Women in comics

[Patrick]

You want mainstream? You don't get much more mainstream than Posy Simmonds.

But I'm fairly relaxed that a cultural niche like comics might not be 100% gender balanced. We should do our best not to exclude people or make them feel unwelcome or weird for arbitrary reasons like chromosomal alignment. Beyond that, it comes down to taste and free choice, and if not as many women want to get involved as men, that's fair enough. There are plenty of cultural niches where there are more women involved than men, and that's okay too.

I think a lot of this fretting over why there aren't more women in comics is just a bit of a nerdy inferiority complex. If there were more girls we'd feel less like outsiders and look cooler and more respectable. Sod that. Make good comics, try not to be too much of an arsehole, and what happens happens.

[TordelBack]

You want mainstream? You don't get much more mainstream than Posy Simmonds.

Well yeah, that's sort of the point:  Posy is one of the best writer/artists out there, and her strips and GNs are everywhere.  And yet here we are, a thread on a comics forum where several posters have never heard of her or would never dream of reading her. So mainstream she is, comics mainstream she is not.

I'm fairly relaxed that a cultural niche like comics might not be 100% gender balanced.

Fair enough, so am I, but how about getting above 5%?  Your point about just making good comics is obviously the most important one of all, but I believe that an increase in female creators into what at its financial (but not creative) heart is a niche medium swimming in ever-decreasing circles could only have this result.  If nothing else sourcing the best creators from the whole population rather than 50% of it is a numbers game.

I'm getting weary of this topic (no reflection on Patrick's articulate post, mind!), so what's hopefully my final point is this: anyone who thinks that the balancing out of gender opportunities and profile in specific industries just happens is fooling themselves.  Maybe it doesn't matter that the spandex'n'capes brigade remains largely a boy's club (for all the exceptions cited above), and the gender balancing is taking place at the real vibrant edge of comics, on the 'free' web and in lush Fantagraphics hardbacks,  but personally I'd like to see that change throughout.  It can only be good for the industry and the artform.

[Jimmy Baker's Assistant]

Not sure we should be blaming "sexualisation" for the unbalanced gender profile of Western mainstream comic readers/creators. I hope we can draw a distinction here between sex and sexism.

The only comic my wife actually likes is The Cobweb. She's totally okay with it being "sexualised", but it helps that it has interesting female characters and high quality writing and artwork. No doubt Melinda Gebbie's contribution as artist/co-creator makes a massive difference here, and let's not forget that the writer of Cobweb is also reportedly quite good too.

[Jim_Campbell]

Not sure we should be blaming "sexualisation" for the unbalanced gender profile of Western mainstream comic readers/creators. I hope we can draw a distinction here between sex and sexism.

You will note that I also mentioned objectification and astonishing levels of violence against women. Women who are central characters are frequently threatened with rape, the ones in more subsidiary roles can find themselves dismembered for no better reason than motivating the male lead with whom they were in a relationship to stop moping about and go after the Big Bad. I don't recall any male (outside a Garth Ennis comic) being threatened or actually raped in a mainstream book, nor a book where a female lead character's significant other turned up as body parts in a fridge.

Don't misunderstand me, I do not confuse sex and sexism. I actively applaud Moore and Gebbie's attempt do something interesting under the label of porn, for example. In large part, terms like 'erotica' translate to 'the kind of porn I like'... if it's the kind of porn you like, and no one gets hurt making or using it, well, fair enough.

I would observe that the mainstream comic industry seems heavily predicated on selling teenage boys' wank fantasies to men who should, really, have outgrown such things. Campaigns like the Hawkeye initiative show up how widespread and how ludicrous it really is; adding in rape and violence contribute to an atmosphere that may feel positively misogynistic. Not being a woman, it's hard for me to comment on how all this makes women feel, but their absence from that part of the industry suggests that it is not creating an inviting atmosphere for them.

Cheers

Jim

[sheldipez]

I would observe that the mainstream comic industry seems heavily predicated on selling teenage boys' wank fantasies to men who should, really, have outgrown such things.

I was reading Red Hood and the Outlaws #17 and all of the Bat Family are wandering about Wayne manor in casual wear and Starfire is flying about looking as she does when my wife happened to look over my shoulder and I honestly didn't have any answer or comeback to her question of why "women always drawn like that and men look normal", your comment would of been an all too true response Jim.

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

I agree with Jim.

Like the pop music industry, the spandex brigade produces a lot of porn for cowards.

[Professor Bear]

I was reading Red Hood and the Outlaws #17 and all of the Bat Family are wandering about Wayne manor in casual wear and Starfire is flying about looking as she does

What is especially baffling about that is that Starfire is one of the most popular characters in the Teen Titans cartoon show, a series seen by millions upon millions of young people around the world with lots of disposable cash to spend on things they recognise, yet the comics version is a different character entirely in order to sell to - at most - 40 thousand people in a brief window of PR opportunity that closed roughly two months after the book hit shelves.  I understand taking a creative gamble is sometimes necessary, but there comes a point when you have to point at something and say "that is not a gamble, it's a pattern of behavior, and it's now a self-destructive one."

[Patrick]

A conclusion I'm coming to is that an awful lot of geeky behaviour is based on having been blown away by something at an impressionable age, and then devoting the rest of your life to trying to chase that blown away feeling and get it back - and obviously getting older, with more experience of life and fiction, you're harder to impress or surprise, so you can never feel that way again, and you get seriously diminishing returns from it. Your palate gets jaded and it takes more and more extreme content to stimulate it.

Superhero comics, in pandering to the jaded palates of their hardcore readers (who for historical reasons are largely male), put off a wider readership (and the wider your readership, the wider the pool of potential creators). So they have to make money by squeezing more money out of a dwindling number of fans, hence the "all crossovers, all the time" approach and the ridiculous oversized and overpriced hardbacks of comics that have been collected numerous times. Whereas something like Star Wars or Doctor Who try to appeal to a wider audience and end up rather more successful, but hated by their hardcore "fans" for failing to make them feel like they did when they were nine.

[Jim_Campbell]

I couldn't agree more, Patrick.

Cheers

Jim

[Patrick]

Well yeah, that's sort of the point:  Posy is one of the best writer/artists out there, and her strips and GNs are everywhere.  And yet here we are, a thread on a comics forum where several posters have never heard of her or would never dream of reading her. So mainstream she is, comics mainstream she is not.

And why would she want to be? Her real mainstream is so much bigger, more lucrative and more prestigious than our poky little "mainstream".

[TordelBack]

And why would she want to be? Her real mainstream is so much bigger, more lucrative and more prestigious than our poky little "mainstream".

I think you misunderstand me here!  Of course Posy's mainstream is the real mainstream, and where she should be - she's the business.  Mainstream comics should aspire to her level of craft and sustained broad-based success, not the other way around.  My point is that many comics fans (wrongly) wouldn't even consider Posy's work as comics - the mainstream of comics is still the superhero boys: there's what, 120-odd superhero books a month, still chasing the same shrinking pool of readers? And for all the reasons you so perfectly articulate in your post above, which really couldn't be phrased better.

[Patrick]

I think you misunderstand me here!

I hoped I had. But I thought the point deserved labouring.

[Jimmy Baker's Assistant]

You will note that I also mentioned objectification and astonishing levels of violence against women.

Absolutely, and I did not take issue with those points, nor indeed do I disagree with you on anything substantive, I just want to be clear that Puritanism is not the solution.

[Jimmy Baker's Assistant]

A conclusion I'm coming to is that an awful lot of geeky behaviour is based on having been blown away by something at an impressionable age, and then devoting the rest of your life to trying to chase that blown away feeling and get it back - and obviously getting older, with more experience of life and fiction, you're harder to impress or surprise, so you can never feel that way again, and you get seriously diminishing returns from it. Your palate gets jaded and it takes more and more extreme content to stimulate it.

Quoted for truth.