And here’s the thing: several popular female creators were approached to take part in the relaunch, like Kelly Sue DeConnick, Marjorie M. Liu, and Rebekah Isaacs. Probably more were approached or submitted pitches that we haven’t heard about. Maybe a lot more. So yeah, I don’t entirely blame DiDio for being frustrated, if he tried to get female talent, was unable to for various reasons, and is now being taken to task for it.

But 2 women to 105 men is a pretty hefty imbalance. And I doubt 103 women were approached and turned DC down.

I’ve been reading a lot about this and the comment I keep seeing is “What do you want, a quota?” People critiquing the hiring decisions are quick to deny that they want a quota and instead offer lists of female writers and artists they’d like to see in the relaunch: “No, I don’t want a quota, but how about Amanda Conner?”

I’ll say it: I want a quota.

This is not to say that I want DC to grab the first ten women who walk by the office and give them jobs writing and drawing comics. And I’m aware that DC doesn’t hire people who haven’t already established themselves in some way, and with good reason. Top publishers don’t take unsolicited talent. (Despite Grant Morrison’s implication that you can simply “send in your stuff” to DC and be considered.)

I’m also aware that there are far more men working in the comic book industry than women. And I would assume that there are more men trying to break into the comic book industry than women, though of course it’s nearly impossible to know the stats on that. So if there’s one writing job and 9 out of 10 of the people gunning for it are male, odds are it’s going to go to a dude.

But it’s a self-perpetuating cycle. The reason there are more men trying to break into comics is because comics are still perceived as being Not For Girls. Because the industry is already male-dominated. Because the comics are mostly about (straight, white, cisgendered, able-bodied) men. Because the industry markets itself to men. So women consume manga and independent comics and webcomics, and the superhero comic book industry ignores that audience – and its potential revenue.

That doesn’t mean that there aren’t women trying to break into superhero comics. It just means that there are fewer women trying to break into superhero comics, because they’ve been told so often – by the marketing tactics, by the covers, by the stories from the industry, by being mocked and dismissed at conventions – that superhero comics are Not For Girls.

But as Laura Hudson points out beautifully, a more diverse stable of creators leads to better comics. Plus, simply by appealing to women – who, you know, make up half of the world – DC has the opportunity to nearly double their revenue. Twice as much money! Who doesn’t want that?

If DC wants to rectify their skewed gender ratio even a little, they need to start by mining that small pool of aspiring women more heavily than the larger pool of male creators. Again, I’m not saying DC should hire women at random or compromise their standards. But here’s a thought: why not open up a month-long call for submissions from female writers and artists who’d like to break into the industry but haven’t quite gotten there yet? Female artists can send in portfolios; female writers, pitches and scripts. Sure, you’ll have to wade through a lot of dross, but that’s what interns are for!

I’m not suggesting putting an untried artist on Detective Comics right off the (forgive me) bat. Just let her get her foot in the door. Hire female artists as inkers as a stepping stone to them becoming pencillers. Give female writers one-shots and miniseries as trial runs, or backup strips. Give women who don’t necessarily write or draw in the house style a chance, as Marvel did with Girl Comics.

And if you do that, if you open that door for women and tell them that you want to see what they can do – and if you look at what they can do in good faith, with the intention of finding creators to hire among them – you can easily bump that 1% up to 5%. Or 10%. Would I love to see 50% of the creative credits on DC’s titles taken by women? Of course. But even 10%, aggressively sought after, would make a difference to the market, and be an enormous show of goodwill to fans everywhere who are concerned about the current gender ratio.

Dan DiDio was asked if DC was committed to hiring more women. He didn’t exactly answer the question (“I’m committed to hiring the absolute best writers and artists.”), but if the answer is yes, then they should show that commitment by actually hiring more women.

And if the answer is no, then they should say so, and we can all stop wasting our time.

-thegeekifiedgirl drops some stats and backs them up with a solid argument.
-It’s interesting to look at which books CBR’s readers are actually interested in buying.
-… and Johanna at Comics Worth Reading’s personal take on the new titles from earlier this month also merit a read.
-Maid of Might highlights the fact that this relaunch (like most other relaunches?) was allegedly meant to bring in new readers rather than the same-old gradually shrinking group DC had been catering to for years. She and DC Women Kicking Ass both remember getting male friends and partners into comics.

More on this issue soon. In the mean-time, keep sending in your suggestions for links!

-Jill Pantozzi’s personal account of her reaction really brings home how important Babs is, and her interview with Gail Simone (writing the new book) about the reboot is essential reading.
-Andy Khouri’s ComicsAlliance editorial provides a look back over what makes Barbara Gordon so iconic.
-The ever-brilliant DC Women Kicking Ass recaps previous attempts to get her walking again.
-And finally the Oracle Create-A-Thon, a tumblr set up in response to DC’s decision, collecting fanart of Oracle “to support visibility for disabled characters in mainstream comics, and comics in general”. Some amazing stuff in there.

And a couple of non-Oracle links to round you off:

-I just found this handy illustration, from last year, of a particularly irritating sexist trope.
-And I fell in love with Cliff Chiang’s rendition of Wondy as Joan Jett, with Black Canary, Zatanna and Batgirl backing her up.

I doubt this will be the last from GW on Barbara Gordon’s reboot – watch this space. And if you’ve got anything for us on this, just send it to submissions@girl-wonder.org.

This week’s links, first the comics-related:

- Colin Smith’s detailed and engaging essay on FLASHPOINT #1.
- More FLASHPOINT fail: DC should really consider how this shit looks.
- Laura Hudson, Blair Butler, Heidi MacDonald and Jill Pantozzi form a roundtable on the “Geek Girl Phenomenon”.

And the non-comics:

- A pair of insightful posts by ginmar on rape culture and the myth of false rape accusations.
- The reprehensible decision by the equally reprehensible New York Post to publicise an alleged rape victim’s alleged HIV+ status.
- An Open Letter to Nice Guys of the World.

This isn’t lasting, but neither does it seem to have been a deliberate attempt at a women-heavy run: it’s just how the strips came out.

One of the strips that deserves a mention is Hondo City Justice by Robbie Morrison and Neil Googe, the latest in Morrison’s stories centred around Hondo (the Japanese mega-city in Dredd’s world). The lead is an old character, Inspector-Judge Inaba, one of the few female Judges in Hondo. She’s mainly been shown as partner and ally to recurring character Shimura (a Judge turned ronin); or there was a focus on her being an outsider in the Judge force due to her gender; or she headlined comedy stories that usually revolved around, you guessed it, T&A gags. And that was pretty much it for her.

Hondo City Justice has been a game-changer for her though. While the strip isn’t the best thing Morrison’s ever done – the villains are a blatant riff on the X-Men and don’t really come off as impressive – there’s something it brings to the table that we’ve seen with Inaba before. She’s now got a cadet. It’s a super-powerful teenage girl psionic cadet, part of an intended next generation of super-Judges, but at the core of Cadet Junko Asahara is that she’s a naïve, young cadet.

And this is the interesting bit, because another writer might have taken the obvious approach and had Inaba become a maternal figure with Junko, or give them a sisterly relationship. After all, one’s a woman and the other’s a girl! What else will you do?

Well, Morrison decided he’d have Inaba as a Judge and Junko as a Cadet, like you’d expect from a male-centred Dredd spinoff. Inaba is now the senior figure here, presented from the start as a highly competent and courageous officer; Junko is presented from the start as fresh out of the academy, overly disciplined & eager to impress her mentor. Only one time do we get a big sis/little sis scene, and that’s a deliberate ruse to trick a potential enemy.

Inaba takes the sort of hardline school-of-hard-knocks approach you’d expect from any equivalent character, and possibly more so: when Junko freezes in battle and is about to killed, Inaba calmly neutralises the threat and immediately demands to know why her cadet froze. The cadet explains she recognised the enemy and isn’t sure what happened; she’s asked to do a mind-probe to find out what’s going on, and does so even though she admits it’s not her speciality.

Inaba doesn’t (openly) show fear for Junko or asks her if she’s alright, Junko isn’t breaking down, both women are getting on with the situation at hand and not letting themselves get distracted. And when it comes to the grand finale, with Junko being mentally controlled by the Professor X stand-in, Inaba snaps her out of it not by making an emotional appeal but by playing on her cadet’s judicial training and getting her to focus on arresting the enemy.

It’s almost like… like Morrison’s writing them as Judges first.

And of course that’s just what he’s doing. Which, in the year 2010, shouldn’t be something remarkable in comics, but it is.

We could do with some more dynamics like Inaba’s and Junko’s.

But there’s one big problem with the Boom! Kids line: there’s not a single female protagonist in the bunch.

Boom is currently publishing 12 ongoing titles for kids, plus a string of four-issue Muppet parodies of famous stories (Muppet Robin Hood, Muppet Snow White, etc.), and a couple of completed Pixar minis (Monsters Inc. and Finding Nemo). Of the 13, The Incredibles probably does the best on the female character front, with the kickass and competent Helen (Mrs. Incredible) starring in an upcoming arc (check out this gorgeous cover featuring her and Mirage! I am so getting this), and just generally being a prominent character in the series, as is her daughter Violet.

Beyond that, female characters tend to consist of The Girlfriend (Minnie Mouse, Daisy Duck) or That One Girl in the Cast (Miss Piggy, Jessie from Toy Story). Sometimes The Villain. Or The Daughter.

Never The Star.

This isn’t really surprising, given the franchises Boom is working with, all of which are boys’ clubs. Pixar has already taken heat for this; in 11 movies they haven’t had a single female protagonist, so how can a comic based on a Pixar movie provide one? The Duck and Mouse books are working from the 1950s tradition of Disney comics, where women exist only as girlfriends who will hector you into adventures and then require saving.

And the Muppets basically have Miss Piggy, who is a glorious character, but can’t represent the gender all on her lonesome. It seemed Boom! was balancing the gender ratio slightly when they introduced an adult Skeeter, Scooter’s twin sister from Muppet Babies, but she was written out again a few issues later. Meanwhile, the Muppet minis go through agonized contortions, trying to find enough female characters to make their parodies work, and settling for B-listers like Janice and Camilla the Chicken (or appalling new character “Spamela Hamderson,” who plays Snow White to Piggy’s Evil Queen in the currently-running Muppet Snow White).

It doesn’t have to be this way. Jessie was marketed as if she was the third protagonist in Toy Story 3, when in fact she wound up being a damsel in distress who existed only to engineer conflict for Buzz. Why not rectify that by giving her an arc in the comic?

Or, hey, Minnie Mouse has been around for 82 years. I think she can carry her own comic book by now, especially considering the vast network of friends and relatives she has in the comic book universe. I’m awfully tired of seeing her as Mickey’s wilting flower. And while we’re at it, can we see less of Daisy the vain, selfish nag, and more of Daisy the plucky career woman from the otherwise-awful 90s cartoon Quack Pack? Mickey and Donald have always contained multitudes, to allow them to play whatever role necessary for the story; Minnie and Daisy can too.

But if none of those work, well, it’s not like Disney doesn’t have a wealth of properties designed with little girls in mind. There are the princesses, of course, and the Tinkerbell line; ordinary little girls like Alice and Lilo; live action properties like Wizards of Waverly Place and Hannah Montana. It’s a little past its prime, but Kim Possible would’ve made a wonderful comic book. Disney is not exactly starved for female protagonists, if you catch my drift.

Because here’s the thing: there are exactly as many little girls out there as there are little boys. Statistically, they read more, and they spend more (or their parents do). And they want to see themselves as main characters, too. So it’s not just right to include female protagonists, but it opens up a whole new potential stream of revenue. Sure, not a lot of little girls read comic books now. I bet a lot more would if they started seeing girls on the cover. (And hey, maybe a boy might read a comic about a girl! Just like girls read comics about boys all the damn time.)

I’ll say it again: Boom! Kids is great. I’ve enjoyed every single comic I’ve picked up from them. But I’d enjoy them a whole lot more if I knew Boom! was telling stories about both halves of the population.

Like lots of fans, I’ve been enjoying the new BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD animated series. It’s campy and fun without being overly knowing or self-referential, accessible to everyone while still being clever. One problem keeps hitting me, though: the lack of female superheroes*.

If you’ve never seen it, there are two notable features of the show’s set-up. First, the few minutes before the title sequence are usually used for a mini-adventure unrelated to the main episode (although they are sometimes used to set up the episode’s backstory, or to further the overarching plot of the season). Second, and most fundamentally, the theme of the show is team-ups. Batman is never alone, always coming together with at least one fellow hero to beat up baddies.

Which makes it quite striking that no female hero has had the full BatB team-up treatment, a one-on-one team-up with Bats in the main episode. Only once has a woman – Black Canary – been in such a team-up, and that was in a pre-title sequence. Every other super-heroine appearance has been alongside other male supers. So far** only five female superheroes have put in an appearance in their professional capacity, and only three have appeared more than once. Let’s go through them – spoilers abound past this point.

Katana has made three appearances as one-third of the Outsiders (with Black Lightning and Metamorpho). Katana is, as you’d expect, Japanese, and carries a lot of stereotypes – she wears a schoolgirl uniform, her powers are skills with katana and shuriken (she has a magic sword in the comics, but it’s not put in an appearance yet in the cartoon), and in her first episode, “Enter the Outsiders!”, she’s silent, speaking only to tell her fellow Outsiders how to perform a sort of super-CPR on an incapacitated Wildcat. Her silence means the other two get more limelight, and she remains quiet during a pre-title sequence with the Outsiders being trained by Batman. This is somewhat made up for by “Inside the Outsiders!”, in which Psycho Pirate has trapped the three in nightmares, and Batman has to save them. Each of the Outsiders gets some meaty psychological stuff, but only Katana gets backstory – the death of her sensei in her native Japan. She speaks a lot during her dream sequence (in a strong Japanese accent which she didn’t have in her first appearance) and we learn that her silence is in honour of her master, so at least it’s a stereotype they’ve taken the trouble to justify. In the end, most of Katana’s character is defined by her ethnicity, and she can be crowded out by the other Outsiders quite easily, but she’s still good to watch and they do seem intent on doing something interesting with her team.

Which is more, really, than can be said for Huntress, probably this show’s greatest disappointment for me as I’m a big fan of hers. Huntress gets two main-episode appearances, one as part of a big ensemble in “Death Race to Oblivion!” where she’s rather overshadowed by Green Arrow, Guy Gardner and Plastic Man, and one alongside Blue Beetle in “Night of the Huntress!”***. Huntress’s whole thing in this episode is “sexpot” – her tooling-up sequence mostly consists of her letting her hair down and applying lipstick, and the main thrust of this episode is Jaime’s crush on sexy Helena. She flirts constantly, with lots of double-entendres. The writers just don’t seem to see much of her character beyond her sexiness (she’s also somewhat more violent, although Batman doesn’t seem to be bothered by this).

Black Canary is another favourite of mine, and the best woman in the series. She’s the only female hero to get a straight team-up in a pre-title beatdown on Solomon Grundy. There are still wrong notes in her portrayal, though – her unrequited love for Batman feels a bit forced and uninteresting. In one of her episodes, the musical “Mayhem of the Music Meister!”, she’s largely passive, apparently under the Music Meister’s mind-control for most of the episode, and though her Canary Cry saves the day Batman has to goad her into using it. Her best episode is “The Golden Age of Justice!”, in which she and Batman are still being treated like sidekicks by an ageing Justice League (of the Flash, Doctor Mid-Nite, Wildcat, Hawkman and Hourman). It’s another ensemble episode, but most of the spotlight is on Canary and she swings the climactic fight. Best of all, nothing is made of her Bat-crush.

Two other heroines have minor appearances – Fire cameos in a Plastic Man pre-title adventure, and one of the Metal Men, Platinum, is really a Metal Woman – but that’s it for woman as heroes in BatB. And over thirty-four episodes, that’s not great.

Part of the underlying problem is revealed by looking at the treatment of women as wives. In the pre-title sequence to “Last Bat on Earth!”, Batman and Mister Miracle escape a death-trap for charity, following which Big Barda hectors Miracle for not cleaning out the garage – Batman chuckles and tells him, “That’s one trap you can’t get out of”. In “Aquaman’s Outrageous Adventure!”, Aquaman’s wife insists that he take her and their son on a vacation rather than fight evildoers. In “Long Arm of the Law!”, Plastic Man’s wife Ramona insists on him watching the baby rather than going out and fighting crime. It’s a time-honoured position for the wives of male superheroes, from Mystery Men to The Incredibles – a dogmatic insistence that their husband give up that silly crimefighting and concentrate on his family. It’s all part of the general stereotype that men put their time and effort into Big Important Projects, whereas women are concerned above all else with their homes and children.

It’s also a genre problem. BatB is trying to recapture an element of light-hearted, old-fashioned fun. Like a cargo cult, they do it by replicating elements from the original purveyors of that fun. And when you do that without some discretion, you replicate the flaws of what you’re making an homage to. With luck, they’ll learn to take what they need from the past and leave behind the unnecessary baggage.

*Which is not to say that this is BatB’s only problem; it’s just the problem I’m talking about here.

**I’m up to episode 34, “Sidekicks Assemble!” – but from the episode list, I don’t think there’s been an uptick in female representation in the episodes I haven’t seen yet. There is apparently a Birds of Prey episode coming up, which should be fun.

***My least favourite episode so far, I think. Not only is it ill-treatment of Huntress, there’s also the awful Mrs. Man-face as a villain.

Comics Waiting Room 3.0 Reviews: COMIC ARTIST’S PHOTO REFERENCE: WOMEN AND GIRLS

Pictures of Real Women to use when drawing? They’re not hyper-thin, but at least the sample pictures are definitely stingy on the plus-side. Of course, so are traditional comic book women. Which is kind of the point…

Rob Zombie’s Werewolf Women Of The S.S. Comic Book Cover!

Umm. I don’t really know what to say about it. But SOMEBODY has to. So, here it is. Go for it.

San Diego Comic-Con 2008 – A woman’s perspective . | CollectionDX

Posted for the novelty value. This is a woman who didn’t seem to have any problems with oversexed idiots at SDCC.

Portrayal of women in comics – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This and the link of women comics creators should probably be a perma-link on most of our personal blogs.

The Hackenblog » Middle-aged women in comics shops rock

Just because I hadn’t seen this last year. Yes, they do.

Bored now! See you later!

Ahem.
Let’s get the facts out.
It’s not a weird lighting issue in the image.
It’s not a coloring error.
Vixen is not a freakin’ white woman.

Found via Racialicious.