The Feminine representation in Misty in the

Brazilian and American issues

Daniela Marino

Women and Comics

In the 1980s, Marvel, through its imprint Star Comics, tried to reproduce the
same success of a comics series aimed to the feminine audience during the 1950s and
the 1960s, Millie, the model. For that, Marvel counted on the ability of a designer
known by her feminist point of view, Trina Robbins, to give life to Misty, Millies niece.
This paper aims to identify the aspects of the feminine representation of a decade, both
in Brazil as in the US and point out the differences between the scripts and the in the
protagonists image in order to show how these differences were influenced by local
culture and historical context.
The path taken from the first comic strips drawn by women up to the first issue
of Misty in the 1980s was not exactly a calm one. In order the little girls could have
Trinas comic in their hands, some women before her had to make their ways through
rough tracks and it is important to know and understand their History so then we can
contextualize the universe Misty was conceived.
Isnt it curious, to say the least, that a character whose inspiration was based on
another very successful comic Millie, the model had only six issues in the US and
nine in Brazil, being published for only about a year?
In the 1980s the only place to buy comics in the USA
was comic book stores, which were owned or managed by
men, who catered to young men and teenage boys,
carrying mostly mainstream superhero comics. The
prevailing belief was that girls didn't read comics, but of
course if the store is full of 12 year old boys and smells
like old gymn socks, and the only comics for sale are big

muscular guys beating each other up, most girls wont

even walk into a comic store. As a result, the comic stores
either didnt carry anything for girls or they underordered, and when the books sold out they didn't
reorder. As a result, if you couldn't find Misty in the
stores, you obviously couldn't buy Misty, so after 6 issues
it was cancelled. Misty was not the only comics that had
that problem: DC comics was publishing Barbara Slate's
"Angel Love," which also failed because of distribution.1
Although we cannot say that the Golden Age was that golden for the female
artists, it was between the 1930s and the 1950s that some women got to shine through
an extremely masculine universe and if it was not due to the intense research of Trina
Robbins for her books The Great Women Cartoonists and Pretty In Ink: North
American Women Cartoonists 1896-2011, it is very likely that we would never heard of
any of them.
The women incidence in the publishing market in the US is directly related to
the historical context of the country: during the 1920s and 1930s feminist movements
inspired by the suffragettes like Lucy Stone and Elizabeth Blackwell started to have
international reverberation. Women organized themselves to fight for their rights of
professional equality, right to vote and to have access to education. In consequence
from the wars and the Great Depression, women saw themselves forced to look for jobs
performed by men until then as they needed to provide for their homes. Women driving
trucks, writing, flying planes and also drawing cartoons and illustrations were no longer
considered as something unusual.
Even before that, Rose ONeil drew the first comic strip ever made by a woman,
almost at the same time that the world was being introduced to a character that is known
for many as the precursor of this style: Outcaults Yellow Kid. In 1986, Rose in her 22
years, published a strip on the magazine Truth only a few months after Yellow Kids
apparition on the papers. She then became the first woman to integrate the humor
magazine Puck.
Everyone read newspapers and magazines. The women
who drew cartoons were nationally famous superstars.
People would cut out their strips and save them. You can
find scrapbooks with these womens cartoons pasted in
1

Answer to the question: Why do you think Misty didnt last longer? In an interview made by e-mail with
Trina Robbins in February 2015.

them, sometimes colored in by a young girl. Nobody

thought it was unusual for a woman to do comics because
it wasnt unusual for girls and women to read
comics.(Robbins, 2014)2
In the 1920s, with the acquisition of the right to vote and the influence of the
flappers way beyond fashion, illustrations alluding to these women became common
and had in Ethel Hays Flapper Fannie one of their greatest icons. However, due to the
crash of New York stock market of 1929, the characters became less glamourous and
portrayed poor women, orphans and hard-working girls struggling to make a living.
An example of this trend in the comics was the appearance of the poor, but
optimistic, protagonist Torchy Brown in Dixie to Harlem, by Jackie Ormes. She was the
first Afro-American cartoonist to be published in the US. Her strips were published in
papers aimed to black population around the country.
With the rise of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party in
Germany, war was on the horizon, and Americans were
volunteering to fight the fascists. Who could defeat such a
seemingly insurmountable evil? The first issue of the
groundbreaking omnibus series Action Comics,
published by Detective Comics, Inc., in June 1938,
featured a new kind of hero, an alien with superhuman
powers, wearing a caped costume typical of daredevils of
the day. Superman fought bullies, oppressors, and
dictators, in stories that alluded to Hitler and the Nazis,
but never mentioned them by name. (Robbins, 2014)3
In spite of the resistance, in 1939 Tarpe Mills drew some mystery stories
featuring zombies and other characters for some comic books (until then, women only
drew delicate or cute characters) and later on, she was known by her Miss Fury, one of
the most successful feminine characters in the adventure stories.
At the same time, still with strong reluctance, the syndicates from Chicago and
New York agreed to publish what would be one of the longest-living series of Comics
History: Brenda Starr, the reporter, by Dalia Messick (published as Dale Messick in
order to hide her feminine identity in the beginning). These comics were published up to
2011, always drawn by women as requested by the artist. (Nogueira, 2015:29)

Interview for the site : site http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/women-who-conquered-thecomics-world/

3
Interview for the site : site http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/women-who-conquered-thecomics-world/

Following the path taken by Tarpe Mills and Dale Messick, Lilly Rene, Gladys
Parker and Fran Hopper also shone during the golden years of comics, but, due to the
end of the Second War in 1945, men then returned home and to their former jobs, so
many women who had been hired to draw action stories, lost their jobs and were simply
not hired back.
Suddenly, all those strong women who flied planes and drove, started to be seen
as unfeminine. Women were being called back home to exercise their only and true
vocation: motherhood. Instead of dreaming about adventures around the world, the only
idea of personal fulfillment possible came in the shape of a marriage, a house and many
children running around the backyard.
Experts told them how to catch a man and keep him, how
to breastfeed children and handle their toilet training, how
to cope with sibling rivalry and adolescent rebellion; how
to buy a dishwasher, bake bread, cook gourmet snails, and
build a swimming pool with their own hands; how to
dress, look, and act more feminine and make marriage
more exciting; how to keep their husbands from dying and
their sons from growing into delinquents. They were
taught to pity the neurotic, unfeminine, unhappy women
who wanted to be poets or physicists or presidents. They
learned that truly feminine women do not want careers,
higher education, political rights, the independence and
the opportunities that the old-fashioned feminists fought
for.(Friedan, 1971:17)
This feminine ideal was not only imposed by the government and publicity, but
it was also totally embraced by society. At least it was what the behavior experts,
sociologists, psychologists thought until the writer Betty Friedan proved that this idea
sold by TV commercials of domestic appliances was as fragile as a soap bubble.
Few suburban housewives resort to suicide, and yet there
is other evidence that women pay a high emotional and
physical price for evading their own growth. They are not,
as we now know, the biologically weaker of the species. In
every age group, fewer women die than men. But in
America, from the time when women assume their
feminine sexual role as housewives, they no longer live
with the zest, the enjoyment, the sense of purpose that is
characteristic of true human health.
During the 1950s, psychiatrists, analysts, and doctors in
all fields noted that the housewifes syndrome seemed to
become
increasingly
pathological.
The
mild

undiagnosable symptomsbleeding blisters, malaise,

nervousness, and fatigue of young housewivesbecame
heart
attacks,
bleeding
ulcers,
hypertension,
bronchopneumonia; the nameless emotional distress
became a psychotic breakdown. Among the new
housewife-mothers, in certain sunlit suburbs, this single
decade saw a fantastic increase in maternal psychoses,
mild-to suicidal depressions or hallucinations over
childbirth. (Friedan, 1971:252)
As if the backlash caused by the mindset in vigor in the 1950s was not enough,
two other factors contributed for the drastic changes suffered by comics industry: the
book Seduction of the Innocent written by the psychiatrist Fredric Werthman, stating
that reading comics could cause juvenile delinquency and that independent feminine
characters such as Wonder Woman would drive girls to become lesbians, and the CCA
Comics Code Authority that censored all comics issues.
However, as the popularity of the Hippie movement rose, denying the values
that had driven the US to Vietnam War, the youngsters started to identify themselves
with the counterculture of Rock n Roll, psychedelic drugs and free love, leading artists
like Robert Crumb, Gilbert Sheldon and Kim Deitch to start an underground movement
called Comix. The comics produced by this movement used to make allusion to drugs
and explicit sex, in a clear attempt to contradict the control imposed by the CCA. These
works could be found in places like the Head Shops, little stores specialized in selling
products related to marijuana, tobacco and counterculture.
Trina Robbins
In the 1960s Trina Robbins lived in Los Angles, moving to New York later.
Influenced by the trend of Marvel comics which characters started to show deeper
psychological features, she tried to draw some super-heroes stories, but soon she
realized that it was not her style. Back then, Trina used to design clothes for rock stars
and their girlfriends, however, her interest in comics did not cease growing, mainly after
he independent newspaper The East Village Other started publishing strips from many
artists who incorporated the Hippie values.
As the underground movement grew, mainly in San Francisco, Trina decided to
move back to California. In 1970 she found out that the city was the center of the

underground comics universe for men, not for women. She had recently become a
feminist and besides her, few other women drew in San Francisco back then.
Nevertheless, despite the male designers did not include her work in their
productions, Trina ended up meeting the publishers of the first feminist journal, It aint
me, Babe and in short time she would be drawing illustrations for its covers, back pages
and inside pages. With the coproduction of Willy Mendes, she got to release the first
exclusively feminine comic compilation.
In 1971 Trina published her first comics on her own, Girl Fight and also joined
other artists to produce the book All-Girl Thrills by Print Mint and due to the huge
success of It aint me, Babe compilation, Last Gasp sold 20,000 issues in other two
reprints of that work.
The visibility achieved by the compilation led one of its editors, Pat Moodian, to
call artists that could contribute in another project and in 1972, together with Trina
Robbins and other nine women; she started the first series of publications exclusively
produced by women, the Wimmens Comix, which lasted up to 1992.
In the first issue of Wimmens Comix, Trina made a story called Sandy Comes
Out, inspired in the life of a lesbian friend of hers, but the artist Mary Wings, also
lesbian and feminist, felt offended believing it was an outrage for a heterosexual woman
to write a gay story. So, in 1973 Mary produced the first comic book about lesbianism
called Come Out Comix and later, Trina and her ended up becoming friends.
In the late 1970s being a feminist and an activist for the LBTGQ community
rights was a little complicated for the only place to carry their underground comics
would be the Head Shops, so, due to the Hippie movement impairment,

these shops

started to stop their activities.

The newsstands would give less room to comics as years went by and at the
same time, comics were being sold almost exclusively in comic shops owned by man
with no interest in selling girls works. Having no place to buy comics, women also
started to buy less and as a consequence, the only option left for them was to resort to
alternative papers that still published their strips.

Trina also draw Wonder Woman and Vapirellas outfit, but she has not produced
comics often in the last 30 years as she dedicates most of her time researching about
women in comics. Her research has engendered over 10 books, being Pretty in Ink
about the great women cartoonist from 1896 to 2013 - the most recent one. In 1994 she
joined other artists in order to encourage women to participate in comics as readers and
creators and this non-profitable organization called Friends of Lulu lasted until to 2011.
Misty
Trina was then living what she thought to be the womens comics drought in the
1980s and, as far as it seems, the comics industry feeling the fall in womens comics
sales, decided to associate Misty to her best seller comics character aunt Millie, so then,
Marvel, through its imprint Star Comics, would assure that girls who had stopped
reading comics returned to buy them again.
Millie was one of Marvels longest-living humor series. At first it was conceived
as a humor series, but in the middle of the 1960s it became more romantic. The
character used to be seen wearing fur and had an unlimited number of clothes. She was
frequently showed in funny situations while dealing with her red-haired rival Chilli
Storm. Among the artists who drew her all men it was Stan Lee.4
In conventional popular culture of the 1950s and 1960s,
teenage girls were represented as talking on the phone
particularly a pink Princess telephone. In issues of Betty
and Veronica magazine (in association with Archie
comics), as well as in teen fiction and teen movies, a
recurring image is that of the teenage girl cannot be
separated from her phone; of course, the worst
punishment she can imagine is to be cut off from the
phone or forced to go on a camping trip with family
members (and separated from her lifeline to the outside
world).(Mitchell;Reid-Walsh, 2008: Introduction)
Being a feminist, Trina could not conceive Millies niece in the same shapes of a
magazine from the 1960s, so she made Misty an independent and quick-witted girl.
Although most of the stories were about boys, fashion and fame, Misty was a selfconfident girl who knew what she wanted. Her wardrobe was cool and many times
designed by real stylists.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ComicBook/MillieTheModel

Fig. 1 and 2 Millie Cover # 4 and Misty Cover # 1 Source: https://www.mycomicshop.com/

Both in the US as in Brazil, the issues used to bring paper dolls of the characters
for the readers to cut and change their clothes, following the pattern produced by the
magazines since the 1930s. The girls also were encouraged to draw and send their
drawings so then the publishers would chose some to be worn by the characters. The
expectation of having one of your drawings worn buy your favorite character was one of
the reasons why girls longed for the next issue so anxiously: according to Trina
Robbins, letters from all over the country came to the publishers carrying drawings for
Misty to wear.
Despite the fact that there was audience to buy Misty, shops would not carry it
under the excuse that girls did not read comics, so, it is almost impossible to find any
track of its existence in the market. This reluctance of the shops in selling girls comics
culminated in the closure of the publication that had six issues in the US between 1985
and 1986, and nine in Brazil, drawn by Watson Portela from 7 to 9. Trina did not even
know about the extra issues and only heard of them by a fan that sent her some copies.

Fig. 3 Credits for the fans drawing- # 9 - Source: personal files

Fig.4 issue # 6 Source: http://bullyscomics.blogspot.com.br/2014/09/paper-doll-month-day-16-dress-misty-for.html

Feminine Representation in Mistys Stories

In the process of recreation for the ways of experience the
world through the comics, the representations, whatever
they are, dont come from one single individual, when it
comes to opinion. They are first, a collective construction,
a process of construction of a representation based on a
net of meanings related to values and social practices.
Therefore, the way the feminine body is represented in the

comics reflects the collective positions, in a Dumontian

ideological plan which is also hierarchized and
evaluative. (Zamprogne, 2015 : 259)
The US were living the end of the Hippie movement and they experienced a new
era of technological innovations. In fashion, the top models like Cindy Crawford, whose
wages would become the dream of American teenagers, emerged. Misty was born in this
scenario and in her stories she would chase her dream through beauty pageants and
adventures among her rows with her rival Darlene.
In Brazil the boom of the top model career got more visibility in the 1990s with
the debut of Gisele Bunchen on the catwalk. In the 1980s, after the popular
movements for direct vote - Diretas j! The country was leaving a dictatorship that
used to censor all cultural production in many levels. The most popular program, as it
still is nowadays, was to watch soap operas.
While in the US Misty would win a talent contest to become a famous model, in
Brazil she would become a soap opera actress whose dream was to win the love of the
leading man called Flvio Jnior, in allusion to the big star Fbio Jnior who was
famous back then.
It is worth saying that the comics sales in Brazil also used to differ from the US:
While there the comics would be sold exclusively on specialized comic shops, here in
Brazil they were sold in the newsstand, what would have helped Misty to get more three
issues here. Side by side to successful comics such as Monicas gang, Scrooge McDuck,
Barbie and all super-heroes ones, Misty was easily found. There was no difficulty in
finding comics once most of the newsstands were located on the surroundings of
schools and together with collectable cards albums, many parents would encourage their
kids to buy them. In our culture it is still very common that a child is alphabetized with
Monicas gang comics and in the 1980s, comics exclusively targeted to girls were
placed on the shelves together with the most popular comics of that time.
Other curiosities about how Misty was represented in Brazil are mainly related to
the way she used to dress in issues 7 to 9 designed by Watson Portela and script by
Lcia Nbrega. The character got crew neck and became more sexualized then her
American version. Trina also remembers that in one of the Brazilian editions Misty is

shown in her hometown, which is in the state of New York, having palm trees on the
background. New York is very cold in the winter. There are no palm trees!
Regarding most of feminine representations in the American media in the 1980s,
according to the authors of Girl Culture, social practices usually associated with teen
girls included going to the mall (including brands and specific stores), cheerleading
(embodying clothing and popularity), writing on a diary (associated with the expression
dear Diary, secret diaries, hiding diaries that would eventually be discovered by
siblings or parents), and babysitting for friends or neighbors.
It is not possible to talk about feminine representation without approaching
gender matters. In their works, Foucault, Butler, Lauretis treat about the construction
and deconstruction of genders, their social and political implications; however, deeper
studies on these concepts would better fit to posterior essays aimed to analyze these
aspects and their impact in certain narratives, which is not our focus here. Therefore, we
have:
Gender is (one) representation which does not mean
that there is not concrete or real implications, both
social and subjective ones, in peoples material life.
The gender representation is its construction and in a
wider common sense it is possible to say that all Art
and east erudite culture are a register of the History of
this construction. (Lauretis, 1994:209)
Misty did not follow the stereotypes of this social idealization: Most of the
stories, although some of them were related to fashion, fame and relationships, showed
a variety of adventures. In one of these stories she has to solve a mystery about a
haunted house and in another one, she finds an outfit designed for a supposed superheroin in a play and she ends up acquiring super powers after trying it on.
In Brazil, from issue 1 to 6 the script did not suffer many changes besides the
ones already mentioned: She wanted to be a soap opera actress, but even in the US she
acts in some TV shows and plays, so, there are not big differences in the way girls used
to be represented in the issues. Both in the US and in Brazil she was independent and
funny, not being limited into the common representations of stereotypes. Concerning
the Brazilian issues, tough, although Lcia Nbrega tried to apply a feminist argument
to the scripts, the designers, mostly men, ended up giving her more sexualized features
than Trinas version.

Figura 1 Fig. 5 - Misty # 9 - Personal files.

The fact that we live in a tropical country with celebrations where the body is the
great attraction, together with the end of the dictatorship, may have contributed to the
way Misty looked, which was closer to Brazilian style. A more detailed view on
Brazilian habits back then would show if this hypothesis can be confirmed. Anyways,
the wish to become an actress and marry the actor who resembled the singer Fbio
Jnior are characteristics able to make the Brazilian readers identify themselves with
Misty, but the truth is that both the look and the language reflected the American culture
and they did not suffer significant changes in Brazilian issues.

Fig. 6 - Covers # 6, 5 and 4 - source: http://blogmaniadegibi.com/2011/11/misty-a-estrela-dos-quadrinhos/

Conclusion
Misty was a comic book that showed an American girl which contents were
targeted to teenage girls and, although she was not exactly a represented as a stereotype
of a typical American teenager, it is possible that most of her readers felt themselves
represented by her, both by her relation with fashion as for her wish to follow a career to
become famous and independent. As Trina Robbins said in the interview given to this
author, deep down, what all women want is that they can be treated with equality and.
SHOES!
However, it is not possible to consider the feminine representation in Misty
stories in Brazil unless when it comes to the taste for clothes, shared almost universally
by girls in all ages, but as it was said by Lcia Nbrega, a typical teenage Brazilian girl
in the 1980s would feel herself better represented in magazines targeted to her, like
Capricho that until 1985 brought romantic stories in sequential photos or by the TV
soap operas.
Bearing in mind that associating comics to childhood is still common in Brazil,
Mistys audience in the 1980s possibly saw in the comics just another possibility of
entertaining and leisure, besides a way to fantasize about what the future held. Perhaps,
if the comic had been published longer, we could evaluate the matters of representations
better, however, due to the difficulty to find feminine comics in the US during the 1980s
and to the cultural aspects of both countries, we can only conclude that Trina Robbins
tried to assure that girls from all over the places could see themselves in her stories and
could relate to the independence and determination of the character and that it is likely
that the feminine representations in the comic appealed directly to their personalities.

REFERENCES

Friedan, Betty. A Mstica Feminina. Petrpolis: Vozes. 1971.

Lauretis, Teresa. A tecnologia do Gnero. in: HOLANDA, Heloisa Buarque de.

Tendncias e Impasses O Feminismo como crtica da Cultura. Rio de Janeiro: Rocco.
1994, p. 206-242.

Mitchell, Claudia; Reid-Walsh, Jacqueline. Girl Culture: an encyclopedia. Westport:

Greenwood. 2008.

Nogueira, Natania A.S..As representaes femininas nas Histrias em Quadrinhos

norte-americanas: June Tarp Mills e sua Miss Fury (1941-1952) / Antnio Paulo dos
Santos Filho. Niteri, 2015.154p. : il Bibliografia: p. 148-154.

Robbins, Trina. Women in Comics. Great Women Cartoonists. National association of

Comics Arts Educators. Disponvel em http://www.readingwithpictures.org/wpcontent/uploads/2008/03/Women-in-Comics-An-Introductory-Course.pdf Acesso em
12 de maio de 2015

Zamprogne, Luciana. Como Estranhos podem encontrar o Paraso: Contra discursos,

ideologias e representaes do feminino na sociedade contempornea. In: BRAGA JR.,
Amaro; SILVA, Velria Fernandes da. Representaes do feminino nas histrias em
quadrinhos. Macei, 2015, p. 259-291

Author: Daniela Marino is graduated in Literature from Universidade Metropolitana de

Santos, Brazil and a member of ASPAS Associao de pesquisadores de Arte
Sequencial (Association of sequential art researchers) E-mail:
dsdomingues@hotmail.com