In 1991 Marvel was on the crest of the wave. Their comics were selling without problems, they had created characters such as Matanza, Bishop or Squirrel Girl and they still had a lot to do. For example, to try to conquer a market that, at that time that distinguished so much by sexes, was still difficult for them: that of girls and adolescent girls. For this reason, the publishing house obtained the rights to a character that would come back into fashion thirty years later: Barbie.
Come on Marvel girl
Five years before Aqua made the character even more legendary with ‘Barbie girl’, Marvel released issue #1 of ‘Barbie’ which had a cover by the legendary John Romita and was accompanied by a “Barbie credit card” in a somewhat desperate attempt to get girls to embrace capitalism. In this first issue she fought a villain who wanted to turn the whole city into a shopping mall, taught a dog to sit, and helped a friend feel better about herself. Well, hey, it could be worse.
Yes, we can look at it with the irony of the years, but the truth is that by 1991 it wasn’t so bad. It also gave work to Lisa Trusiani, Trina Robbins and Mary Wilshire, who continued their careers with success: Trusiani wrote ‘Morbius‘, Robbins won an Eisner for a whole career and Wilshire was in charge of ‘Power Pack’, ‘The New Mutants’ and even ‘Conan’. Big words.
The surprising thing is that, having it there, so close, Marvel did not give in to the opportunity to mix Barbie with their superheroes in either of the two series of the doll, ‘Barbie‘ and ‘Barbie fashion’, more focused on their models. During the course of the issues, our protagonist won the Venice film festival with a documentary about cats, became a superheroine, starred in a jeans ad and even sent messages of encouragement and confidence to girls who wanted to lose weight.
It wasn’t perfect, but at the beginning of the 90’s it could hardly be improved: a comic for girls, empowering and written by women. It hasn’t gone down in history or been collected in Omnibuses, but the 63 issues of Barbie and the 53 issues of ‘Barbie fashion’ were a key piece of the 90’s sadly forgotten but that did incredible things, like drawing girls sending pictures in pink comic style. What more could you ask for?
It is true that in 1962, the same year ‘The Fantastic Four‘ was released, Barbie already had her first foray into the world of comics at the hands of Dell in five, to be generous, forgettable comics. What’s surprising is that no one has taken the character in all these decades and given her a fantastic ‘Flintstones’-style comic book spin. Will the movie come to change all this? Frankly: I wish it would.
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