misty english version

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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 comic’s 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, Millie’s 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 protagonist’s 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 Trina’s 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. Isn’t 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

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  • 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 under-ordered, 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)

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

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

    comics-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 self-

    confident girl who knew what she wanted. Her wardrobe was cool and many times

    designed by real stylists.

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

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

  • 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

    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

  • 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 super-

    heroin 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.

  • 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.

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

    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/wp-

    content/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:

    [email protected]