A review by octavia_cade
The Great Women Superheroes by Trina Robbins

informative medium-paced

4.0

I know very little about the history of comics in general, so many of the superheroines mentioned here were new to me. I was really surprised to read that, in the 1940s, a number of studies showed that more girls were reading comics than boys. I was distinctly not surprised to learn that, as the number of comics featuring relatable heroines - rather than shrieking ninnies or those ridiculously over-sexualised pneumatic villains - decreased, so did female readership. I don't like reading that bullshit either. It is in fact hard to read anything when your eyes are rolling that hard. More eye rolls - none of which are directed at Robbins, who is messenger and not culprit - at the superhero teams of the 1960s, I think it was, who consistently only had one woman member and liked to present her shopping and fainting. What a shock that more girls weren't lining up to buy that!

I believe this book was first published in 1996, so the history covers about 50 years or so; I'd be interested in knowing what the overall trends have been in the three decades since. There are some fantastic modern comics written by women with compelling female protagonists out there. A lot of them, true, aren't superheroines, but then I tend to find superhero types some of the more boring protagonists anyway. This book wasn't boring, though. History rarely is.