Written in a witty, entertaining manner and filled with black-and-white illustrations, this book packs as much punch as the superheroines it chronicles. And she criticizes the "bad girl" comics of the 1990s, wherein scantily clothed pinups spend their adventures bathed in blood. Robbins explores the roots in the booming comic industry of the 1940s, when the new characters provided powerful role models for female readers. She chronicles comic-book heroines and their creators and also analyzes these characters from a feminist standpoint.
In this detailed history of female superheroes from the Forties through the Nineties, the author covers not only well-known classics like Wonder Woman but also includes more obscure comics. When was Wonder Woman created? Who is Miss Fury? What is Supergirl's disguise? Here comic illustrater and writer Robbins (A Century of Women Cartoonists, Kitchen Sink, 1993) answers these questions and a great many more. While she always brings a distinctly feminist sensibility to the subject matter, she is never strident, even about the most egregiously intelligence-insulting conceptions, such as the Black Canary, who fights crime in high heels and fishnets.
Although some sense of absurdity might have been appropriate to the task, Robbins is generally straightforward in describing frequently silly characters. The '90s offer such alternatives for girl comics readers as the punkster Tank Girl and spunky young Action Girl. The '70s saw a rash of "women's lib" ^-influenced characters sporting what Robbins terms a "slightly addled feminism." The backlash came with "bad girl" comics starring buxom, scantily clad heroines appealing to an adolescent fanboy's worst instincts. When psychologist William Marston (inventor of the lie detector, by the way) created WW in 1941, her success opened the floodgates for such exotically named but generally undistinguished imitations as Liberty Girl and Madame Strange. Robbins shows that there have been hundreds. Most would be hard-pressed to name one female superhero besides Wonder Woman.
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