The world of comic strips always reflected the fashion of the time-- from R.F. Outcaults nightie-clad Yellow Kid to Grace Draytons Campbell Kids. By the 1920s all the little roly-poly girls depicted in those early strips had grown up, bobbed their curls, and become flappers. Women got the vote in 1920, and suddenly they were equal to the boys-- at least in the voting booth. They smoked and drank bootleg hootch, they shortened their hair and skirts, and tossed out their corsets. It was a revolution, a time of excess and ebullience, and the flapper was the new queen-- and scores of women cartoonists chronicled her in the pages of Americas newspapers. Fantagraphics celebrates that revolution with The Flapper Queens, a gorgeous oversized hardcover collection of full-color comic strips.

In addition to featuring the more well-known cartoonists of the era, such as Ethel Hays and Nell Brinkley, Eisner-winning comics herstorian Robbins introduces you to women cartoonists like Eleanor Schorer, who started her career in the teens as a flowery art nouveau Nell Brinkley imitator, but by the 20s was drawing bold and outrageous art deco illustrations; Edith Stevens, who chronicled the fashion trends, hairstyles, and social manners of the 20s and 30s in the pages of The Boston Globe; and Virginia Huget, possibly the flappiest of the Flapper Queens, whose girls, with their angular elbows and knees, seemed to always exist in a euphoric state of Charleston. Trina Robbins welcomes you to the revolution with a coffee table book filled with liberating, full-color illustrations and comic strips.