Trina Robbins

Trina Robbins (August 17, 1938 – April 10, 2024) was a cartoonist, writer, historian, and one of the most consequential feminist voices in the history of American comics. Born in Brooklyn, she came up through the underground comix movement of the late 1960s and became one of the driving forces behind It Ain't Me Babe (1970) — the first commercial comic book created entirely by women — and co-founded the Wimmen's Comix collective, an all-female anthology that ran for two decades. In 1986 she became the first woman to draw an issue of Wonder Woman, with the Legend of Wonder Woman miniseries. Her original characters include Go Girl!, California Girls, and The Cowgirl Wentworth. Equally important was her lifelong work as a comics historian: her books excavating the contributions of women cartoonists — including A Century of Women Cartoonists and The Great Women Superheroes — helped recover a history of female talent that the mainstream industry had consistently erased. She passed away from complications of a stroke at age 85. Joni Mitchell name-checked her in 1970 in the song 'Ladies of the Canyon.'