“With Harley Quinn and Miss Marvel, the next generation of super-heroines is assured,” says Trina Robbins, comic book specialist

Of Wonder Woman 1984 at Birds of Prey through the phenomenon WandaVision and Marvel’s return to theaters with Black widow, the super-heroines impose themselves in force on the screens. It was time ! Indeed, it took for example 10 years and 20 films for Marvel Studios to devote a film to a super-heroine with Captain marvel. The series are also already announced She-hulk, Ms. Marvel or the film Batgirl at DC Comics. Are we witnessing a reign of superheroines?

This is exactly the subject, and even the title, of an unpublished documentary directed by Xavier Fournier and Frédéric Larière and broadcast Monday at 8:55 pm on Toonami – and available on demand. It takes 90 minutes to Reign of the superheroines to look back on 80 years of struggle for the recognition of women, whether they are the superheroes themselves but also the authors and readers they represent. Among the many speakers, all of quality, one voice attracts more attention, that of Trina Robbins, author, activist and historian of the place of women in comics. At 82, she doesn’t have her tongue in her pocket and made 20 minutes to meet her.

If Wonder Woman is one of the first, and most famous, superheroines, you like to remember that she is preceded by another, Miss Fury.

Miss Fury was indeed born before Wonder Woman, her adventures were published six months before those of the Amazon. She is a very interesting superheroine, first of all because she is the first created by a woman, by the excellent screenwriter and designer Tarpé Mills. Inspired by 1940s film noir, Miss Fury is the alter ego of wealthy Marla Drake, who dons black panther skin to dispense justice. We can think a little bit about Catwoman. But Miss Fury is not stuck in one costume, and often wears fabulous clothes, the finest pieces in 1950s fashion. She is very aware of what she is wearing, what it means, what it is. t is also its way of existing.

Not all superheroes have served the cause of women, and you take the example of Supergirl.

She is Superman’s cousin, has the same powers as him but never really demonstrates them, has to keep her identity a secret like him but it goes further than that. He insists that she stay in the shadows, because the world already has Superman, so he doesn’t need Supergirl, he doesn’t need to know of her existence.

Both superheroes and women have always been seen as secondary. They are not as “strong” as men, so men considered them weak. But we are not weak. And then Supergirl, Invisible Girl… For a long time, it was the “girls”, the girls, in the comics, not the “women”, the women.

Moreover, in Fantastic Four, Sue Storm’s power is to become… invisible.

What a metaphor! It literally becomes invisible to everyone. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby weren’t necessarily aware of it, I’m sure they weren’t, because it was the state of mind, and the place of women, in the 1960s. But you have three super strong guys, Mr. Fantastic, the Human Torch, the Thing, and that invisible little girl. In the first few issues, she even spent her time fainting.

You were the first woman to draw Wonder Woman in 1986, and even helped create Vampirella in 1969.

It was very important for me to draw Wonder Woman because I love her, I admire her. I wanted to pay tribute to the golden age of comics. For Vampirella, it’s different, I didn’t really collaborate on the creation of the character, I just found her costume. A costume that has evolved over the ages, and not necessarily in a good way. She had less and less fabric on her, the male gauze took over. I didn’t like what they did with her, but I didn’t have a say.

In the 1990s, there was the fashion for “bad girl art” in comics, where the superheroines wore very revealing costumes, posed in exaggerated postures… Everything was done to satisfy a part of the male readership who did not was not yet old enough to buy his Playboy or his Penthouse. They were not admired for their powers, their strength, but only as pin-ups.

Superheroes have had to rely on the help of writers and artists to turn things around, like Chris Claremont on the X-Men and the character of Jean Gray.

Chris Claremont was amazing, he kept adding female characters to his stories. The superhero teams were finally only made up of three guys and a girl. If there was a new character, primary or secondary, superhero or doctor, he was the first to immediately ask: what if we made her a woman? What he did with Jean Gray is in this respect fascinating, his arc is today one of the most famous in the history of comics.

Miss Hulk, Spider-Woman, Jane Foster in Thor… what do you think of these female versions of iconic superheroes?

I still prefer women to have their own characters than a female version of already existing superheroes. Why Miss Hulk? Why not make her a full-fledged superheroine, with her own identity? Miss Hulk is a lot like Supergirl. It’s also a way for the industry to test women as superheroines without taking too much risk. And I also think the majority of these feminized superheroes were created by men, they didn’t have the feminine sensibility.

Many people have discovered superheroes through films and series, do these adaptations also have an importance in the presentation?

If the comic book industry has always been fairly conservative, what about the movie industry? It is even more so. It took so many years and so many films to have a Marvel superheroine movie for example. But I admit I have seen little of the latest films, it is always a bunch of superheroes against a threat that wants to destroy the universe, we quickly go around and, me, I have reached the point. end. (laughs)

But the Wonder woman by Patty Jenkins, starring Gal Gadot, was interesting, as it returned to Themyscira, the island of the Amazons, and set during World War I. After the death of its creator William Moulton Marston, we could forget where it came from and this period, so it was a welcome homecoming. And visually stunning.

Which super-heroine finds thanks to your eyes today?

New Miss Marvel, Muslim teenager Kamala Khan, is awesome. And to go to the competition, at DC, there is also the wacky Harley Quinn. I like them both very much. We can also mention Squirrel Girl and her crazy powers. I’m pretty optimistic about future superheroines, because more and more women are working in comics, as screenwriters and cartoonists. They change the representation but also the drawing itself. Before, there was a way to draw if you wanted to be a superhero. However, they redefine this framework, the boxes of the comics.