Heidi highlights a postcard mailing campaign highlighting gender inequality in the American comic industry that leads, via Tom Spurgeon, to this site, which describes itself as “an online storehouse for information about and experiences of women and transgendered comics creators” based on “original research conducted in the public realm and by students of the Ladydrawers class at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.” It’s related to a course at the SAIC, apparently, and also a teaser for a book on the subject due later this summer. All of which is well and good, but there’s something really odd about the first piece of research released on the blog. Described as “data we collected on the most recent 30 titles released in North America,” I’m not entirely sure what it actually is – DC Comics is entirely unrepresented outside of Vertigo, and release dates on the other books range from 1998 through this month, with no seeming pattern as to why some titles appear and others don’t.

I’m hoping that it’s literally just a case of the wrong file being linked to, as opposed to surreally random research, but either way: This isn’t a promising start for a project that would at least be interesting, and at best be a necessary eyeopener to publishers, especially in light of the news that DC’s DCU relaunch will only feature one female writer or artist across 52 titles.

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