Women and Female Characters in Comics! They do EXIST YOU $%^&#!@!!! PART 1

Welcome to 2018 and the Return of The Burning Mind.

For anyone who has read the blog before, you probably know the drill.

To anyone new, here is the short version. I am Ace Masters. This is The Burning Mind. Here I write about comics – anything I feel that is worth writing about. I also do weekly reviews of titles on my Pull List.

There, that’s it.

Now, in my hiatus piece back in November, I mentioned I was going to kick off 2018 by making January ‘Women in Comics’ Month here at The Burning Mind. So that is exactly what I am going to do. Initially, I announced I would kick off the year with a Review of the Documentary She Makes Comics, but that has changed.

I am going to END this month with my thoughts on She Makes Comics. This documentary sparked my desire to do this when I finally watched it in October. So I decided to save that for last.

I have decided to kick off 2018 and my personal ‘Women in Comics’ Month with one of my well known rants.

So forgive if this sound incoherent and rambling, it is a rant.

Women and Female Characters in Comics! They do EXIST YOU $%^&#!@!!!

PART 1

(Artist: Sara Pichelli)

Despite what mainstream media would like to portray, or at least showcase in their willful ignorance of our industry. There are very talent female creators in the comic book industry, and they are not that hard to find.

This is a sad fact: main stream media when covering comics rarely talks about women creators or female characters. In fact I’ve seen ‘news’ coverage that downplay that there are female creators in comics. This is a deliberate disservice.

Women are all over the spectrum of the industry: artists, inkers, writers, colorist, letters, editors, publishers! They are out there, and they are not THAT hard to find. They work for Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, Image, IDW, and throughout the indies.

A sadder fact is this: Many comic book readers can’t name a female creator who doesn’t work for DC or Marvel or isn’t employed by any of the Big Indies (Dark Horse, IMAGE, IDW, Dynamite). Even then most can only name female creators who work on titles they read.

This is also a disservice. Albeit, not willful ignorance.

There are women creators throughout the comic industry. And YES, editors and publishers are creators too – without them no comics could be created.

What I want to do right now, is put out a list of Female Creators, this is just a list of Female Creators who worked on titles I picked up last Wednesday, December 27th.

(Artist: Arianna Florean)

• Delilah S. Dawson – Writer; Arianna Florean – Artist – Star Wars Adventures #5 from IDW
• Grace Park, Desinger – WWE Comic Book – Boom Studios
• Annalise Bissa – Assistant Editor, THANOS – Marvel Comics
• Heather Antos – Assistant Editor, STAR WARS – Marvel Comics
• Sara Pichelli – Artist and Inker, Spider-Men II – Marvel Comics
• Kathleen Wisneski – Assistant Editor, Spider-Men II, Spider-man/Deadpool – Marvel Comics
• Rochelle Rosenberg, Color Artist, Ben Reilly, Marvel Comics
• Allison Stock – Assistant Editor, Ben Reilly – Marvel Comics
• Sara Brunstad – Assistant Editor, Black Panther – Marvel Comics
• Adele Matera – Colorist, Jessica Burton – Editor, Amoona Saohin – Associate Art Editor, Doctor Who, 10th Doctor – Titan Comics

13 Women, across the disciplines that create comics, 9 titles, 4 publishers – one of them Marvel Comics, the rest Indies.

As I wrote above, this is only a list out of titles on my personal pull list that came out last Wednesday, December 27th. It doesn’t included any women who worked on titles I don’t get – which means this list is actually much bigger.

And this only is from titles that came out on one week – not the entire month.

Yes, I have not listed Gail Simone here, or any other Top A-list Female talent (except for maybe Sarah Pichelli). In any industry if all you do is focus on the top most well-known talent, you do a disservice to all the talent.

With all respect to all women in the comic book industry if all I did was focus on Gail Simone and the most well-known female creators, that would be the easy way out. I want to do more than that, I want to showcase that there are women working in every facet of the Industry.

And again, my list here is only a very small sample.

NEXT TIME: There are a lack of Female Characters in Comics, right!? Right?

Women and Female Characters in Comics! They do EXIST YOU $%^&#!@!!!

PART 2

 - Ace Masters