Memory: Pretty in Ink at Cartoon Art Museum 2014

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Trina Robbins discusses the fine points of a page by Grace Drayton from her collection at the Pretty in Ink exhibition, as Cartoon Art Museum’s executive director Summerlea Kashar looks on.

Today I’m rescuing another great exhibit from my old blog: Trina Robbins’s Pretty in Ink at the Cartoon Art Museum’s 655 Mission Street space in 2014. These photos were taken at a reception/curator talk on July 31. The exhibit showcased pieces from the collection of comics Herstorian Trina Robbins, some of which we showed again years later at the Society of Illustrators. On view were works by female cartoonists working in the early 20th century, including pieces from Ethel Hays, Edwina Dumm, Nell Brinkley, Ramona Fradon, and Lily Renée. The exhibit also includes fan art, rare photos, and other memorabilia. Trina also signed copies of her Fantagraphics book, Pretty in Ink: North American Women Cartoonists 1896-2013.

Trina Robbins pointing out highlights in the career of the flapper age cartoonist Nell Brinkley.

Robbins was invited by Malcolm Whyte to join his first Advisory Board when he founded the museum in the 80s and she has had many exhibits since then. Her most recent shows have focused on the subjects of her books, like Nell Brinkley and the Flapper Era, or her long connection with the DC comics icon Wonder Woman. In 2019, she showed work from her collection aimed at teenage girls, including pages from Archie, paper dolls, and work from her own 90s titles for Eclipse Comics Go Girl! and California Girls.

Trina Robbins talks about Teen Comics from her collection with sydney phillips, fashionista and romance comics specialist. This exhibit was at the Cartoon Art Museum’s current gallery at 781 BeacH Street in Fisherman’s wharf.

SDCC Memory: Kim's First Panel, 2009

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Just found a few photos from my first San Diego Comic-Con panel with Michael Dooley and Denis Kitchen, a Comics Arts Conference panel on exhibitions. Michael was talking about Masters of American Comics, Denis was talking about his Underground Classics show opening in Wisconsin, and I was talking about my research on The Comic Art Show.

Denis and Michael became wonderful friends and mentors. I appreciate you!

In 2009, Michael Dooley did a Spotlight on Denis Kitchen panel that began with him unspooling a long roll of paper that dropped over the podium down onto the floor, representing DK’s busy and multi-faceted career. I also met Trina Robbin for the first time.

Farewell to Maurice Horn

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Maurice Horn as M’sieu Toute in a 8/26/1968 Steve Canyon strip by Milt caniff. “He was named Toute because he toots his own horn” Maurice told me. He was very proud of this REOCCURRING character.

I was sad to hear of the passing of the French comics historian Maurice Horn on 12/30/2022 in New York after a long illness. He was 97 (obit by Andrew Farago on TCJ). My essay “Maurice Horn: A Memorial,” published in the International Journal of Comic Art (Spring 2023), includes the recollections of his younger brother Pierre Horn.

He was a controversial figure and an important pioneer in comics studies and exhibitions. I interviewed him several times and visited his New York home for the 2016 article I wrote about Horn and his publications. He was always charming and helpful. The last time I saw him in person was in 2015. Danny Fingeroth, my husband Marc Greenberg and I met Maurice for dinner at Bistro la Cote in his upper West Side neighborhood at 1st Avenue and 80th. May he rest in peace.

The IJOCA printed my short memorial to him with comments from his brother Pierre (V25,#1, 504-509).

A few of horn’s best-known books. A History of the Comic Strip helped spark a new wave of comic art exhibitions in the 1970s, including his own ny exhibit 75 Years of the Comics (1972). Long after these titles were published, I persuaded him to write a sidebar for the Routledge Handbook of the Secret Origins of Comics Studies. I think this was the last writing by him that was published.

Horn was best known for his 1976 encyclopedia. it had numerous flaws but many people say it was their first exposure to the wide world of international comics.

Horn was one of the last surviving members of the French Fan Club that produced this breakthrough 1967 exhibit. He was an important connection to US cartoonists like Milt Caniff and Byrne Hogarth. A History of the Comics Strip was the English translation from this show’s catalog.

Before Horn moved to the US and embarked on his career as a historian, he and claude moloterni wrote a series of mystery novels.under the pen name franck Sauvage (inspired by Doc Sauvage). they were so successful that they had a radio show.

My last communication with him was this pretty holiday greeting from the Central park conservancy in 2017.

del Toro's Pinocchio at MOMA NY

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In February while I was attending the College Arts Association’s national convention in midtown NY, I was able to catch Guillermo del Toro Crafting Pinocchio, MOMA’s stunning display of puppets, sets, and other production materials from del Toro’s stop-motion film. After a short intro, the exhibit began with a room of character models, video clips, and concept art. It continued with several galleries containing the actual stop-motion sets used in the film with videos of the sets in use, and other production materials. On a lower floor, there was a gallery dedicated to film scoring and some key models. The exhibit concluded with a screening room featuring posters and art from all of del Toro’s films and film clips organized around themes that reoccur in his work.

My photos don’t really do justice to the scale and detail of this exhibit, but here’s a taste. The copy that follows is a description from MOMA’s website: “No art form has influenced my life and my work more than animation and no single character in history has had as deep of a personal connection to me as Pinocchio,” the acclaimed director Guillermo del Toro has said. Guillermo del Toro: Crafting Pinocchio, an exhibition uniquely organized during the production of a feature film, focuses on Del Toro’s first stop-motion animated feature—an innovative reinterpretation of Carlo Collodi’s 1883 children’s novel, now set in Fascist-era Italy. In this exhibition, which coincides with the film’s premiere, visitors will experience being on a movie set and see first-hand how an international team of designers, craftspeople, and animation artists in Portland, Oregon, Guadalajara, Mexico, and Altrincham, England worked collaboratively to realize Del Toro’s vision.

Opening with classic and contemporary editions and interpretations of Pinocchio from around the world, the exhibition also includes production art, props, and a look at the various phases of puppet-making. Working film sets from Del Toro’s movie, motion tests, and time-lapse video installations document the complex stop-motion process that brings the story’s characters to life. The exhibition concludes with an immersive installation that brings together newly commissioned video and posters from Del Toro’s filmography, including works such as The Devil’s Backbone (2001), Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), Pacific Rim (2013), The Shape of Water (2017), and Nightmare Alley (2021).”