Cartoonist Trina Robbins dies at 85

Trina Robbins, a cartoonist, writer and editor who helped make room for women in the male-dominated world of American comics, creating books and anthologies with sophisticated female characters and an unabashedly feminist perspective, died April 10 at a hospital in San Francisco. She was 85.

The cause was a stroke, said her daughter, Casey Robbins.

Robbins was one of the most prolific and acclaimed women to come out of the underground comix movement of the late 1960s and ’70s, when creators such as Robert Crumb, Gilbert Shelton and S. Clay Wilson thrilled readers with taboo-breaking work that was by turns psychedelic, violent, sexual and political — a stark departure from the mainstream fare found in Sunday newspaper sections or in display racks stocked with tales of muscle-bound superheroes.

Describing herself as “a storyteller, not a humorist,” Robbins explored issues of gender, sexuality and politics, often drawing on her love of ancient cultures, science fiction and mythical goddesses. Her work found plenty of male readers, although she wrote for a female audience, aiming to tell the kind of stories that she had once sought out as a young girl in Queens.

“From day one, she looked at the comics that were being published and she asked herself which stories weren’t being told, who felt they weren’t being seen by publishers, and she did whatever she could to remedy that, both as an artist and as an editor and publisher of anthology titles,” said Andrew Farago, curator of the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco.

Robbins fell in with a community of feminist activists and cartoonists after moving to San Francisco in 1969.

Working with fellow cartoonist Barbara “Willy” Mendes, she produced “It Ain’t Me, Babe” (1970), the first American comic book to be produced entirely by women. The cover was emblazoned with the words “WOMENS LIBERATION” above a parade of classic female cartoon characters raising their fists: Olive Oyl, Wonder Woman, Mary Marvel, Little Lulu, Sheena of the Jungle, Elsie the Cow.

The comic book became a hit, reportedly selling 40,000 copies over three printings, and laid the groundwork for “Wimmen’s Comix,” considered to be the longest-running comics anthology created entirely by women. Launched by Robbins and an initial team of nine other collaborators in 1972, the series lasted 20 years and featured work by celebrated cartoonists including Aline Kominsky-Crumb and Diane Noomin.

Its first issue featured a story by Robbins, “Sandy Comes Out,” that was inspired by the coming-out of her roommate Sandy — Crumb’s sister — and was believed to be the first non-pornographic comic to feature an openly lesbian character.

Robbins “understood and bolstered the importance of collective work between women,” said Caitlin McGurk, a curator at Ohio State University’s Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, “and through these anthology comics she provided a platform for voices that had been historically marginalized.”

Over the next few decades, she bounced between the comics underground and the industry’s mainstream. She edited “Wet Satin” (1976), a collection of women’s erotica; became the first woman to draw a full issue of Wonder Woman, in 1986; created a Marvel comics character, Misty, geared toward young women; and co-founded Friends of Lulu, a nonprofit organization that promoted the reading and creation of comics by women.