As writer Gail Simone begins her tenure on DC’s Wonder Woman, Newsweek’s Jennie Yabroff looks at how women are at last breaking into the comic-book boys’ club:

With the release of this month’s “Wonder Woman” No. 14, the superhero gets her first permanent, ongoing female scribe, Gail Simone, just as alternative and foreign comics by women are gaining visibility. The movie “Persepolis,” based on Marjane Satrapi’s graphic memoir about the Iranian revolution, opened Christmas Day, and Megan Kelso’s multipart strip “Watergate Sue,” about a Nixon-era family, was recently featured in The New York Times Magazine. Kelso’s graphic story collection “The Squirrel Mother” was well reviewed, as was Alison Bechdel’s 2006 graphic-novel memoir “Fun Home.” Manga, a Japanese style of comic featuring huge-eyed characters and often including elements of fantasy, has spawned a female-oriented subset, shojo manga, some of which outsells regular manga. The ladies aren’t exactly kicking the guys off the planet yet—”Spider-Man 3″ was the top-grossing movie last year—but they’re no longer the comics equivalent of kryptonite, either.

Yabroff goes on to note the rise in female readership, at least among alternative comics and manga.

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