It took a war to let America's female comic book artists break character.

A new exhibit at Pittsburgh's Toonseum is celebrating the history of female comic artists, including those who began laying the groundwork 100 years ago and the female artists of the 1940s, when World War II sent many male artists overseas.

"Wonder Women, On Page and Off" includes originals by Nell Brinkley, who created masterful, wispy drawings of curly-haired working girls starting in about 1907.

But Joe Wos, director of the Toonseum, notes that even the successful female artists faced a type of glass ceiling at first. Some were able to break in to the competitive industry, but the characters and stories were mostly related to fashion and women's experiences.

"Men's comics, they could write about whatever they wanted. They could write about being a little girl, about being an iguana, or a Viking," Wos said.

That started to change at the beginning of World War II, when men went off to fight and women filled the void at home, in comics and in other industries, Wos said.

The exhibit features original panels from Jill Elgin's "Girl Commandos," a 1940s series that chronicled the adventures of four young women who fight against the Axis powers.

"You begin to see women in the heroic roles," Wos noted. But after the war ended, women had to struggle to gain acceptance again.

Pittsburgh resident Cindy Washington visited the exhibit Friday and said she was struck by how female artists had drawn such powerful female characters in the 1940s.

These characters weren't "just waiting for someone to come and help — they were very active" in taking control of situations, Washington said.

The show features a satirical 1949 letter from Hilda Terry, the creator of the comic strip "Teena," to the National Cartoonists Society, which didn't admit women at the time. Terry suggested that the group change its name to the National Men's Cartoonists Society, setting off a passionate debate. Her letter reads, in part:

"Gentlemen: While we are, individually, in complete sympathy with your wish to convene unhampered by the presence of women, and while we would, individually, like to continue, as far as we are concerned, the indulgence of your masculine whim, we find that the cost of your stag privilege is stagnation for us, professionally."

The next year, the bylaws were changed, and Terry became one of the first female members.

The exhibit was created from the collection of Trina Robbins, a writer, artist, and author of "Pretty in Ink," a history of female comic artists. Robbins said by phone from her home in California that despite the breakthroughs of the 1940s, as time went on, more and more comic books began to be dominated by male superheroes, who she found to be a "total bore." By the end of the 1960s, the few remaining mainstream comic strips involving romance and teenage girls were dying off, and women looked for other ways to express themselves.

But instead of fading away, a new generation took matters into their own hands. "You have this rise of, "If we can't find someone to print our work, we'll do it ourselves,'" Wos said.

The underground comic movement that began in the 1960s led to female artists openly addressing sexuality and discrimination and helped lay the groundwork for graphic novels, which are flourishing today.

"So that's the hope of the future, really," Robbins said, of new storytelling forms.

The exhibit runs until March 30.

?ys0???7w Young, a King confidante who helped their father coordinate civil rights efforts throughout the South, over footage of King that shows up in a series produced by Young's foundation. The King children acted in 2008 to block actor and singer Harry Belafonte from auctioning documents that their parents had given Belafonte years earlier, leading Belafonte to sue the younger Kings last year in hopes of determining legal ownership.

Young has said the Kings' lawsuit doesn't bother him because the question of rightful ownership does need to be sorted out, especially because certain aspects of King's legacy belong to him, too. Lawyers on both sides of the Belafonte lawsuit did not return telephone calls seeking comment; court papers indicate a settlement is being pursued.

The King heirs even have used the courts to fight each other.

In 2008, Bernice and Martin III sued Dexter, accusing him of acting improperly as head of their father's estate. The three reached a private settlement in October 2009.

Now they're back in court again, with Martin III and Dexter suing Bernice over her possession of their father's Bible and his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize medal.

Both items are likely to gain value: The 50th anniversary of King's Nobel Prize is later this year, and King's personal Bible was used to swear in President Barack Obama during his second inauguration in 2013.

Bernice King refused to turn them over, saying her brothers want to sell them, just as the three of them have sold other items that belonged to their father.

"I take this strong position for my father because Daddy is not here to say himself, 'My Bible and my medals are never to be sold not to an institution or even a person,'" she said during a news conference this month at Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church. Her brothers, who run King's estate, have not responded publicly to their sister's complaints.

It's the same for Parks and Malcolm X.

Because of infighting, a trove of Parks memorabilia — unseen writings from a young Parks, mementos from world leaders who honored her, and family artifacts — sits unsold at Guernsey's auction house in New York, waiting for a buyer.

Guernsey's can't sell the material piecemeal because, after much legal wrangling, a judge ordered it sold together. No museum, foundation or private collector has met the $10 million price for the entire collection, said Arlan Ettinger, president of Guernsey's.

Last year, the family of Malcolm X successfully blocked Chicago-based Third World Press from publishing diaries from his pilgrimage to Mecca and his travels across the Middle East and Africa in 1964.

Matthew D. Brinckerhoff, lawyer for Third World Press, said in court papers that the publisher has a signed contract from one of Malcolm X's six daughters, Ilyasah Shabazz, making her siblings' complaints moot.

The company created by the activists' children, X Legacy LLC, indicated in court papers that it plans to publish the diaries to coincide with next year's 50th anniversary of Malcolm X's assassination.

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