Quick, name a female writer working for DC or Marvel whose name isn’t Gail Simone! Too late. How about a female pencil artist on an ongoing at each company…? Time’s up; how’d you do? Not so easy, is it?

Like a lot of you, I read a lot of comics. And like many of you, I read a lot of DC and Marvel superhero comics. And it’s quite apparent to me—as I’m sure it is to you—that super-comics are still very much a boys club (Particularly compared to other genres and markets within the medium).

More men write them and more men draw them, so perhaps it’s no surprise that there’s almost always a male voice and male point of view to the stories, and that life in either the DC Universe or Marvel Universe is a hell of a lot easier on Supermen than on Wonder Women, and that She-Hulk’s boyfriends are going to have longer, healthier lives than Daredevil’s girlfriends (Daredevil’s poor, poor girlfriends).

I’m not about to launch a tirade about sexism—conscious and unconscious (or, less generously, malicious or clueless)—in the fictional shared settings that the bulk of DC and Marvel’s superheroes populate. Not because I don’t think it’s important enough to post about so much as the fact that I get sick of talking about it, and on weeks where I open up a copy of kids’ comic Super Friends to see rapist Dr. Light looking back at me, I just assume that anyone listening has already heard and decided it either is a problem or it isn’t.

But now that 2008 is about to turn into 2009, I wanted to look back on the year and, rather than counting down the outrages that occurred to fictional super-women, instead point out some positive developments among the leading makers of super-comics.

Specifically, more women making more comics for DC and Marvel. I know I’m always quick to point out when DC has panels of blood-splattered boobs or has its characters cavalierly chatting about raping Supergirl, or when Marvel expresses confusion about how something like a villain beating a half-naked woman on film for the entertainment of a male audience might be perceived as tasteless—sometimes to laugh at their crass tastelessness, sometimes to sigh over their lack of awareness. But while such things tend to get all the attention online for a week or two, too often I think we gravitate toward mourning the negative stuff and failing to celebrate the positive stuff. Like, for example, this stuff:

—Television writer Amy Wolfram makes her comics debut scripting Teen Titans: Year One, a fairly well-received and very well-reviewed six-issue miniseries illustrated by Karl Kerschl and Serge LaPointe. While it didn’t exactly set the sales charts on fire, it provided a nice, light-hearted counterpoint to the more serious sturm und drang of the franchise, and sold only about 10 to 12 thousand units below the parent title, which isn’t bad for a spin-off set in the Silver Age written by an unknown creator.

—Writer and actress Grace Randolph writes March’s Justice League Unlimited #41, a Joker and Harley story that introduces the latter into the JLU-iverse. It’s a really solid story, although the title would be cancelled shortly afterwards (although that likely had more to do with the cartoon it was based on being cancelled than Randolph scripting one issue).

—In addition to continuing her Wonder Woman run, Gail Simone launches a Secret Six ongoing with pencil artist Nicola Scott. Sales aren’t great so far, but it’s by far DC’s most consistent (Four straight issues with one creative team!) and competent team title at the moment, and the only place to find intentional homoerotic undertones in a mainstream capes and tights book.

—Ivory Madison writes a fairly unnecessary six-issue miniseries entitled Huntress: Year One, illustrated by Cliff Richards and Art Thibert. Sales are pretty poor (just over 21,000 at the high point, and just over 14,000 by the final issue), but respectable enough given the fact that the story was a do-over of a recent Huntress origin by fan-favorite Greg Rucka.

—Minor mysical DCU character Madame Xanadu gets traded to DC’s Vertigo team for a new ongoing, featuring art by Amy Reeder Hadley. It’s still not cancelled, which is pretty good news for a Vertigo series, particularly one replicating the original Sandman model of turning half-forgotten super-characters into adult fantasy stars.

—Kathryn Immonen writes Patsy Walker: Hellcat, probably the weirdest comic book Marvel is currently publishing. Sales are fairly awful, but it’s a Hellcat comic by fairly unknown creators (rising star David Lafuente provides the art) that has nothing to do with the company’s 2008 mega-story Secret Invasion, so it’s hardly doing surprisingly poorly. Plus it’s really, really weird.

—Colleen Coover continues to provide Marvel fun, funny strips for their more all-ages friendly books, and does full stories for an issue of Age of The Sentry and King-Size Spider-Man Summer Special #1. (The image at the top of the post is Coover’s, from her story in the Spider-Man special. That’s probably my favorite single comics panel of the year, and it’s even funnier in context.)

—New York Times best-selling writer Marjorie Liu scripts a new NYX series, the six-issue NYX: No Way Home with art by Kalman Andrasofszky Ramon Perez.

—Vertigo’s Cairo and Air writer G. Willow Wilson begins a six-issue Vixen series, illustrated by Cafu.

—DC editor-type Jann Jones is point-woman for the new, DC hero-related efforts of the Johnny DC imprint: Tiny Titans, Bill Batson and The Magic of Shazam and Super Friends. The first two are fantastic comics for all-ages; Super Friends is a kids’ comic that’s hard to appreciate as an adult. A new title, featuring a Supergirl that’s actually a girl—Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade—just launched a few weeks ago. Jones is also apparently the driving force in cajoling Keith Giffen to write and DC to publish a new Ambush Bug series.

—Artist Amanda Conner returns to the DCU to illustrate Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray’s long-delayed Terra miniseries, featuring a third incarnation of the old Titans character. Conner was also announced as the artist of an upcoming Power Girl ongoing.

Any other examples of women creating super-comics for the Big Two in ’08 anyone wants to mention?

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 18th, 2008 at 7:05 pm and is filed under DC Comics, Marvel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.