This is Golden Age artist Fran Hopper, standing next to a portrait of herself she painted in the 1940s, around the time she was working for the publisher Fiction House.
Trina Robbins just e-mailed this to me—as rediscovering Ms. Hopper alive and well was joint effort between us!—and I still can’t believe how fortunate we are to have a chance to preserve one more small corner of women’s comics history before her memories were lost to us like so many others.
Fiction House comics are all in the public domain, so it’s not too hard to find Ms. Hopper’s work online if you dig around, but here are two stories about adventure heroines Mysta of the Moon and Gale Allen (along with a Lily Renée story) from the Golden Age Comic Book Stories blog. It’s fun stuff, and Ms. Hopper’s art is capable and strong.
The Next Stage of the Women’s Sequential Art Library
I’ve mentioned in the past wanting to turn my collection of women’s comics anthologies, histories, biographies and so on into an actual brick-and-mortar library, or at least a travelling “exhibit”. I signed up for LibraryThing and ComicBookDB catalogs (and got started with Goodreads), and even created a wishlist spreadsheet! And while I’m still no closer to actual premises or other library-type things, I have two things.
A dedicated bookshelf in my apartment:
And a logo:
(I’m still taking critiques on this by actual designers, btw)
So naturally I decided the next step was to start a Tumblr! Conveniently located at wsal.ladiesmakingcomics.com, I intend to post reviews of books and issues within the collection and whatever other things I think would be of interest. And maybe someday I’ll be able to set up a booth at conventions like the Kirby Museum does!
