the under-represented Comic-Con (Thursday edition)
I got to go to Comic-Con this year, thanks to Tom Spurgeon at The Comics Reporter. Thanks for letting me serve, Tom!
When looking at the enormous tome listing all the panels, and knowing that I have a relatively low tolerance for standing in lines, I decided to forgo as many of the high profile panels as I could manage to avoid, and instead attend those panels dedicated to those typically underserved in the comics world: women, minorities and LBGT.
We came in on the train on Thursday afternoon, so I missed a couple of themed panels, including The Witty Women of Steampunk, Spotlight on Becky Cloonan, Censorship and the Female Artist, Trailblazers of Comics - Lynn Johnston and Kate Beaton, Progressive Politics in Comics... all those were just in the first half of the first day! I did manage to catch about the last 20 minutes of the Womanthology panel, so my notes start there.
Womanthology - For those who don't know, this Kickstarter-funded project began as one woman's question on Twitter, and resulted in an all-female artist graphic novel anthology. The first one was so successful they are now doing a sequel! Things I overheard in the panel:
--Vote with your dollars! don't support main stream comics because they don't care about you (women and underserved populations)
--seek out *retailers* as well that support you - ones that have the kind of material you want to buy on the shelves
--there isn't just one kind of story that women like, because there isn't just one woman. Our tastes are as varied as we are.
--make noise!!! If you like something, get on the internet, tweet it, recommend it to friends, spread the word. Make your voice heard!
--advice for young artists? Sleep and eat (don't be a starving artist if you can avoid it!), study your craft (art school or lessons), and draw as much as you can. Spend all your free time drawing. Don't buy that gaming console! Also, learn how to network, don't be afraid to do it badly - you have to get out so many bad drawings before you get to the good ones.
The panel ended on a very strange note. The last woman to ask a question didn't - she actually scolded the panelists, full of a sense of her own rightness, for referring to themselves in general as guys (as in "the rest of the guys on the panel..."). She felt like it was some sort of huge feminist failing - but what she insisted was the proper way to refer to each other was "girls." "You're GIRLS," she insisted, "you need to call each other that." Which made me nearly stand right up and say "Absolutely WRONG!!!" It drives me crazy when people refer to grown females as "girls" - women fought very hard for years to get that form of address removed from common usage. And now someone is claiming that it is better to call women "girls" than the generic "guys?" I beg to differ!
However, it did bring up an interesting issue, which is that we are having a serious labeling crisis in the country right now, in that everyone wants to self-label differently, and everyone (myself included) denigrates the other self-labels as wrong and bad. Which leads to a whole lot of confusion, because it's very hard to keep from offending someone the way things are now! Don't know that I have a solution, but it is a problem that gives me quite a bit of agita. Would love to hear others' thoughts on it.
The Most Dangerous Women at Comic-Con: A rather deliberately provocative panel name - the guests were Katrina Hill, Leah Cevoli, Holly Conrad, Adrianne Curry, Abbie Heppe, Claire Kramer, Kristen Nedopak, Milynn Sarley, Stephanie Thorpe, and Patricia Tallman. It was moderated by Bonnie Burton, who I always enjoy watching on Vaginal Fantasy Hangout.
Bonnie kept the panel lively with some good questions ("when are you most dangerous?" "when are you most geeky?"). When she asked "how is Comic-Con different for women?" the answer was "it depends on what you wear!" If you are covered head to foot, you are going to have a completely different Con than if you dress as Slave Leia. One of the panelists mentions that she chooses cosplay now that isn't too revealing, because she is sick of dealing with handsy assholes. (To which an anonymous male voice in the crowd jokingly called out "Sorry!"). They then mentioned that this Con felt very inclusive, and that essentially Comic-Con is what you make of it (which is true of any Con, really). I did find it sad to hear that women just expect to get groped in the crowd if they are wearing "sexy" outfits. And considering what most comic or superhero female outfits are like, that pretty much means you can expect to get groped if you dress up. Really really not cool.
The panel was for the most part pretty low-key, until the very end when the topic of Booth Babes came up. I was saddened by the defeatist attitude - "Companies are going to hire booth babes - we can't stop it. Don't let it ruin your Comic-Con. Just be yourself." Well, except if women make their displeasure known in great enough numbers, then we *can* change the practice! Remember voting with your pocketbook?
A couple of the women on the panel had *been* booth babes, and stressed that they are human too. When you are a starving actress, and you need the work, it's a job. However, one of them emphasized that if she was hired to work a booth, she did her homework and researched everything she could find about what that particular vendor was selling. She wanted to be able to talk intelligently to customers, as any salesperson working the booth should. Essentially, if they are not there just as eye candy, and aren't even into the product, it's a lot easier to take. There was a lot of bashing of E3 - apparently booth babes are the norm there, and some of the women on the panel said that as female gamers, they find it unnecessary and insulting.
Bonnie led the conversation away from what was becoming a very lively topic, and asked what everyone's favorite cosplay character was. One of the ladies said Alex from A Clockwork Orange - she loved blowing people's minds by wearing a huge codpiece! Others mentioned FemShep, and how exciting it was that FemShep even existed.
Website referenced in the panel: actionchickflick.com, teamunicorn.com, GeekNation.com
Rewriting the Rules of Queers in Comics: A very good panel!
This was a mix of queer comics artists and writers, and straight artists and writers that worked on queer characters. The panelists were Oliver Nome, James Robinson, Nicola Scott, Gail Simone, Ivan Velez Jr. and the moderator was Charles "Zan" Christensen.
The first question was whether there were any special considerations when writing queer characters. The panelists replied: staying honest, staying away from stereotypes, and doing them justice. They mentioned that because there are more gay characters now, they have more freedom to play with the characters. One of the writers (a gay man) said he makes it his mission to challenge the status quo. But another writer (a straight man) countered that because there are still areas of the world where people are freaked out or turned off by gay characters, he tries to present his gay characters as regular good people doing good things. He said he would feel nervous doing a gay villain, that at this point, it's not his place to do that.
The mod asked if there were any artistic signifiers in the drawing of gay characters? One of the female panelists answered: you have to be true to the personality of the character as well as the physicality of the character as much if not more than their sexuality. She used as an example the character of Alan Scott, the Green Lantern character in DC Comic's Earth 2. and his boyfriend Sam. Because Alan is the leader of the team, he is an alpha male, and needs to be drawn that way. His boyfriend Sam has to be beautiful, because Alan is beautiful, and they need to fit together. (ed: thought that was an interesting remark right there) But Sam has his own life in which he is a powerful man, so that informed the way he was drawn. Still, she was sensitive to the fact that it should be clear that as the non-superhero, Sam would be "the bottom."
Another panelist pointed to a transgender character who is a shapeshifter, and therefore no one knows she's a gal.
They talked a little bit about how the climate is today, and how there is actually encouragement to include more diversity and diverse characters of all kinds. They also mentioned how wonderful it is to see gay couples come to conventions and cosplay gay characters together - that they are excited to be included.
Gail Simone said that she started out with a mission to include more women characters, because there were so few, but when she saw how scant the representation was of all minorities in comics, then she broadened her mission (no pun intended). And yes, she said she has received hate mail and had people accuse her of pushing her agenda.
They talked about that it is a relatively new thing that a gay character doesn't always need to be a new character - that the trend now is to also have established characters come out. That way they already have a fan base for the character.
They talked about how the queer characters now are stepping stones to a world where it won't be a big deal, but we are still in the stepping stone phase where we have to fight sometimes against negative feedback.
The mod asked "do you worry about how they meet their fates?" and referenced the Women in Refrigerators phenomenon for female characters. The panelists answered that it would be disingenuous to protect them more than straight characters - if everyone is getting beaten up in a fight, then everyone is getting beaten up. You can do the episode that deals with gay-bashing, but you don't want that to be the only story told about the queer character.
The mod asked about their 1st characters that they looked up to or identified with, and all them actually said it was people in their own lives who were their heroes.
The last comment: "The great thing about Archie Comics is they say 'We don't care if bigots don't read our comics.'" :)
Superhero Kung Fu Extravaganza: So this had very little to do with my theme for Comic-Con, but I wanted to see at least some of the panel. And I did make note of a web series that features a fighting superhero: It's on Hulu, and it's called "Shinobi Girl." I'll have to check it out. The other group that I saw there that I want to plug is The Stunt People and their movie "Death Grip." They are a group of stunt fighters that are tired of the way fights are shot these days - where you can't see the fighting! - and so they make their own fight films. The clips I saw were great, so check them out if you have a chance!
Then I had a dinner date, and so I had to leave the Con for the day. Look for Friday's entry next!