Trina Robbins, a Will Eisner Hall of Fame comic book artist and one of the most influential women in the early American underground comix scene, recently took to social media to ask fans to be on the look out for several pieces of her art from the 1970s, which were apparently lost by FedEx or stolen by someone to whom they were mistakenly delivered. Robbins said that she had loaned the art out for a show, and that Fedex had marked it as delivered to her when it was returned by the venue. She said that the signature was not one she recognized.
Videos by ComicBook.com
There were three pages of original art included in the package, and two copies of It Ain’t Me, Babe, a feminist newspaper in which some of Robbins’s early comic strips ran. She shared the images (seen below) to Facebook today, asking fans to keep an eye out.
“Dear friends, I need your help!” Robbins posted to Facebook over the weekend. “Back before the lockdown, I loaned 5 pieces of my original comic art from the 70s for a planned exhibit at Sacramento State college. Then along came the lockdown and the exhibit never happened. In May, the woman responsible for the exhibit suffered the tragic loss of her daughter to cancer, so I told her to take her time returning my art. Then, this month I ran out of patience and demanded my art back, only to discover she had returned my pages via FedEx back in May! I saw the FedEx receipt — someone had signed for the package, signing my name as ‘RTRINA’ — I have NEVER signed my name like that! The woman from Sacramento, almost as upset as me, is filing a claim with FedEx, but I’m appealing to you: if anyone, at any time since May, has offered any of my art for sale, PLEASE let me know ASAP! (Yes, I’ve already looked on eBay!) I have very little art from the 70s left, because back in the day I was desperately poor and sold my pages for peanuts. My surviving work from those days is no longer for sale, but if I had been willing to sell those pages, they would have been worth about $5,000. I know this is a longshot, but please be on the lookout for any art by me that’s for sale!”
In addition to her role in helping to build the early underground comix movement, Robbins is well known for working tirelessly to help build an environment where other women could find their way into comics. Along the way, she became the first woman to be the artist on Wonder Woman — in the ’80s, more then 40 years after the feminist icon was created. In recent years she wrote an autobiography as well as books on comics history, including Flapper Queens, an exploration of women’s roles in the earliest days of American comics.
People with any information about Robbins’s missing art can reach out to her via Facebook.
