Review: ′The Incredible Nellie Bly: Journalist, Investigator, Feminist, and Philanthropist′

Luciana Cimino (Author), Sergio Algozzino (Illustrator)

With the trailblazing movement in full swing, we see more biographies of women who changed the world and forged a path for us to follow, and this is the case it’s the admirable Nellie Bly.

Born in 1864, she is best known because her written answer to a man who insisted women “should stay at home,” landed her a job on the very same newspaper.

Luciana Cimino tells this story through Miriam, a fictional female student at the Columbia School of Journalism in 1921. There are many good bits into these interviews, from the way Bly handled herself, to the dangerous positions she would allow herself to be put in, in order to report truthfully about working and living conditions of thousands of women.

As a journalist, she also interviewed Belva Ann Lockwood in 1884, Belva was the first woman candidate for a presidential election—one that was ultimately won by Grover Cleveland—and Bly predicted correctly that women would not get the vote until 1920.

There are two pivotal moments in Nellie Bly′s career, if you will. Both are incredibly famous: once, she pretended to be mad in order to get institutionalized, so she could carry out an undercover investigation in an insane asylum. Secondly, she bested Phineas Fogg, a fictional character, and managed to travel around the world in 72 days—alone—which was unthinkable for a woman in the late 19th century. Hence why she invented a suit that would allow her to move freely and face all types of weather, a feature piece that is her signature to this day.

As Miriam learns more of Bly’s story, she realizes that the most important stories aren’t necessarily the ones with the most dramatic headlines, but the ones that, in Nellie’s words, “come from a deep feeling.”

Hopefully we will have many more graphic novels with this subject; biopics about outstanding women should never be hard to find. That′s what the trailblazing movement is all about: putting in the spotlight women who made history, against insurmountable odds, so that they are not forgotten.

The Incredible Nellie Bly: Journalist, Investigator, Feminist, and Philanthropist is on sale since March 02, 2021.

Price: $24.99
Publisher: Abrams Comicarts
Publish Date: March 02, 2021
Pages: 144
Type: Hardcover
EAN/UPC: 9781419750175
BISAC Categories: Nonfiction – Biography & Memoir Women

Featured image by Sergio Algozzino, all images belong to Abrams Comicarts