Females in Comics
Last Tuesday, in a state of high anxiety and out of an attempt to avoid said state, I wrote a huge essay thing about Harry Potter. It was mostly inspired by movie 7.2, and my particular issues with A) that movie, and B) the half of the book that the movie is derived from. I wrote it, and was relatively pleased with it, but since it is mostly critical, I've since been reading it periodically and asking myself how badly I really want to post it.
However! Today we're not going to talk about Harry Potter. Today I worked (I have a temp job now that will last for about three more weeks), and then was hit by the barrage of my mom's constant stress (she is moving to Indiana, possibly on Friday), and have some interesting things coming up in my life. (July, man. July is the most stressful month of my year, every year, except maybe for December. Without fail, I pretty much stop writing completely every July.)
So today I came home after listening to my mom and grocery shopping, and was moderately grumpy, and then I read some things, and now instead I am going to talk, briefly, about a subject near and dear to my heart.
I'm not entirely sure why--maybe it's just due to being an adult female--but I'm becoming more aware of feminism in the media lately. I've been really conscious of it because I'm working on getting a secret project off the ground with my sister, something we talk about pretty much every time we're together, and which involves female characterization in a pretty male-dominated industry.
(Also working on the Project--this is just the Project, not the Secret Project--I guess we can call one the Transporting Project and the other the Secret Project--makes me aware of the presence of females and feminism, because for some reason I am working on fathoming, there are more females in this genre I've made up than males.)
So I think a lot lately about female representation in the media. How we're represented. What we're meant to take away from it. And not just whether it's good role models or accurate portrayal, but whether some women (not necessarily me) are meant to take something away from it, or if it's just having a woman present for the sake of having a woman present.
And I've always been very aware of female presences in comics and whether they actually do things or just punch people while wearing bikinis. I mean, you can't miss them. Doing personal studies of my favorite female character as an adult (Emma Frost) and my favorite female character when I was a teenager (Rogue) led me to realize that both of them are very often very badly written. Another personal pet peeve of mine is having characters--all characters, male and female--always solve their problems by smashing and/or killing things, and it very, very often seems that when a character in the X-Men (male or female) can't do those things, the writers don't know what to do with them. Really, I never gave it much thought one way or the other except for mild irritation.
Then San Diego Comic-Con happened, and the Internet has somehow exploded with all this talk about the complete lack of female creators in mainstream comics.
I suppose I have a love-hate relationship with comic books. Comics are the first fandom I really got into and comics are what made me start writing regularly. (I suppose you could argue that it was the supremely terrible X-Men: The Animated Series that was those things for me, but since it was inspired by comics and I am ashamed for having loved it so hard, considering that it was so bad, we will just say comics instead.)
...despite all this, I don't think my words can really add any more to the situation, but it's stupid and frustrating. Especially when you consider how many novels by female writers are being turned into graphic novels lately.
Links:
Where I first read about it all, at Cleolinda's LJ. ( Some comments I found interesting.)
Blog with some commentary abtou the SDCC incidents: Ladies Making Comics
Girl-Wonder.org, "dedicated to female characters and creators in mainstream comics." They are kind of awesome, and my entire evening just got consumed by their Dimestore Dames feature. (I've been longing, for YEARS, to find an outlet to share the awesomeness of Emma Frost, when she's written properly, and now I hope that Dimestore Dames will beat me to it, because they are pretty concise and better at writing reviews than I am.)
Those are the only sites I've really enjoyed, but tonight it occurred to me that I don't buy new comics anymore (too expensive, and not really worth the effort/cost of buying them; periodically I go through a phase and order all the comics I haven't read yet from the library and read them all, and usually out of ~20 comics or more I'll find, like, four, tops, that I really love), but I do follow a handful of webcomics. More, when I thought about it, than I thought I did. And here's the kicker: they are all written and drawn by women. (In fact, thinking it over, many of my favorite artists are women, and most, if not all, of the artists I discovered online via fanart are women.)
Hanna is Not a Boy's Name, by Tessa Stone. Even if it never updates again (last update was Valentine's Day and though many fans are getting antsy, I know perfectly well how real life can eat your online life, and that it can be hard to make yourself go back to that, so I'm not going to be judgey), I will ALWAYS love it.
Lackadaisy, by Tracy J. Butler. It combines so many things I love, and it's hilarious!
The Dreamer, by Lora Innes. MMMM HISTORY. When I met the author/creator/artist at the Cincinnati Comic Expo, I was just so delighted with all her beautiful merchandise that I wanted to buy everything she'd made for the comic. She was really nice! Also, her comic is awesome!
I completely ADORE this artist (goes by Chira but her real name is Jayd Ait-Kaci) and almost everything she does. I really love the comic she illustrates and co-authors, Sfeer Theory, but she just started illustrating something new, with more of a female presence, called The Fox Sister. Both are very beautiful.
Though it doesn't have an only female creator (from what I can tell, it's 50-50), I've heard great things about Girl Genius. I haven't gotten into it yet (even HiNaBN, Webcomic Of My Heart, I had to read like four times before I finally got it and started loving it), but I'm going to soon. Gaslamp fantasy!
Also, Shannon Hale is kind of a hero of mine for writing outside her genre and generally being creative and awesome; she co-wrote two awesome graphic novels, Rapunzel's Revenge and the sequel, Calamity Jack. I basically had to rip them out of my (then ten-year-old) niece's hands last year when I introduced them to her.
That is all. For now.
However! Today we're not going to talk about Harry Potter. Today I worked (I have a temp job now that will last for about three more weeks), and then was hit by the barrage of my mom's constant stress (she is moving to Indiana, possibly on Friday), and have some interesting things coming up in my life. (July, man. July is the most stressful month of my year, every year, except maybe for December. Without fail, I pretty much stop writing completely every July.)
So today I came home after listening to my mom and grocery shopping, and was moderately grumpy, and then I read some things, and now instead I am going to talk, briefly, about a subject near and dear to my heart.
I'm not entirely sure why--maybe it's just due to being an adult female--but I'm becoming more aware of feminism in the media lately. I've been really conscious of it because I'm working on getting a secret project off the ground with my sister, something we talk about pretty much every time we're together, and which involves female characterization in a pretty male-dominated industry.
(Also working on the Project--this is just the Project, not the Secret Project--I guess we can call one the Transporting Project and the other the Secret Project--makes me aware of the presence of females and feminism, because for some reason I am working on fathoming, there are more females in this genre I've made up than males.)
So I think a lot lately about female representation in the media. How we're represented. What we're meant to take away from it. And not just whether it's good role models or accurate portrayal, but whether some women (not necessarily me) are meant to take something away from it, or if it's just having a woman present for the sake of having a woman present.
And I've always been very aware of female presences in comics and whether they actually do things or just punch people while wearing bikinis. I mean, you can't miss them. Doing personal studies of my favorite female character as an adult (Emma Frost) and my favorite female character when I was a teenager (Rogue) led me to realize that both of them are very often very badly written. Another personal pet peeve of mine is having characters--all characters, male and female--always solve their problems by smashing and/or killing things, and it very, very often seems that when a character in the X-Men (male or female) can't do those things, the writers don't know what to do with them. Really, I never gave it much thought one way or the other except for mild irritation.
Then San Diego Comic-Con happened, and the Internet has somehow exploded with all this talk about the complete lack of female creators in mainstream comics.
I suppose I have a love-hate relationship with comic books. Comics are the first fandom I really got into and comics are what made me start writing regularly. (I suppose you could argue that it was the supremely terrible X-Men: The Animated Series that was those things for me, but since it was inspired by comics and I am ashamed for having loved it so hard, considering that it was so bad, we will just say comics instead.)
...despite all this, I don't think my words can really add any more to the situation, but it's stupid and frustrating. Especially when you consider how many novels by female writers are being turned into graphic novels lately.
Links:
Where I first read about it all, at Cleolinda's LJ. ( Some comments I found interesting.)
Blog with some commentary abtou the SDCC incidents: Ladies Making Comics
Girl-Wonder.org, "dedicated to female characters and creators in mainstream comics." They are kind of awesome, and my entire evening just got consumed by their Dimestore Dames feature. (I've been longing, for YEARS, to find an outlet to share the awesomeness of Emma Frost, when she's written properly, and now I hope that Dimestore Dames will beat me to it, because they are pretty concise and better at writing reviews than I am.)
Those are the only sites I've really enjoyed, but tonight it occurred to me that I don't buy new comics anymore (too expensive, and not really worth the effort/cost of buying them; periodically I go through a phase and order all the comics I haven't read yet from the library and read them all, and usually out of ~20 comics or more I'll find, like, four, tops, that I really love), but I do follow a handful of webcomics. More, when I thought about it, than I thought I did. And here's the kicker: they are all written and drawn by women. (In fact, thinking it over, many of my favorite artists are women, and most, if not all, of the artists I discovered online via fanart are women.)
Hanna is Not a Boy's Name, by Tessa Stone. Even if it never updates again (last update was Valentine's Day and though many fans are getting antsy, I know perfectly well how real life can eat your online life, and that it can be hard to make yourself go back to that, so I'm not going to be judgey), I will ALWAYS love it.
Lackadaisy, by Tracy J. Butler. It combines so many things I love, and it's hilarious!
The Dreamer, by Lora Innes. MMMM HISTORY. When I met the author/creator/artist at the Cincinnati Comic Expo, I was just so delighted with all her beautiful merchandise that I wanted to buy everything she'd made for the comic. She was really nice! Also, her comic is awesome!
I completely ADORE this artist (goes by Chira but her real name is Jayd Ait-Kaci) and almost everything she does. I really love the comic she illustrates and co-authors, Sfeer Theory, but she just started illustrating something new, with more of a female presence, called The Fox Sister. Both are very beautiful.
Though it doesn't have an only female creator (from what I can tell, it's 50-50), I've heard great things about Girl Genius. I haven't gotten into it yet (even HiNaBN, Webcomic Of My Heart, I had to read like four times before I finally got it and started loving it), but I'm going to soon. Gaslamp fantasy!
Also, Shannon Hale is kind of a hero of mine for writing outside her genre and generally being creative and awesome; she co-wrote two awesome graphic novels, Rapunzel's Revenge and the sequel, Calamity Jack. I basically had to rip them out of my (then ten-year-old) niece's hands last year when I introduced them to her.
That is all. For now.