Hermes Press is coming to slay the fashion industry- with some HERstory! Gladys Parker: A Life in Comics, A Passion for Fashion explores the history behind Mopsy and her creator Gladys Parker! This beautiful book will also provide a rarely seen collection of Mopsy stories and many of Parker’s earlier strips. Cartoonist Gladys Parker was unique in comics. As with Frida Kahlo, it was impossible to tell where her art left off and its creator began. Parker mixed fashion and comics and created classic characters that mimicked her sense of fashion. In fact, Parker was an exact double for her ink-and-paper creation, Mopsy. Tarpe Mills and Dale Messick both dressed to kill and included paper dolls featuring their heroines’ chic 1940s wardrobes. Tarpe Mills and Lily Renee were fashion models before they drew comics. But only Gladys Parker (and one other)* was a fashion designer with a successful line of clothing while at the same time drawing an equally successful comic strip. Parker’s dresses bearing the Gladys Parker label were sold at her own New York shop and at high-end department stores across the country – and she also found the time to costume Hollywood movies and the beauties that starred in them! Who better to chronicle the story of Gladys Parker than comics herstorian Trina Robbins, who in the 1960s designed clothes for hippies and rock stars out of her East Village boutique, while drawing underground comix?
Author
Trina Robbins is an American comics artist and writer. She was an early and influential participant in the underground comix movement, and one of the few female artists in underground comix when she started. Her first comics were printed in the East Village Other. She later joined the staff of a feminist underground newspaper It Ain't Me, Babe, with whom she produced the first all-woman comic book titled It Ain't Me Babe. She became increasingly involved in creating outlets for and promoting female comics artists, through projects such as the comics anthology Wimmen's Comix. She was also the penciller on Wonder Woman for a time in the '80s. Trina has worked on an adaptation of Sax Rohmer's Dope for Eclipse Comics and GoGirl with artist Anne Timmons for Image Comics. Trina designed Vampirella's costume for Forrest Ackerman and Jim Warren. In addition to her comics work, Robbins is an author of non-fiction books, including several with an emphasis on the history of women in cartooning. She is the first of the three "Ladies of the Canyon" in Joni Mitchell's classic song from the album of the same name. Trina Robbins won a Special Achievement Award from the San Diego Comic Con in 1989 for her work on Strip AIDS U.S.A., a benefit book that she co-edited with Bill Sienkiewicz and Robert Triptow.
