Ladies Making Comics

Covering the latest and greatest of women comics creators and their works.

[ladiesmakingcomics]

Remember all those things I said I was going to do? Yeah, I did something completely different! For one, I finally did something with the YouTube account that comes with having this blog’s Gmail account, so that’s a thing you can check out. So far it’s mostly just playlists of other people’s videos, recs for artists’ vlogs/tutorials, and uploads of other people’s videos that I got permission to put on YouTube (more on all that in another post, probably). The first (slightly) original content I’ve made for it is this compilation of lovely Nell Brinkley art set to the song “The Nell Brinkley Girl”

Nell Brinkley was an illustrator and early comics artist in the early 20th century (though it’s somewhat debatable whether her works count as “comics” as we think of them today, she worked at a time when “comics” were first really being defined, it would be equally anachronistic to exclude her entirely). Her depictions of women became glamour icons unto themselves and inspired a line of hair care products and at least two Broadway songs. "The Nell Brinkley Girl" was part of Florenz Ziegfeld's Follies of 1908, and the role was originated by Annabelle Whitford (later Annabelle Moore, who also appeared in several early Edison films).

I could not find a recording of any performance of the song, but the sheet music is available online at the Library of Congress. In order to produce this recording, I transcribed the sheet music into the MuseScore software (and then uploaded into their database), which generated both a MIDI piano recording and “ahhhh-ahhhh” vocals, which I supplemented with on-screen lyrics rather than subject you to my singing. I’ve also started working on the other song, “The Brinkley Bathing Girl” from The Follies of 1909, but I don’t really have a timeline for that one yet. 

Anyway, I hope you like this one, and please please please send me any suggestions you have for the YouTube channel generally (especially topics for playlists I could curate). I don’t plan for it to take over completely, but I’d like it to be a fairly robust sidebar to the blog. And of course, subscribing would help me gauge people’s interest in it!

(x-posted to Patreon)

[ladiesmakingcomics]

[ladiesmakingcomics]

Reblog/update for the evening crowd! And if you missed the original post, I’ve decided these are going to be part of the regular schedule (usually/hopefully going up by Monday), while the $3-tier patron perk will be a list of all the links from the previous week I didn’t include in the main links round-up. Because there are a LOT of great things that I could have included but would have taken a whole other week to write up.

My Favorites

Pakistani cartoonist Unaiza Ali Barlas now holds the Guinness World Record for creating the longest comic strip at 267.38 meters (877 feet) long.

The Billy Ireland Museum and Cartoon Library at OSU has a digital exhibit about Edwina Dumm, the first woman employed in a full time position as editorial cartoonist, starting in 1915. Her comic strip, Cap Stubbs and Tippie, ran for six decades starting in 1918.

#VisibleWomen happened two weeks ago, but it’s not old news because the Beat just posted their own rundown both of the Kelly Sue DeConnick-sponsored hashtag, and also the Queer Cartoonists/Cartoonists of Color databases run by MariNaomi. (See also: This HuffPo article.)

Other News

That’s right, get your money, Patty Jenkins! Seriously though, what a damning indictment of the whole film industry this part is: “[She] expects to be paid substantially more and the same as a male director would receive after such a box office coup.” She doesn’t just want a raise, she wants as much of a raise a man would get!!

Ignatz nominees? Is it SPX time already?? Yes, and it’s awesome because 9 out of the 10 award categories are dominated by women, including the 5-for-5 “Promising New Talent” and “Outstanding Minicomic” categories! They’ll be awarded at SPX, Sept. 16-17 in Bethesda, MD.

Speaking of awards, Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda’s Monstress vol. 1: Awakening won the 2017 Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story. In addition, all but two categories were won by women.

Gena Robertson-Dworet is taking over scripting duties for the Captain Marvel movie. It’s not clear if she’s working from Nicole Perlman’s screenplay or starting over, but either way it’s great news. Robinson-Dworet also wrote the forthcoming Tomb Raider movie, and a treatment for a Gotham City Sirens movie.

Stats! Women buy more than half of all comics sold in France. Women make up 46.15% of self-identified European comics fans on Facebook. Tim Hanley counts 25 female and nonbinary creators on 24 DC Comics books in October 2017, while Marvel has 20 on 21 books.

Interviews

Elisha Lim discusses facing sharp resistance to portraying 19th century Chinese national hero Qiu Jin as a queer woman in their series 100 Butches. See an early draft of the first page here.

Mimi Pond discusses The Customer is Always Wrong (the sequel to her fictionalized memoir Over Easy) with CBR and Jezebel. Did you know she wrote the first episode of The Simpsons? And wasn’t offered a staff writing job because showrunner Sam Simon was going through a divorce and didn’t want to be around any women? SMH.

Rainbow Rowell talks to Marvel.com about what we’re going to see in her Runaways series, and teaches her non-comics reading YA audience how to pre-order comics.

Crowdfunding

Do you wish you could buy comics and support Planned Parenthood at the same time? Do I have the Kickstarter for you! It would be easier to list the major creators not contributing, so just go check it out yourself.

Hope Nicholson (The Secret Loves of Geek Girls) is putting together a gothic romance anthology, featuring both diverse creators and characters.

The Sun and the Wayward Wind anthology is reimagining North American legends and lore. This is the first Kickstarter by the Dandelion Wine collective, and they’ve set an ambitious $32,000 goal so that they can pay their contributors. Go check out the art samples posted and you will have no doubts they deserve every penny.

Reviews

The Customer is Always Wrong, by Mimi Pond (“addictive”)

Generation X #5, written by Christina Strain (9/10)

Genius: Cartel #1, art by Rosi Campe (“Check it Out”)

Moonstruck #1, written by Grace Ellis, art by Kate Leth & Shae Beagle (“super-cute”; #2 out this week)

Wonder Woman #28, written by Shea Fontana (“fun, looking forward to more”)

The Rest of the Week

All the Previews I Could Find - Calla Cthulu GN, Clueless: Senior Year GN, Detective Comics #963, ElfQuest: The Final Quest #21, First Strike #2, Harley Quinn #26, Hi-Fi Fight Club #1, Jem and the Holograms: Infinite #2, Josie and the Pussycats #9, Lumberjanes #41, Mighty Captain Marvel vol. 1 TPB, Power of the Dark Crystal #6, Red Sonja #8, Rick and Morty #29, Science Comics: Plagues SC, Sisters of Sorrow #2, Sky Doll: Sudra HC (prvw of #1), The Storyteller: Giants HC, War Mother #1, Wonder Woman vol. 3 TPB

Events - Aug. 24: My Favorite Vampire release party, Floating World Comics, Portland, OR.

Birthdays - Marie Severin, Bobbie Chase (Aug 21); Anna-Maria B. Cool (Aug 22); Tara Madison Avery, Christian Beranek (Aug 23); Amy Reeder (Aug 25); Yumiko Igarashi (Aug 26); Wendy Snow-Lang, Catel Mueller, Melissa Mendes (Aug 27)

ICYMI: Sanya Arwar and Magdalene Visaggio are part of this year's DC Comics Writers’ Workshop. And you can buy a Kamala Kahn costume at the Disney Store. Also Molly Crabapple teamed up with Laverne Cox on a video about the history of trans rights.

[ladiesmakingcomics]

As promised, here’s the first weekly links round-up over on my Patreon page. I had said the subsequent ones were going to be a $3-tier exclusive, but the more I worked on it, the more I realized how stupid that idea was. So now these are going to be part of the regular schedule (though usually/hopefully going up by Monday) and the $3-tier will be a list of all the links from the previous week I didn’t include in the main links round-up. Because there are a LOT of great things that I could have included but would have taken a whole other week to write up.

ETA: And tonight I'll update and reblog this post with the whole roundup on here. I just can't do it now because I'm at work and there's no easy way to copy it over on my phone.

[ladiesmakingcomics]

Ladies Making Comics is creating a place for women in comics to shine. | Patreon

Become a patron of Ladies Making Comics today: Read posts by Ladies Making Comics and get access to exclusive content and experiences on the world’s largest membership platform for artists and creators.

(That’s right-- I’m back and begging for money!)

I started Ladies Making Comics while in law school in November of 2010. From a simple tumblr made on an impulse, it grew into a wiki, a physical library, and a multi-platform up-to-the-minute resource of what remarkable things amazing women were doing in comics.

Then, just as I was hitting my stride, I had to slow it down.

I had graduated from law school, started a whole other non-legal job, and found myself moving every summer for three years straight. Blogging had to take a backseat, then be put on ice. And then, once I had finally settled down geographically, I decided to throw my career into upheaval all over again: I was ready to take the bar exam and actually become a lawyer. After a lot of studying (and even more paperwork, it feels like) that finally became a reality in a little over a month ago.

But I've never stopped loving comics, the people who make them, or their wild and crazy history. There's so much about comics I want to keep discovering and sharing. At the same time, I'm still job hunting for my first real lawyer job while working full-time at my current job. While I've frequently imagined my triumphant return to comics blogging! with a great splash and much fanfare, I've concluded that, nah, I'll just start doing things again.

What things, you may ask? Well, getting back in the habit of researching for the wiki and acquiring and cataloging materials for the library, for one thing. Finally debuting a brand-new project, restoring the comics of public domain action heroine Betty Bates: Lady-at-Law that I've been working on sporadically for the past year and a half, for another (see the first page and find out more at @lady-at-law!) 

As for actual blogging? I'm still trying to hammer out what that's going to look like-- reviews and creator profiles most likely, maybe some kind of column format. That's where you come in.

I've set up this Patreon to be pay-per-post both to motivate me to keep posting regularly and to be fair to you guys if I don't. I'm keeping the reward thresholds low, so even keeping up with my current posting plans shouldn’t break your bank. So, to help you figure out how much, if any, you want to pledge, here's the rough schedule I'm planning on:

A new restored Betty Bates page every other week

A review/creator profile/column on LMC proper the other weeks

A weekly links round up for $3+ tier subscribers (I’ll be posting the first one for free in the next day or so so you’ll know what you’ll be getting.)

To translate that into monthly terms:

$1 pledge = $4-5 a month

$2 pledge = $8-10 a month

$3 pledge = $24-30 a month

$5 pledge = $40-50 a month

That’s it. And of course, if I don't stick to the schedule, you won't pay as much. I'm committed to doing this, but life happens. It's better for everyone if you don't feel like your pledge is wasted just because I get sick one week, or have to put in extra hours at the office another week. Also, if the tiers or schedule ever change, you'll get plenty of notice to adjust your pledge. 

So, please check out my Patreon and consider pledging, or at least keep it in the back of your mind. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription yet, but wouldn’t be averse to kicking me a few bucks, I also have a ko-fi profile for Betty Bates.

[ladiesmakingcomics]

Golden and Silver Age romance comics have long languished in a kind of postmodern carbonite, frozen in mainstream consciousness as images of tearful women in Roy Lichtenstein paintings, held in ironic disregard that often seems born of both feminism and misogyny (depending on whether one is judging the perceived messages sent by the often-male creators, or their intended audience as is often the case with media aimed at teen girls). The fact that the genre endured–and at one point even dominated the comics market–for about 30 years means that it is usually “graciously” afforded a cursory overview in most comics history books, and not much else. But could a whole genre of comics really have endured for so long with ultimately so little to offer?

For almost a decade, Jacque Nodell has been answering that question, finding and sharing forgotten gems of vintage romance comics on her blog, Sequential Crush, showing time and again that that was very much not the case. Romance comics not only often contained mature human drama that the rest of the medium lacked for decades after their own popularity had waned, but frequently conveyed positive, sometimes even empowering, messages to young girls that remain relevant to this day.

It is for that reason that Nodell has pulled together the best of the romance comics’ version of the letter column, the advice column, for her book How to Go Steady. Presented as both a collection and a history, the book aims to shake up the view of romance comics of the ‘60s and ‘70s as mere cultural artifact and offer up certain timeless pearls of wisdom. And it’s capped off with an afterword by former Marvel romance advice columnist (that’s a phrase I’m sure you never thought you’d read), Suzan Loeb of “Suzan Says”!

Charmingly illustrated by Jenny Cimino, the art’s retro aesthetic encapsulates the spirit of Silver Age romance comics for modern audiences, rather than aping Pop Art detachment.

And it’s endorsed by Stan Lee!

But if you want to get your hands on a copy, you’ll have to act fast– the book’s Kickstarter has just under 4 days to go and is not quite half-funded. At just $20 for an eBook or $35 for a print+eBook bundle, it’s a great deal for a fun and worthy project! (And if you’re a retailer, there’s still nine retailer packages left– 10 books for $175!) Even better, a full third of the total goal is earmarked to pay Jenny Cimino for her illustrations, so not only would you be helping preserve a forgotten slice of women’s comics history, you’ll also be directly supporting a modern female artist!

I personally pledged $250 to this book and pulled myself out of semi-blogtirement to encourage, implore, entreat, and flat-out beg you to give whatever help you can by Wednesday, 9:40 am EST, to make this book a reality. What more needs to be said?

For samples of what Nodell has worked so hard to bring to modern audiences, check out the “Advice Column” tag on the Sequential Crush blog.

[ladiesmakingcomics]

Reblogging for the evening crowd!

[ladiesmakingcomics]

Golden and Silver Age romance comics have long languished in a kind of postmodern carbonite, frozen in mainstream consciousness as images of tearful women in Roy Lichtenstein paintings, held in ironic disregard that often seems born of both feminism and misogyny (depending on whether one is judging the perceived messages sent by the often-male creators, or their intended audience as is often the case with media aimed at teen girls). The fact that the genre endured--and at one point even dominated the comics market--for about 30 years means that it is usually “graciously” afforded a cursory overview in most comics history books, and not much else. But could a whole genre of comics really have endured for so long with ultimately so little to offer?

For almost a decade, Jacque Nodell has been answering that question, finding and sharing forgotten gems of vintage romance comics on her blog, Sequential Crush, showing time and again that that was very much not the case. Romance comics not only often contained mature human drama that the rest of the medium lacked for decades after their own popularity had waned, but frequently conveyed positive, sometimes even empowering, messages to young girls that remain relevant to this day.

It is for that reason that Nodell has pulled together the best of the romance comics’ version of the letter column, the advice column, for her book How to Go Steady. Presented as both a collection and a history, the book aims to shake up the view of romance comics of the ‘60s and ‘70s as mere cultural artifact and offer up certain timeless pearls of wisdom. And it’s capped off with an afterword by former Marvel romance advice columnist (that’s a phrase I’m sure you never thought you’d read), Suzan Loeb of “Suzan Says”!

Charmingly illustrated by Jenny Cimino, the art’s retro aesthetic encapsulates the spirit of Silver Age romance comics for modern audiences, rather than aping Pop Art detachment.

And it’s endorsed by Stan Lee!

But if you want to get your hands on a copy, you’ll have to act fast-- the book’s Kickstarter has just under 4 days to go and is not quite half-funded. At just $20 for an eBook or $35 for a print+eBook bundle, it’s a great deal for a fun and worthy project! (And if you’re a retailer, there’s still nine retailer packages left-- 10 books for $175!) Even better, a full third of the total goal is earmarked to pay Jenny Cimino for her illustrations, so not only would you be helping preserve a forgotten slice of women’s comics history, you’ll also be directly supporting a modern female artist!

I personally pledged $250 to this book and pulled myself out of semi-blogtirement to encourage, implore, entreat, and flat-out beg you to give whatever help you can by Wednesday, 9:40 am EST, to make this book a reality. What more needs to be said?

For samples of what Nodell has worked so hard to bring to modern audiences, check out the “Advice Column” tag on the Sequential Crush blog.

[ladiesmakingcomics]

This picture of me dressed as She-Hulk at Boston Pride 2011 brought to you by the fact that 

I PASSED THE NEW YORK BAR EXAM!!!

Carry on.

[ladiesmakingcomics]

why are you asking people to support a transmisogynist comic? do you really care about women, or just the cis ones?

I'm not sure how the excerpt in question is transmisogynistic? If anything, it's commenting on how cisnormative beauty standards are. It depicts a cis woman who feels uncomfortable wearing "feminine" clothes being misgendered for wearing what she likes.But I am cis, so if any trans readers have a different read on it, I'm all ears.

[dirtydiamondscomic]

Oh hello, internet. Another day, another glimpse at the comics in Dirty Diamonds #6: Beauty! We’ve also got a preview of another splash page illustration from the book, this time by contributor Anna Krzton for the chapter about Family.

From top to bottom:

Liz Rosema 

Lira Kraunik (kraunik)

Rica March (poppyapples)

Stephanie Mannheim 

Anna Krzton

With five days left to go, we have just over $4,000 left to raise!! We can do this, but only with your help! The campaign ends June 26th at 11:59 EST.

BACK DIRTY DIAMONDS ON KICKSTARTER TODAY! 

[ladiesmakingcomics]

Now with four days and about $3,500 left to go, please consider backing this project! The ladies at Dirty Diamonds have five excellent anthologies under their belts, and the sixth is shaping up to be one of their best with such a thought-provoking theme. Just $15 gets you digital copies of all six issues, and $30 gets you a print version of #6 on top of that, plus postcards and a thank you on their website.

Included in their overall goal $15,000 is full compensation for their contributors, so your pledges will really be supporting women in comics (or at least their coffee habits)!

[ladiesmakingcomics]

Thank you for the spotlight, staff!

And welcome new followers!

[ladiesmakingcomics]

This is an announcement I’ve been hoping to be able to make for a few years now: You can now pre-order the complete Wimmen’s Comix slipcase hardcover collection, coming in September from Fantagraphics! Includes all 17 issues of Wimmen’s Comix and its one-shot predecessor It Ain’t Me Babe.

Wimmen’s Comix ran on-and-off for 20 years, from 1972 to 1992. Launched in reaction to the misogyny and boys’ club atmosphere that pervaded the underground comix scene, it provided women cartoonists (many of them early in their careers) a platform to tell their stories, from the very personal (such as Lora Fountain’s “A Teenage Abortion”) to the fantastic (like Sharon Rudahl’s science-fiction “Tale of Satvia”).

Literally all of my favorite women cartoonists from this era appear in these comics, including Dori Seda, Phoebe Gloeckner, and Shary Flenniken, and it is indeed where I discovered most of them. Later issues featured some of the defining voices on independent comics in the 1990s and beyond, including Lynda Barry, Alison Bechdel, Jennifer Camper, and Julie Doucet.

Now if only someone would pick up Action Girl Comics for reprint…

[cbldf]

Iranian Cartoonist Faces Prison, Floggings for Mocking Birth Control Bill

A 29-year-old Iranian artist and women’s rights activist is facing up to two years in prison, plus corporal punishment, for a cartoon she drew last year criticizing a bill that would outlaw some forms of birth control. Atena Farghadani’s trial finished in just one day this week, but the judge said he may take “anywhere between a week and 20 days” to render a verdict.

Read more…

[topcowofficial]

Free Comic Sunday! Genius #1 by @MrAdamFreeman @marcbernardin @afuarichardson Free digital: http://ow.ly/N3Y6r Buy in print: http://ow.ly/N3Y8Y

[ladiesmakingcomics]

The Genius TPB comes out this Wednesday. Try the first issue free tonight!

[ladiesmakingcomics]

Congratulations to all six of the (very deserving) women who won at last night’s Reuben Awards, held by the National Cartoonists Society in Washington DC.

The top prize, Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year (also known simply as The Reuben), went to New Yorker cartoonist and memoirist Roz Chast. She is only the third woman to win The Reuben in the award’s 69 year history and the first in over 20 years. Chast was preceded by For Better or For Worse’s Lynn Johnston (1985) and Cathy’s Cathy Guisewite (1992). The award caps off a year of acclaim following the publication of her memoir Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? about her experience as an only child caring for her aging parents. The book was a New York Times #1 bestseller and finalist for the National Book Award. Her career goes way back to 1978, when she sold her first gag cartoons to the New Yorker a year after receiving her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design.

The first female winner of the night, Marla Frazee, took the prize in Book Illustration for her picture book The Farmer and the Clown, followed by both Single Panel categories: Liza Donnelly of The New Yorker for magazines and Rhymes with Orange’s Hilary Price for newspapers.

Both Online Comics categories were also won by women: Danielle Corsetto in Short-Form for her recently concluded Girls with Slingshots, and Minna Sundberg in Long-Form for her post-apocalyptic Nordic Stand Still, Stay Silent.

Other women to be nominated were Jen Sorenson (Editorial Cartoons), Batgirl artist Babs Tarr (Comic Books), This One Summer’s Jillian Tamaki (Graphic Novels), Time for Bed, Fred’s Yasmeen Ismail (Book Illustration), and Maria Scrivan (Greeting Cards).

Though not quite half of the sixteen categories, I feel perfectly justified in calling it a sweep for women cartoonists; it is certainly a vast improvement over last year’s one female winner (Isabella Bannerman in Newspaper Comic Strips for Six Chix, though she is, as the title suggests, one of six female cartoonists on the strip). I hope it’s the beginning of a trend for the Reubens and not a fluke.

(Credit to Michael Cavna for the Roz Chast image above. Check out his write-up of the event on his Comic Riffs column at the Washington Post.)

[mutantmagic]

Ooh, shots of Drawn and Quarterly's Free Comic Day offering! Flip cover featuring SuperMutant Magic Academy (out in April!) and Kate Beaton’s new one, Step Aside, Pops (out in the Fall).

Free Comic Book day is May 2.

[ladiesmakingcomics]

FCBD cannot come fast enough *_*

[cbldf]

Women Who Changed Free Expression: Marjane Satrapi

Happy Women’s History Month! All through March, we’ll be celebrating women who changed free expression in comics. Check back here every weekday for biographical snippets on female creators who have pushed the boundaries of the format and/or seen their work challenged or banned.

Anyone who’s read Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel memoir Persepolis is already familiar with the key events of her early life. Growing up in Tehran during the turmoil surrounding the Islamic Revolution, Satrapi experienced abrupt changes that curtailed the secular lifestyle she and her intellectual parents had enjoyed prior to 1979. Always rebellious and bluntly inquisitive, she began to act out even more in school and in public after her favorite uncle was killed in prison. For her own safety, Satrapi’s parents sent her alone to attend high school in Austria when she was 14, in 1984. She returned to Iran at 18 and obtained a Master’s degree in visual communication from Tehran’s School of Fine Arts, but found the prospect of remaining in the country under the repressive regime untenable. In 1994 she moved to Strasbourg, France, where she continued to study art, and on to Paris three years later.

Satrapi often regaled her friends in France with stories of her surreal childhood, and they in turn introduced her to comics including art spiegelman’s Maus. She had been dabbling in children’s picture books without success, but Spiegelman’s work proved that illustrated books could treat more serious subjects. Satrapi decided to try her hand at graphic novel memoir, and produced Persepolis in four volumes between 2000 and 2003. They met with immediate critical and popular acclaim in France, and were translated and collected into two volumes for the U.S. market in 2003 and 2004. In 2007 she co-wrote and directed the animated movie based on the comics, which tied for the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, won two French Césars, and was nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe.

While it’s hardly surprising that both the books and movie have been banned in Iran, Persepolis has also seen more than its fair share of trouble in U.S. schools, where parents and administrators have objected to profanities and depictions of torture. Most spectacularly, Chicago Public Schools officials made a confused attempt in March 2013 to remove the book from all classrooms due to “graphic language and content that is inappropriate for children.” They allowed it to remain in AP classes for 11th and 12th graders, but now require 8th-10th grade teachers to undergo extra training before they can use it in class. The book remains banned in 7th grade CPS classrooms. In 2014 there were two more school challenges to Persepolis in quick succession: one in the Three Rivers School District in Oregon, and another in Illinois in the Ball-Chatham district, where a review committee unanimously decided that it would not be removed from classrooms.

[1979semifinalist]

Top 50 Women Comics Writers & Artists - VOTE NOW

Annnnnd hot off the heels of yesterday’s super popular (and spreading like wildfire - thank you!) She Has No Head! - Women Writers and Artists in Comics Llist - we have the polls now open to vote!

GO HERE TO VOTE: http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2015/03/02/vote-for-the-top-50-female-comic-book-writers-and-artists-of-all-time/

Spread it everywhere, my lambs!

Or should I say…fly my pretties, fly! ;)

[ladiesmakingcomics]

After you've verified your favorites are on the master list, give your top 10 writers and top 10 artists their due and submit your rankings to Kelly! (instructions at the link) Voting is open until March 16th, 11:59 PM EST.