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Dont mistake Trina Robbinss gentleness for shyness.
Shes overjoyed for their success.
Well, yknow what?
Itsnotone of the first.
Her voice dropped down a quarter-octave.
Robbinss awakening came when shed already built a remarkably unusual life.
Its hard to overstate how much this transition changed Robbins.
And she said, Well, that was before I was in womens liberation.
I dont feel that way anymore.
What she did feel at the time was left out.
It didnt exactly work, and Robbins is certain that it was because she was a woman.
When she did get into events, she writes that they could be sexist nightmares.
The vibe was clear:why isnt this bitch in the kitchen where she belongs?
I think that a lot of these guys simply were misogynist, she tells me.
On one hand, no one can deny that the underground was male-dominated.
Rosenkranz says Robbins wasnt invited to contribute to many comic books because she wasnt good enough.
Whatever the reasons for her marginalization, she didnt allow it to stop her from being bold.
Robbins followed that up with 1971s all-woman anthologyAll Girl Thrillsand a solo comic calledGirl Fight Comicsin 1972.
It was also the source of what was perhaps her most momentous artistic conflict.
Robbins was deeply involved in the publication from the very beginning as a contributor and leader.
She had a style that couldnt have been more different from that of Robbins.
Where the latter was fond of refined elegance in content and presentation, Kominsky was committed to radical messiness.
Kominskys stories forWimmens Comixwere autobiographical affairs that depicted, in uncomfortably vivid detail, her own self-hatred and neuroses.
Kominsky and Noomin grew resentful of Robbins.
We unabashedly liked men.
We were more comfortable seeing ourselves as Bad Girls, sluts, anarchist artists doing whatever we pleased.
The resentment was and is mutual, though Robbins thinks it has less to do with politics than personalities.
I think they just dont like me and just never liked me, Robbins says.
I think its as simple as that.
Whether or not that was true at the outset, Robbins certainly gave them reason for bitterness in time.
Kominsky and Noomin had enough.
They set out and formed their own all-woman comic,Twisted Sisters.
We didnt like Trinas definition of feminism, Noomin tells me.
It was kind of a difference of opinion.
Says Rudahl, It wasnt any kind of deep-seated philosophical artistic split.
It was just plain jealousy, and that was typical high-school, bad-girl stuff.
Whatever the cause, the split rocked the underground.
I think I thought initially,Well, itll fly over, and it didnt.
None of that should overwrite the impact of the work Robbins and her comrades made in the underground.
Nor should historians forget Robbinss subsequent work after the underground scene petered out in the late 1970s.
She went on to edit the all-woman erotica comicWet Satinand contribute to the transgressive French anthologyAh!
She completed acclaimed graphic novels like 1981sDopeand 1985sThe Silver Metal Lover.
Throughout it all, she has remained a firebrand.
She would speak out on behalf of women creators past and present and help organize campaigns to promote them.
But she has continued to write comics and prose.
And Robbins thinks the world is finally catching up to her and her aspirations.
I used to be a voice crying out in the wilderness, you know?
There are all of these women.
