ComiqueCon 2015 Brings Women Creators to the Forefront

ComiqueCon is a brand new comics convention happening this year in Dearborn, Michigan on November 7th, 2015. Its focus is on female comic creators, and they've lined up guests including Nancy A. Collins, Mikki Kendall, Alex De Campi, and Mairghread Scott. The convention is also crowdfunding a fairly small amount of money to help pay for the cost of bringing special guests out to attend. It seems like an interesting convention that will hopefully bring something new to the table.

It's especially interesting that the show didn't go with a woman-centric name, like Geek Girl Con, but rather a more general name that can allow them to do any number of things down the road. Their mission statement on their website, though, leaves no doubts as to their female focus:

ComiqueCon is a one day celebration of the amazing work of female comic creators.  We are super pumped to bring together some fantastically talented women and the fans who are passionate about their work.

 

On the one hand, it's always great to see women creators pushed to the forefront. When most conventions still have only a handful of women guests compared to anywhere from 20 to 100 male guests, it can feel extra difficult to see women represented prominently in the convention scene. Clearly that won't be a problem at ComiqueCon. On the other hand, it doesn't feel quite right to see a convention focus only on female guests. For one, it leaves out non-binary people. For another, it often doesn't help the place of women at other conventions, just like Women In Comics panels don't help with panel parity for all the other panels.

Yet ComiqueCon promises to be an interesting convention, and I admire the organizers' focus. I hope that it's an excellent convention and that it can grow and provide a spotlight for women creators. But the ultimate hope is that all conventions have better representation, and we don't have to worry so much about female-guest-only conventions. That's the dream, right?