Born Martha B. Links in Oakland, California, she moved with her family to San Francisco, where she grew up. For six months she attended San Francisco's Fashion Art Institute, her only art training, and then began painting murals in the teenage departments of San Francisco department stores—the Emporium, the City of Paris and O'Connor Moffat. In 1940, she arrived at the San Francisco Chronicle where she drew for the "Women's World" department.
Comic strips
After landing an assignment to create fashion drawings for a major advertising campaign, she delivered her artwork to an ad agencyaccount executive, who rejected the drawings and said, "This isn't what we want. These kids look more like bobby-soxers." The reaction gave her the idea for a cartoon character, and in 1944, she launched her comic stripBobby Sox about a teenager named Mimi. It was distributed by Consolidated News Features. The Chronicle described Mimi as a "precocious sub-deb with a flair for trouble." Chronicle writer Carl Nolte noted the role of Links and her husband in San Francisco history: Alexander Arguello died in 1966 after the couple had been married for 25 years.
''Bobby Sox'' becomes ''Emmy Lou''
As the footgear fashions of the 1940s became passe, the title Bobby Sox became outdated, so Links changed it to Emmy Lou, as noted by comics historian Don Markstein: Links had three children, and her daughters served as models for Emmy Lou. In 1954, Links lived at 215 32nd Avenue in San Francisco. In 1957, she described her working methods: The pilot for a proposed series based on Emmy Lou aired as a second-season episode of Mister Ed. The role of Emmy Lou was played by Noanna Dix. Her parents were played by George O'Hanlon and Jeff Donnell. By the time her children became adults, Links felt the strip no longer represented teens, as she told columnist Caen, "Everything I know about teenagers today is unprintable." Thus, she brought Emmy Lou to an end in December 1979.
Hallmark
She then began doing ceramic sculptures and working for Hallmark as an illustrator of greeting cards, developing a group of child characters for a series called Kidlinks. At age 82, she retired from Hallmark. During the 1990s, she lived at 64 Manzanita Way in San Francisco. She continued to do watercolor paintings until the last year of her life. She died on a Sunday, January 6, 2008, of heart failure at a San Rafaelassisted living facility. She was survived by two daughters, Victoria Arguello of San Rafael, and Elizabeth Arguello of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and by six grandchildren.
