By Janis Mara
Bay City News Service

Cartoon enthusiasts, graphic novelists and folks from all over the Bay Area braved the rain to meet Wonder Woman – or at least the first woman to draw her – at the Cartoon Art Museum Saturday and Sunday.

The occasion was a pop-up Women’s Comic Marketplace, and Trina Robbins, the first female illustrator of the feminist icon, was on hand along with 20 or so exhibitors whose work reflected the rich variety of styles and subject matter in women’s comics today.

“We love comic books. We are vibing out,” said Valaree Garcia of San Francisco, who attended the event with her partner Sunday. “Every single booth is amazing, every woman is telling her story her own way.”

Exhibitor Avy Jetter of Oakland displayed her indie comic “Nuthin’ Good Ever Happens at 4 a.m.” which offers an Equal Opportunity look at the world of zombies, with an all-black cast of undead.

Around the corner at another table was cartoonist Jules Rivera, a surfer who detailed her dive into the largely male world of surfing in one of her first zines.

“I was already an aqua creature. I grew up in Orlando and had always lived on the beach,” Rivera said. When she moved to California, becoming a surfer came easily.

Rivera took over the decades-old Washington Post cartoon strip “Mark Trail” in 2020. The conservation-minded but rather conventional male character quickly got a makeover.

Rivera said, “I made him hot. They always intended him to be hot, they just went about it the wrong way.” In her zine, “Thirst Trapped in a Cave,” Rivera depicts Trail in a series of seductive poses she describes as “pinups.”

While many of the exhibitors create material intended for adults, Jen de Oliveira, a Livermore resident, is the co-creator of Sunday Haha, a free weekly comics newsletter for kids.

Children were much in evidence at the event, grouped around a table in the back industriously coloring and drawing, gathered in front of a big screen in another room watching (what else?) cartoons, sprawled on the floor reading (what else?) comic books.

At 4 p.m., the event adjourned to the library for tea with Robbins and Marrs.

Sitting at a round table sipping tea and eating gingersnaps, the two shared stories of their lives in the comics field.

Marrs, a Berkeley resident, created the comic book series, “The Further Fattening Adventures of Pudge, Girl Blimp,” which was nominated for an Eisner Award in 2017, the highest honor bestowed in the comic book world.

In 1972, Robbins, a San Francisco resident, wrote and drew a short story called “Sandy Comes Out,” starring the first lesbian comic-book character outside of pornography. Shifting gears, she began drawing for DC Comics in the 1980s, and since then has authored several books and continues to write and draw comics.

“Lee Marrs and Trina Robbins talking about feminism, and the younger artists writing graphic novels about their lives – you don’t have to create a universe. You don’t have to make up a planet” the way traditional cartoonists have done, said Ron Evans, chair of the museum’s board of trustees, who was on hand for the event.

“It’s what you experience, and it’s much more relatable,” Evans said. Reading about common experiences in graphic novels and cartoons can make people, especially young people, feel less alone.

“In school you’re taught to write about what you know, and that’s what they’re doing. It’s cathartic, and who knows? Maybe it will help other people.”

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By Ken Epstein

Leaving many students, faculty and Oakland residents feeling betrayed, Holy Names University’s leadership is aggressively moving ahead with plans to sell the 60-acre campus in the Oakland hills for high-end private residences and have not been willing to work with city leaders and other universities that are reaching out to save the site as a center for higher education.

In a reply to a recent letter to Vice Mayor Rebecca Kaplan, Jeanine Hawk, HNU’s vice president for finance and administration, wrote that HNU has already placed the property on the market through real estate broker, Mike Taquino at CBRE marketing, to market the property and is already distributing marketing materials offering the campus for sale.

Responding to Kaplan’s offer to collaborate with HNU to save the campus for educational purposes, Hawk replied, “At this point it is unclear to HNU how the City of Oakland can assist with the process of achieving the objectives of obtaining the highest and best use of the HNU property for public good.”.

“Nevertheless, if the city is aware of any interested acquirer or successor entity, please provide that information to Mike Taquino or to me,” she wrote.

She added that HNU had sent letters to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) so see if they might be interested in establishing a campus on the West Coast.

The CBRE Group, Inc. is the world’s largest commercial real estate services and investment firm. The term “highest and best use” is used in the real estate industry as expression of seeking to sell a property for its highest possible value.

Hawk did not mention the universities that have expressed interest in collaborating with Holy Names nor the university’s lender, Preston Hollow, which has also offered to find solutions other than selling the campus to a real estate developer.

Campus leaders at Holy Names and members of the Oakland community were stunned by the announcement of HNU’s latest moves to dispose of the campus,

“It’s too bad I don’t believe my own rhetoric sometimes,” said activist and scholar, Kitty Kelly Epstein. “I’ve been saying for some months that it seemed like the chair of the Holy Names Board was actually trying to sell the campus to real estate developers, and that’s why he refused to meet with any of the elected officials and city leaders who have offered help in keeping Holy Names open as a college campus.

“So – guess what? Now the marketing materials are out to sell the campus, while our trusting students, many from Oakland, are tossed out with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt and no college degree. It’s more evil than even a suspicious person like me can wrap my mind around.”

“I’m shocked,” said a HNU faculty member when hearing the news about the real estate developer.

A Holy Names student leader said, “Students are furious. They are afraid that Holy Names will be sold to a private developer.”

Said Councilmember Carroll Fife, “As an alumnus of Holy Names University, I am deeply disappointed the administration refuses to work with city leaders to ensure the campus can continue to be an important resource for Oakland but insists on selling the campus for maximum profit. I’m most concerned for students and faculty. I hope Oakland residents will make it clear that preserving this campus for generations of future students is more important than enriching a developer.”