Amanda Conner's Power Girl: Both missing from the new DC lineup. Yet Rob Liefeld still gets work.
*steps up to the soapbox*
Hey folks. Sorry I’ve been quiet on my end here, as I’ve been a little busy. I was going to talk about some anime this time, but the San Diego Comic Con was this past weekend and a few things popped up that kind of made me have a couple of second thoughts. There was a woman at SDCC dressed as Batgirl who asked a very important question: Why aren’t there more women doing comics for DC? I’ve had this conversation with my girlfriend many times. At first my answer was the same as many male comic readers. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, there’s tons of them.’ And when asked to name them, I start to rattle off Gail Simone, Colleen Doran, Jo Duffy, Devin Grayson, Louise Simonson, Jill Thompson, Nicola Scott, and even one of my favorite artists Amanda Conner. But I started to realize I couldn’t name any others. And a lot of them I did name, I’m not sure are even working in comics anymore. There was a few others who’s done work for Vertigo comics, like Elaine Lee or Alisa Kwitney, or even some of Marvel’s more off-the-wall comics done by Colleen Coover or Kathryn Immonen. (Seriously, I cannot recommend ‘Pasty Walker: Hellcat’ enough!) But really, I started to hit the end of my list there. And I‘m really good at minutiae, and I can name almost hundreds, if not probably thousands or male comic creators. But I couldn’t even name fifteen female ones? It bothers me. (For the sake of discussion, I’m referring to comics and webcomics as two separate entities, though I shouldn’t, it just makes discussion easier.)
Just why AREN’T there more women working in comics? (Not just DC, but Marvel too.) I mean, there’s a lot of women working in ancillary roles, like inkers and colorists. (I really don’t know if I’ve ever seen a female letterer… Then again, if a letterer does their job, you should never notice them at all.) But why not more writers and artists, the ones that get the fame and acclaim? Look, I’m a perv and we all know this. (You’ve seen what I draw!) But I’m also the furthest thing from a misogynist as well. If the talent is there (and it is) then why isn’t the industry utilizing it more? I thought about the usual excuses I’ve heard for many years:
- It’s been a man’s game for so long, and the women creators just haven’t stormed the field yet.
I’ve heard that before, and yeah, I could accept that, back in the early 90’s, when I was a young lad buying Youngblood. But it’s been almost two decades now. Try again.
- Women just aren’t as interested in superheroes like men are.
You think all those women cosplaying at conventions are just men in drag or there just to make their boyfriends happy? You think girls don’t read and like superheroes? What the hell is this, the 1950s where girls are only supposed to read bad romance comics? That’s a crock of crap if I ever heard it. Tons of girls like many of the same things as guys do.
- There just aren’t as many women comic creators out there as there are men.
So this wide plethora of female webcomic and indy comic creators only came into existence because they’ve only read manga and other webcomics in the past ten years? And many of them I know weren’t exactly influenced by reading girly manga books in high school. They read Batman and X-Men like the rest of us. (And quite a few of them make me look like a high school art student who holds his pencil wrong.)
- Well, what would you consider a good affirmative action for the industry to take?
Nicola Scott's Wonder Woman. Try and tell me this isn't one of the best Dianas you've ever seen.
Christ, this isn’t the Equal Rights Amendment, or some public relations diversity ratio so you can get Rachel Maddow to write the foreword to your comic. It’s simple point. There’s lots of women comic creators, and there’s less than ½% of them working on the “big boy books”. Why? That woman dressed as Batgirl had a very good point and no one can give her a good answer, and when she pressed for one, she was mocked and ridiculed. I think that’s what bugs me more than DC’s response to her, was that the surrounding fans pretty much told her to shut up and sit down. Every time I think comics are on the verge of being taken serious as a respectable creative medium, like novels, movies, and television… Crap like this happens and reminds me there’s a real reason stereotypes like the Simpson’s Comic Book Guy exists.
It’s like women creators are akin to nuclear power. They’re an awesome powerful resource that people aren’t using for reasons that are steeped in traditionalism and fear. Taking it all into consideration, the only reason I can come up with is that ‘girls have cooties’. It has to be that! Because otherwise the only other logical reason is that the industry still has some serious cases of sexism going on, and that would just be insulting, infuriating and just outright depressing. I don’t want to say that, but they’re running out of reasons. And that’s one trait I really got to love about the webcomic community. It’s truly a community where anyone can be a creator, who’s judged on talent and not their gender. (Or race or sexuality.) And as comics start to go digital, blurring the lines between them and webcomics… I hope that this is a trait that they someday will also adopt, in actual practice and not just lip-service.
*Steps off soapbox, and goes back to the art table*
You know, you pretty much hit the nail on the head. It’s the same way in a lot of places- my theory people tend to feel kinship with people who are like them, so a workplace with a lot of women will hire more women than men, and a workplace with a lot of men will… well, you get the picture. And when someone raises the question of why isn’t there more gender diversity, they’re either ignored, or called a feminazi/wacko/henpecked pansy/he-man-woman-hater, depending on the unfortunate questioner’s gender. It’s tough, and it sucks for all parties involved, but I don’t know what to do about it. Ask me when there’s more than one woman who has made manager in my department.
I got to wonder though… If it was a guy or a group and not just one lone girl, or what if she was dressed as a “sexy/dirty” character (like say Catwoman or Black Cat), as opposed to the conservatively dressed and optimistic Stephanie Brown? Would she have been treated differently? I’ve seen stuff like this happen before. For example, it’s a bit of a long story… But you’ve known me long enough to know I never tell short stories.
About ten years ago, I was at the Motor City Comic Con, hanging around the Arrow Comics table. I wasn’t part of them. I was just hanging around the publisher Randy. Arrow Comics used to be pretty respectable in the independent comic circles in the 80’s, but the comic speculator market crash of the 90’s had not been too compassionate toward them. (Shame too, as while they had some really bad stuff, they also had some wonderful gems among their lineups as well.) Well, I was behind the table, and we were bullshitting, when this guy came up to show his portfolio to see if Randy would be interested in his comic. I won’t say the name of the comic, but it was a really nice looking ‘magical sailor scout’ type of comic, with loads of nicely drawn fanservice, that looked rather light-hearted and fun. Randy was in no position to publish anything, so he had to reject him, but he was rather encouraging, telling him to not give up, that he was really good.
Fast forward two or three years, and I’m hanging out with some friends. One of them just came back from the comic store with her weekly haul, and among the new books she got was this ‘magical sailor scout’ book. And I was happy, because he did it! Then I read the material inside… And the creator of the book was credited to some cute Japanese model in her underwear. I’m wondering what the hell is going on? And I look into the credits, and the guy’s name is credited there as ‘art assists’ but this girl is give the majority of the comic’s credit. And I’m thinking either sex changes are able to perform some serious miracles now, or he got a ghost writing thing going on. I could have just let it go, and assume I didn’t have all the facts when I saw him a couple years earlier. But then I read the “comments” from the “creator”, and it was obviously written by a dude, making all these references to looking sexy and doing kinky stuff, and then in the next breath ranting about various opinions and facts in the comic industry. And of course, the photos they got of her, are these professionally shot fanservice pictures, of this girl in her bikini briefs with a katana. It’s obvious what happened, is that this guy got this model to pose as the creator, and also to double up as a ‘table biscuit’ for conventions. Obviously the publisher had to know what was going on. It’s a marketing ploy. If it was just to play up the ‘woman creator” aspect, then any average looking girl would have worked. After all, there’s people, and not just women, struggling to get noticed in the industry, and these guys parade some girl around in her undies… And it worked.
Some people were fooled into believing she did it. And I even remember my friend feeling disheartened, that you were having to look a table biscuit now to draw comics. I told her what was going on, but how many other girls felt that way? Now thankfully, this book never took off, and it’s really not much more than your average indy comic now. But the fact that the publishers and the creators went along with this meant that they probably think that’s true.
And I found it disingenuous and very disgusting. And I need to emphasize… This is me, and I‘m a perv, and not the world‘s greatest feminist. You all know that and what I’ve drawn. And if I have a problem with this, then it’s a real issue. There’s a big difference between harmless cheesecake and degrading exploitation. I’m a fan of the former, but I’m dead set against the latter.
I think we’re describing two different aspects of the issue- there’s “mob mentality” and “thinking with your genitalia.”
Actually, that’s an interesting marketing ploy, hiring a woman to be ghostwritten for (is that a thing?)- claiming to have a female creator might bring women in to your audience. Probably the reason why it never took off was that it was CLEARLY not a female creator who was actually doing the work, and women bought one issue and were all “nope!”
It started off as a story about mob mentality, but I started rambling and rambling, and then I realized it ended up not even being about my point I was getting at, but another story all together. THis is why I whouldn’t type stuff up late at night.
But hey, you shoot from the hip, sometimes you miss.
David I want to say that i am proud of you and the art work is great… keep it up, don’t ever give this up, it expresses who you are.
I grew up in a very nerdy town, in a very nerdy part of a very nerdy state. I was surrounded by women training to be robotic technicians, computer programers, etc.. I knew there were geek girls out there because I had seen them on T.V.. Of the hundreds of science geared women around me 24/7 the closest I would ever come to a geek girl is one who had seen every episode of STNG an most episodes of the XFiles. Oh wait I am forgetting the manager of the only anime store (15ftx10ft) in a world famous metropolitan city that has a dozen world famous colleges in it, one of which is the official code word for super nerd. One, that’s’ it, one. Today I know tons of Geek girls, they are all at least 28, with a tiny few in there early thirties. Of the thousands of guys you can name at the big three how many are in there mid to late thirties if not older? I have no idea who the unknown up and comers are who are working there way up the ranks an no possible excuse for why there should not be a ton of women amongst them but I can understand why there are not a lot of them at the top right now.
On a side note on the same point the writer Don Glut; he all but invented the super hero fanfilm concept back in 64′ was an early fan of Comic Con an he came in second in the cosplay competition but there was some controversy because he lost to a girl in a Vampirella costume who was only 15. While looking at the picture of his truly great Solomon Grundy out fit I realized I had seen the picture before, on Brink Stevens web site. That how tiny the non hired female cosplay world was, a girl who ten years later would start her film career was the star of the day. Just because the damn has burst an women are finally free to let there freak flag fly is no reason to forget just how slow this was to happen.
I’m assuming that like me, you’ve been around for a bit. And normally, I’d agree, because in the past, I thought the same thing. Until I went to art school, and there was a crap load of nerd girls there. (This was 15-16 years ago.) It kinda blew my mind then, that not only was I able to have a conversation with a member of the fairer sex about X-Men, but that they were actually correcting me on shit. It was awesome! These girls would be well into their 30s now. I’m not saying it all should be a 50/50 thing. No one’s saying let’s get a form of affirmative action going on here… You gotta hire the talent for their talent, and not their gender or race. It’s just in this particular case, DC had made a huge attempts to make their comics more diverse… And the problem with forced diversity is that if you’re not careful and your hap hazarded about it, it comes across as tokenism. And when the issue was brought up to the DC guys, not only did they blow her off, but the fans were horribly rude to her too. And that’s just not cool. To add insult to injury, an announcement made today by the DC Team is that they paid attention and are looking into changing it, which unfortunately comes across like band-aid on a wound, and really hurt their public relations. I’m a life long DC fan, and this bothers me.
And ALL of this could have been avoided, if they just simply said “It’s not an intentional oversight. It’s just how it happen to work out. We’ll look into it for future projects.”
My long rant can be summed up with simple math. If you were 14, 16 years ago, then you are 30 now. If you were 18, 16 years ago you are 34 now. An I may be wrong about this but if you were too get all the big names in comics together in one room most of them would be 36 or older. The last I heard there idea of putting new young blood in charge was Jim Lee. Twenty years ago a 16 year old geek boy would of killed for a chance to talk to a girl who knew more about the X-Men than him. The 34 year old trail blazers are the ones opening up the door for the next generation an going were all most no women had gone before them.
An as far as people acting like Comicbookguy in real life I remember a article two years ago were two 10 year olds were at a Starwars convention in a costume contest with there home made AT-AT costume that if they made them selves was very good an they were booed off the stage bye guys who only wanted to see store bot $800 outfits. Mob mentality is like the internet people feel free to act like scum to people they do not know. Unless of course you mean the panel members acted like jerks to Batgirl, in which case I agree they were being sexist idiots.
That’s kind of what I was meaning. The panel guys were kind of jerks to her, and the fans in the room just piled on her. That’s pretty much the center of my complaints.
Okay… while I am totally behind this rant and couldn’t agree more, I am arrested mid-thought by the adorableness that is Merv at the top of the page. Can I see this somewhere in a larger size that I might make him the wallpaper on my phone and keep his adorably disgruntled face for me to see for all time?? Please?
Now, squee-gasm over, it truly is a shame to see exceptionally talented artists that don’t get the work they deserve because there are still people lining up to fellate Liefeld (and others like him) and that man has the worst grasp of anatomy I have ever seen! Forget his inability to draw feet (hence his never drawing them), I’m talking basic proportion here. One can only hope that some of those wonderfully talented women can hang in there long enough to get to the upper strata and prop the door open bodily for the rest to stream through and set the comic world on it’s ear. I, for one, am gleefully awaiting that time.
Here you go, hon.
Given the hell that lots of female characters have been put through over the years, as compared to the drama that the male ones face, my money is (sadly) on sexism.
Yanno, it’s understandable that bad things will happen to your characters. It’s just the nature of a story at times. But there are some comic creators who are just outright mean to their characters, and you wonder if they’re taking some frustrations out on them. I see this in movies too, especially a lot of modern day horror movies. But that’s probably a rant for a later day.
I don’t get it either. I’ve been waiting for DC to put Amy Reeder Hadley on good book ever since she finished her run on Madame Xanadu, the art was refreshing and much better than many of the other comics out there. She even had Richard Friend as her inker and (who seems to be well on his way of being the next Scott Williams of inkers) and Matt Wagner writing the script. The book won Eisner awards for “best penciler inker team” and she won an Eisner for “best cover artist.” So what happened when Madame Xanadu was cancelled? She was put on a suffering Supergirl book, does covers for the series (most of the time) and was promised to be moved onto Batwoman when the first arc was over, which still hasn’t happened yet and since the she’s not listed as the artist after DC’s reboot I can only assume she’ll be waiting longer, which could mean that she’s out of a job since she’s being replaced on Supergirl as well. She proved her skills and got recognized for it, but is still lost in obscurity and stuck on 3rd rate books for some mysterious reason. It just makes no sense.
It seems DC is paying attention at least: http://dcu.blog.dccomics.com/2011/07/29/we-hear-you/
Too little too late though dude, as they, and the fans there as well, were total dicks to that girl. As I mentioned to Ulysess above, all this could have been avoided if they had not gotten angry and kept a cool head and said a very simple “It’s not an intentional oversight.”
I agree, but what’s done is done. What matters is what they do now. I know the comics industry has good female talent, lets see if this is what gets them to actually use it.
My favorite thing about that is how they misspelled Amanda Conner’s name.
Haha. I didn’t notice, good eye.
“I don’t think I’ve seen a female letterer”…….
Do they have letterers anymore? I thought everything was done with fonts now.
Well, yeah it is. But the person who does that is called a letterer.
^What Dave said. Some letterers do still handletter when given the opportunity.but it depends on how they’re doing deadline wise because when hand lettering they have to work before the inker, whereas normally when a letterer works digitally they are the last person before the editor to work on the book. These days it’s rare to find someone who hand letters regularly for a major publisher, but it is more common in indie comics and comics with one person doing all the art. Adam Warren is a good example of someone who still hand letters.
While reading, couldn’t stop wondering. How the Hell is that Power Girl in the beginning of the post is able to fight with a rack this HUGE? One could say: that’s fanservice for you, male exaggeration and all that. But the author is a woman, she should know better – it’s quite uncomfortable for buxom women to run, let alone unarmed combat. Back strains, balance shifted, just plain few kilos of flesh in the way of proper combat techniques…
While Wonder Woman on the second picture is much slimmer, and seems more suited for close-quarters fighting.
Just don’t get it.