you know, the first issue had a comic called a teenage abortion. She was still illegal. We talked about menstruation, we talked about subjects that men didn’t just didn’t talk about, you know.

Alex Grand: Right. Which I think are important to talk about. I mean the cause those are real things that they should be out there.

Trina Robbins: Of course.

Jim Thompson: You were more involved in women’s comics then you were in Tits and Clits.

Trina Robbins: I was an occasional contributor to Tits and Clits. I think I may have contributed to two issues.

Jim Thompson: And you were actually an editor at least for one issue of Women’s Comics

Trina Robbins: Two issues.

Jim Thompson: but there was comments made that you were almost in charge of it, that you, you were the defacto editor for more than that.

Trina Robbins: I was never in charge of women’s comics. I was never the defacto editor. We had a rotating editorship so that no one could be a dictator and in fact, starting in 1982 we had two editors, a double editor ships so that even even then nobody could be the supreme law.

Jim Thompson: I understand that. But people have said that you were,

Trina Robbins: well, this is simply not true,

Jim Thompson: but you know what I’m talking about.

Trina Robbins: Yes.

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Alex Grand: Maybe Jim is saying that did you have to make some executive decisions every now and then?

Trina Robbins: We really were a collective every month we would meet and people from the first issue on and the first issue we solicited submissions and we got them and every month we would meet and we would sit on the floor surrounded by submissions and go through them and offer our opinions. The editor would have the last say for sure, but all had say, and you know, a lot of it was simply unanimous. If someone was simply awful, we all felt the same way, but every now and then we’d get something really exciting, something new, something that you know, showed real talent. And it really was, although maybe the editor had the last say, it was a collective decision.

Jim Thompson: Talk about the publishing of that with this was, this was being done. Who was financing this?

Trina Robbins: By Last Gasp, Ron Turner was the publisher of last gasp comics and he had published It Ain’t Me Babe Comics, which was the very, very first all woman comic book in the universe. As far as I know, I don’t know about Pluto, but I produced that one, that one. I completely, I take credit for that. I completely thought it up and produced it.

Jim Thompson: Who were some of the men during this period that really did support women cartoonists and comics? I know you’ve talked about Vaughn Bode as somebody that really helped.

Trina Robbins: Yes. He was very supportive when you know, like I said, there was a boys club and he wasn’t part of the boy’s club either. I think he felt very shut out. I think those guys resented him. Maybe he was just too talented for them. I don’t know. But they did resent him and there were other guys in 1972 my partner was Leslie Cabarda who was a cartoonist underground cartoonist at the time contributed comics book and he was of course supportive. I mean I wouldn’t be living has been living with him if we weren’t supportive there were lots of supportive guys. There was that core, there was that core of boy’s club

Jim Thompson: and there were some that seemed to go out of their way to leave you out of the convention list and to leave you out of projects and panels and you mentioned Roger Brand several times.

Trina Robbins: It was almost uncanny how much he went out of his way to not introduce me to anyone until leave me out. It was just, it was really kind of mindblowing. Yes.

Jim Thompson: I was reading where, I think it was Spain Rodriguez, and I hope I don’t get it wrong because you’ll fuss at me, but Spain Rodriguez said that they weren’t trying to actually freeze you out because you were women. It was just that your stuff was sweeter and they wanted to be vulgar and gross.

Trina Robbins: That’s exactly what he said. Yeah. To me that was a great compliment because first of all, that was when we were co teaching a class in the early 21st century in Chico on comics, I was teaching the writing and he was teaching the drawing. We would have separate classes. But then the last class was the two of us together and he said that he had read this in my book, my history of women cartoonists, a quote saying that it was a sweetness to women’s comics and he said that was really why they didn’t want to publish me because it was too sweet because they didn’t want to be sweet. They wanted to be nasty and raw and horrible. This was really an enormous compliment, you know? And not only that, but it told me that he had read my book, which was a big compliment too.

Alex Grand: So do you feel like when they want to be vulgar, is that just because it just gets more readers and it pays more? Is that basically all that is?

Trina Robbins: No it’s what they wanted to do. It’s little boys telling potty jokes. Come on, you guys. Do you remember when you were horrible little boys, but these are just horrible little boys who never grew up.

Jim Thompson: Well, I will say that the early women’s comics have their own level of vulgarity. They also were pushing boundaries quite a bit.

Trina Robbins: Some of them were quite vulgar, yes.

Jim Thompson: Tina, is there anything else you want to say in relation to, well, one, one thing I want to ask you about because I love this story was where it was a party and the men kept wanting to basically split up and put the wives and women in the kitchen and the men were going to go in another room and talk. And you were a cartoonist too…

Trina Robbins: You keep getting it just a little twisted. This was, this was 1970. It was a dinner, given at Roger Brand and his wife Michelle given at their house and they had invited other cartoonists and at the time I was living with Kim Deitch and he was part of the boy’s club. So I came along, I was invited, but then after dinner all the women went into the kitchen and the man hung out together, you know, smoking pot and talking. And I was, damn, that was a feminist. Oh, it’s not going to go into the kitchen with a bunch of women. I was a cartoonist. I wasn’t just the wife, you know. So I stayed with the male cartoonists, but then what happened was Roger kept leading them out of the room into another room and I would follow them into that room and then brought to lead them into another room. So it was like he kept moving away from me and leading the guys away from me and I just kept following cause I wasn’t going to be left alone. It was a very weird situation.

Jim Thompson: That’s great. I want to ask you about what other anecdote, which was you were being invited when you were living in New York. You were going to parties, were they hosted by Archie Goodwin?

Trina Robbins: Yes. Archie and Anne Murphy, his wife.

Jim Thompson: You saw Steve Ditko there?

Trina Robbins: Yes. In a little gray suit.

Jim Thompson: and Bill Everett and Roy Thomas and Gil Kane and Walt Simonson a whole blend of the past and the the current ones and they were all there at the parties talk about that a little bit and some of your encounters.

Trina Robbins: It was Flo Steinberg, who invited me, I guess the first time I went there was Roger again, Roger Brand, but he had never invited me. He had never told me about these parties. And he said, what are you doing here? I said, I was invited and it was great. I mean, I was, you know, they, I don’t think that they took me seriously as a cartoonist, but they accepted me as a person and were very nice to me.

Alex Grand: What year was that roughly?

Trina Robbins: That was 69

Alex Grand: when you saw Steve Ditko and Roy Thomas and then, that was in 69?

Trina Robbins: yes.

Alex Grand: Oh, okay. How was Steve Ditko? Was that the only time you saw him around then? did you see him at another time?

Trina Robbins: I saw him twice, a little gray man in a little gray suit, standing all alone in the hall with a drink, not talking to anybody. And, and Anne Murphy, Archie’s wife, came over and said, can I get you anything? And he said, no, I’m fine. And she just kind of looked at me and shrugged and he walked. He left shortly after that. And the second time I saw him, he was at Woody’s studio. I went to visit Woody, and he was there. And Woody said, oh, this is Trina Robbins. This is the girl I told you about. Which was a great compliment to me that someone that he actually told someone about me and all of a sudden Steve Ditko left. Woody said, you’re going, you’re going so quick. He said, yeah, I got to go.

Alex Grand: so he didn’t say much, I guess those two times. Did you get the impression that Woody and him were friends?

Trina Robbins: I think they were.

Alex Grand: So Ditko was just, do you think he was just shy? I mean, what’s your, I guess it’s hard to tell from those few encounters…

Trina Robbins: I think he didn’t like to hang out with people very much.

Alex Grand: Yeah, that’s okay. No, that’s fair. That’s interesting.

Jim Thompson: One other anecdote in terms of the parties, so I don’t know if it was the last party you went to before you moved, but there was a party where you brought the brownies.

Trina Robbins: Yes I made pot brownies. I felt that the parties were too stayed, that everyone was just being a little too rigid and too straight. So I made pot brownies and brought them in and called them Alice be topless brownies because she has the recipe for pot brownies and her Alice B Toklas cookbook that are quite famous. And everybody ate the brownies and was having a wonderful time and just just laughing and really loosening up. And at one point Roy Thomas said, what did you put in these Brownies Trina? And I said, Pot he said, I thought so

Alex Grand: that’s great. Now let’s talk early eighties you had basically a series of installments of Dope, of the comic Sax Rohmer’s Dope Book, but in comics form and Eclipse comics, it was were released in a serial fashion as you went through the story. You wrote in the graphic novel when I was kind of researching your stuff, that you felt like the elements of this story, we’re perfect for a comic book. And you also said that you enjoyed it reading it within the context of his time because there’s some racism and misogyny and this and that, but you still value it as an artifact of its time. So I guess a couple of questions. What made it for perfect comic book and what advice would you give to younger readers as they look at old stuff like that and how should they process that stuff?

Trina Robbins: Well, you know, I think we have to realize that by our standards in the past everyone was racist. It’s as simple as that. Really, truly everyone was racist. I mean, if you read Charles Dickens, you read Mark Twain, every one was racist. They were, you know, they didn’t know they were being racist. We have different standards now, but as for Dope, it’s so visual. I mean, my God, it’s got such a great villain essence such a great villain and such great characters and it’s just, it’s so visual. It’s so blood and thunder. Sax Rohmer was such a good pulpy writer and it just was made to be adapted into comics.

Jim Thompson: I was so happy to see that come back in print because it’s, it’s lovely. It’s, it’s one of my favorite things.

Trina Robbins: I think it really holds up, yeah, I think that in the eighties I was at my best as an artist.

Jim Thompson: I have to say that we had Tom Orzechowski on our podcast. He does such a good job on the lettering on that, it as some of his best stuff.

Trina Robbins: He lived downstairs from us, you know, we lived in the same building and I could just bring the pages downstairs to Tom.

Alex Grand: You mean back then he did?

Trina Robbins: yes. Okay. Okay.

Alex Grand: Oh that’s awesome. Yeah cause that was when he was also lettering X-Men at the same time.

Trina Robbins: He’s such a good letterer oh my God. Yeah.

Jim Thompson: And you were doing a lot of main stream work than in previous years during this a eighties period as well. Cause you were, you did some work for DC, the Wonder Woman series and you also did some Marvel work as well under Jim shooter, correct?

Trina Robbins: Yes. Yes. My attempt to bring back the girls’ comics with Misty who was Millie Model’s niece.

Alex Grand: Well that was awesome. Trina I know you’re low on time. What we’ll do is we will continue this off in a second segment in the future. Jim, any closing comments?

Jim Thompson: I just want to say how much I enjoy this, but also I look forward to the second section when we talk about Trina as a Comic Historian and a scholar and an advocate for artists who were underappreciated at the time and unknown until she really started to make us aware of them.

Alex Grand: Wonderful. Yeah. Thanks so much for joining us here at the comic book historian podcast.

Trina Robbins: Okay. Talk to you later. Bye.

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