women in comics

Hire This Woman is a recurring feature on ComicsAlliance that shines a spotlight on female comics creators, whether they're relative newcomers or experienced pros who are ready to break out. In an overwhelmingly male business, we want to draw your attention to these creators --- and to raise their profile with editors and industry gatekeepers. Cartoonist E.K. Weaver produced her webcomic The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal for five years and it is currently being collected in an omnibus that's being Kickstarted by Iron Circus Comics. She's also done things as varied as erotica for Smut Peddler and covers for Adventure Time.

Things got interesting over the past few days for comics folks who keep their ear to online skirmishes over how welcoming comics is or isn't --- and how welcoming comics should be in the first place. Between the new Killing Joke-inspired and tonally jarring cover to Batgirl #41 (which was just pulled at artist Rafael Albuquerque's request, and in line with the creative team's wishes) and Erik Larsen going on a Twitter rant about comics pandering to a "vocal minority" that in his mind wanted superheroines covered up, it would be easy for readers interested in the new world order of "comics for everyone" to feel discouraged. After all, if some of the decision-makers at DC and one of the owners of Image Comics don't get it, how can we expect everyone else to get it? The answer is easy: we move on without them.

Editor Hazel Newlevant is running a Kickstarter campaign for a comics anthology titled Chainmail Bikini, in which women cartoonists create stories about gaming. Given the current environment of the gaming community, this project is a welcome move away from death threats and pathetic anti-"SJW" rhetoric towards a pure expression of love for the medium of games.

A lot of writers, when asked for advice on how to write better women characters, respond "treat them like people." While that's good advice, and sadly not obvious to everyone, it also misses some of the nuances that make up individuals. Writers who just write any character like they were a man miss a big part of the point. We live in an age where works with female leads are increasingly financially lucrative and thus attractive to publishers, so it's important that writers learn how to write a gender-diverse cast, even if their motive is profit rather than progress.

Hire This Woman is a recurring feature on ComicsAlliance that shines a spotlight on female comics pros, whether they're relative newcomers or experienced pros who are ready to break out. In an overwhelmingly male business, we want to draw your attention to these creators --- and to raise their profile with editors and industry gatekeepers. Cartoonist Maria-Elisa Heg does a bit of everything including writing, drawing, coloring, lettering, and singing. She's primarily worked on anthologies, educational comics, and auto-bio comics. She's also co-head of Zinefest Houston. Just like last week's featured person, C.M. Bratton, you can see her in person at the Hire This Woman panel at STAPLE! in Austin, Texas, on March 7th.

Brian Hibbs has put up his great yearly analysis of the Bookscan numbers over at Comic Book Resources, and they reflect a change that's slowly dawning on many people in comics right now: books for women and children are where the money is. Nine of the top twenty books sold and tracked by Bookscan last year were by women, and twelve of the top twenty were books for kids.

Hire This Woman is a recurring feature on ComicsAlliance that shines a spotlight on female comics pros, whether they're relative newcomers or experienced pros who are ready to break out. In an overwhelmingly male business, we want to draw your attention to these creators --- and to raise their profile with editors and industry gatekeepers. Writer CM Bratton has a long resume, including eight novels, multiple screenplays, and, of course, comics. Her next comics work is based on her novels and is titled Me Zombie, You Food. You can see her in person at the Hire This Woman panel at STAPLE! in Austin, Texas, on March 7th.

Caitlin DiMotta goes by @ComicsLawyer on Twitter and she is exactly that. As an attorney and partner at Impact Law Group, she works with many comics creators as their lawyer. Her clients include Kelly Sue DeConnick, Ed Brubaker, Rick Remender, Chip Zdarsky, and Jeff Lemire. Her top priorities are protecting the rights of artists and educating them about their legal rights. ComicsAlliance sat down with her to learn more about the work she does.

Boom Studios has a reputation in the comics industry for publishing an increasingly diverse group of books and creators. This commitment to diversity in genre and people is reflected in an all-new initiative the publisher announced today in Previews with a letter from founder Ross Richie. While 2015 is the 10th anniversary of Boom, the publisher wants to talk about what's next rather than what's come before. They call this discussion of the future Push Comics Forward and they don't want it to be only about Boom. Push Comics Forward is Boom's way of focusing on the ongoing conversation about diversity and the future of the industry. To learn more about this initiative and what to expect from Boom for the next ten years and beyond, we spoke with Editor-in-Chief Matt Gagnon.

Comic book publishing is a difficult world to survive in, particularly for small and independent publishers. C. Spike Trotman and her Iron Circus Comics, however, has found a way to thrive. When we spoke with Trotman earlier this year for Hire This Woman, we spoke primarily about her role as a creator. Today, this is only a small part of the role Trotman plays in comics, as the slate of books from Iron Circus continues to increase. As a publisher, Iron Circus places a high value on inclusivity and publishing books that are too often ignored in mainstream comics. To wit, the publisher has a currently-running Kickstarter for Poorcraft: Wish You Were Here written by Ryan Estrada and drawn by Diana Nock. The 130-page black and white book is the the followup to Trotmans original Poorcraft, and is available in a variety of formats at eminently sensible price/reward tiers. With less than one week left to pledge to the Kickstarter, we reconnected with Trotman to talk about webcomics, publishing, smut, and paying the bills.