Women in Comics: Women Guests at LSCC
The London Super Comic Convention is the new kid in town this year, opening its doors on the 25th-26th February. I've been in touch with them for a while now, organising the interviews with their star guest Stan Lee, and also about their quest to attract women guests.
The main line-up consists of 49 men and one woman - Emanuela Lupacchino (Marvel's X-Factor) - but the organisers are keen to stress that there are women guests in the small press section of the convention, and that women guests are an important part of their future.
The organisers of the LSCC have given me the following statement, and the list of women creators at the convention later this month, and it all sounds very positive indeed!
"London Super Comic Convention would love nothing more than to encourage diversity in the comic convention field, to that end we contacted quite a number of mainstream women creators to invite them to attend. Due to either work commitments or other reasons they were unable to do so, but we did manage to secure Emanuella Lupacchino and we have several women attending as part of our small press creators. [hit the jump for more!]
SciFi Now: Interview with Stan Lee
In addition to the interview I completed for The Independent on Sunday, I also interviewed Stan for the UK magazine, SciFi Now. While the other interview was aimed at a mainstream audience, the genre coverage of SciFi Now allowed for some geekier questions.
The focus of the interview was the Silver Age, when Stan and Marvel ruled the comics world. The interview is available in full in the current issue of the magazine and is 6 pages long, talking about everything from The Fantastic Four to Spider-Man, Kirby to Ditko, and a lovely little bit about Bill Everett and Daredevil.
You can download an excerpt at the website here!
Women in Comics: New Power Girl Costume to Attract New Readers?
Nielson's survey of DC New 52 buyers was recently published and the results are either surprising or predictable depending on your stance. Only 5% of readers were new to comics, 2% were under 18 years old, and 93% were male – that's right, only 7% of those surveyed were female readers.
The survey was conducted both in stores and online (as well as with digital buying customers) and yielded just over 6000 respondents. The New 52 has largely been a success with lapsed readers, and DC's preferred target audience of males between 18-50, but has seemingly failed to bring in any new readers; something that is increasingly important in a declining market with falling sales.
A day later, the cover to World's Finest #1 was released, showcasing new looks for Power Girl and Huntress that have removed the infamous skin revealing windows in their costumes. The lack of a "boob window" in Power Girl's outfit has led to outrage from fans, decrying the "prudes" that are "ruining" comics. It's perhaps obvious that this reaction is somewhat inevitable given the statistics above, but may suggest that the failure of DC to expand its readership has less to do with content and ambition, and more to do with a failure of marketing.
Women in Comics: Kapow! The Women Are Here
As a follow up to yesterdays article, it has now been made widely known that the Kapow! Comic Convention does indeed have some women guests. In Monday's press release on CBR, "the creators of Bayou Arcana" are stated as guests, but this news somewhat slipped under the radar.
Bayou Arcana is a well publicised upcoming anthology title in the UK which is made up of 11 stories, each created by a male writer and women artist. The Kapow! website was updated today with details of 5 women from the project who are attending - Dani Abram, Jenny Clements, Lynsey Hutchinson, Patricia Echavarri Riego, and Alex Thompson - along with organiser and writer Jimmy Pearson, and writers Steve Tanner and Darren Ellis. The Kapow! organisers tell me that the group will be hosting a panel to talk about their work and women in comics.
This is fantastic news as five women guests are certainly better than zero, and it's interesting that this is very much an independent book which may indicate that the con is starting to soften its rule of superhero books only.
I'll be talking to the ladies involved very soon... (hit the jump for more!)
Women in Comics: Kapow! No Women at Cons
In 2011 and in its debut year, Mark Millar's Kapow! Comic Con was referred to as the Sausage-Fest Con due to the entire guest line-up being male. After fans started complaining noisily online, two women guests were subsequently added to the event.
This year it seems history is doomed to repeat itself, with 40 comic industry guests now announced, and no women to be seen. Unlike the larger London MCM Expo the following week, Kapow! is focused very much on superhero comics, and the argument is that while there are women working in comics in the UK, they are working in indie and non-mainstream comics (ie not DC, Marvel or 2000 AD).
[ETA 15/2/12 - women guests (plural!) are attending both Kapow! and the London Super Comic Con - more details here!]
I chatted with Mark Millar (and Gail Simone) on twitter to see what he thought, and I would love to hear from the male guests who are attending and the female non-guests too!
An Interview with Me: SpiderGirl Jerusalem
It's the height of vanity I know, but Kneel Down of The Cult Den asked so nicely I couldn't refuse! And he wins major brownie points for the reference to my hero, Spider.
It's very strange to be at the opposite end of the questions for once, but quite nice too - when the interview is over my job is done! We talk about my site, comics journalism, the Comic Studies MLitt, why Spider is my hero, my favourite comics, and my thoughts on the comics industry in general.
Read here: SpiderGirl Jerusalem - an interview with Laura Sneddon
The Independent on Sunday: Interview with Stan Lee
You may have been wondering where I've disappeared to so far this year, but rest assured that I simply had a very busy January writing things that are only just starting to trickle out, along with some work for uni that will be appearing in some form on this site in the near future too. For now though, the first of two interviews I completed last month with the legendary Stan Lee!
It's a little more edited than my previous work as it appeared in the News section of The Independent on Sunday, but I hope you enjoy it. The focus was his upcoming visit to London for the new London Super Comic Con.
Read here: Stan Lee on his upcoming visit to the UK for the London Super Comic Con...
(NB - referred to as co-creator throughout)
As ever, the full version will be up here at a later date. You can check out my earlier interviews for the paper here:
Women in Comics: A Reading List
One of the questions that most often crops up in my e-mail inbox is, "so what comics created by women do you know of?", followed shortly by, "where can I find a list of all the comics created by women?". The internet, being the vast procrastination device that is, has plenty of such lists but none of them really seem to cover everything.
Undoubtedly this is because to attempt such a list would be madness. Fortunately, that means it's right up my street...
Behold, an always in progress browsable list of comics and graphic novels, strip compilations and webcomics, all written and/or drawn by the many talented women in comics.
Please add missing books (or corrections) to the comments and I'll add them at regular intervals. Cover artists do count but I'm unsure how to categorize them...
Many thanks to Lee Grice at Small Press Big Mouth for his contributions!
Women in Comics: Sexing up Cancer
Last week, a new ad campaign was released by the Associação da Luta Contra o Cancer, a breast cancer awareness foundation based in Mozambique, who have run some pretty hard hitting campaigns in the past. These ads were a little bit different, and featured some of the most well known women comic characters, which is why you may have seen it featured on a fair few of the comic websites around.
Clearly, breast cancer awareness is a very worthy cause, and anything that will help get the message to women is great. However, that doesn't mean we can't stop and think about just why it is that a) comic book women almost always look sexualised, and b) women touching their boobs immediately gets re-shared across fandom (the reaction in Mozambique is not covered here as it is not my place!). We need to separate our applause of the message, from our apparent applause of the (objectified) method. Everyone knows "sex sells", but how messed up is it that we live in a society where the best way to spread a serious message about women's health is to use objectified women's bodies?
How messed up is it, that these wonderful illustrations of women touching their own body, have been greeted with slobbering idiots drooling over the idea of women checking their own breasts?
Women in Comics: Alex de Campi Interviewed
If you haven't heard of Alex de Campi, then this is your chance to catch up with the Eisner nominated writer and talented music video director. Alex is the British-American talent behind the wonderful Smoke, and is currently whipping up a storm on Kickstarter with her latest project: Ashes.
The fundraising drive finishes tomorrow, Sunday December 18th at 5:02PM EST. The project has already achieved its target goal of $27,000 but every extra bit of funding helps to publish Valentine, Alex's hugely popular digital comic which has so far had over 200,000 downloads! So if you want to get your hands on a copy of Ashes or help Valentine, get pledging!
I chatted with the talented writer about bringing Ashes into publication, the challenges of the comics industry, and of course what comics she likes reading herself!
"I like that, toiling away in secret then bringing forth the script fully-formed, like Athena from Zeus' migraine."
About a Grrrl
Freelance writer. Comic geek, film addict, metal head, book worm, gamer. I sell books and write. I'd prefer to write books and sell.
This is a collection of my writing, thoughts and interesting links about my geeky interests.
Oh, and I'm not a guy. A woman reading comics still surprises some people...
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