THE FLAPPER QUEENS

Throughout the 1920s, the fun-loving flapper made her way into comic strips.

Comics historian Robbins, a “retired underground cartoonist” who is a member of the Will Eisner Hall of Fame, pays homage to six women artists of the 1920s and ’30s in a lively, vividly illustrated celebration. Published in newspapers across the country, the cartoons chronicled the adventures and misadventures of “happy-go-lucky society girls and co-eds” who styled themselves flappers. Flirtatious and adorable, they wore their hair bobbed, smoked, drank, partied, and reveled in the latest—slinky, glamorous, and sometimes absurd—fashions. Feminist Nell Brinkley, the “mother of comic strips that star pretty girls created by women,” wrote for Hearst papers. Her characters included Prudence Prim, Flossie, and the daydreaming Dimples, who fantasized about becoming an aviator, an artist, or even president of the U.S. Most cartoon flappers, though, were intent on finding a suitor and, even better, a husband, and their romantic escapades filled many Sunday magazine pages. Eleanor Schorer contributed “The Adventures of Judy,” and Edith Stevens often did a sendup of fashion, hairstyles, and hats for the Boston Post. Ethel Hays conveyed advice about romance in her popular series “Flapper Fanny Says”: Fanny, a skinny young woman with impossibly long legs (and short skirts) offered sly comments about men and dating. Virginia Huget, “the flappiest of the flapper queens,” drew society girls, “all sharp elbows and knees bent at forty-five degree angles,” and also working-class girls: “Babs in Society,” for example, featured a department store clerk; another series featured a manicurist. Published in many newspapers, Huget also drew cartoon advertisements for Lux soap, aimed at bolstering women’s self-confidence and self-image. The Wall Street crash of 1929 was the “beginning of the end” for carefree flappers, and by 1930, Brinkley noted that the flapper was “a fading mirage.”

A fresh, spirited look at a colorful cultural phenomenon.