This is a point I tried to make.

The question isn’t why doesn’t DC go out and recruit female creators. The question is why aren’t more females interested in pursuing the path that most people follow toward creating genre/superhero comics.

That’s why I think the note on Image is so relevant to the outcry over DC’s “hiring” practices.

Who cares? Only politically correct leftist Obama-scum whine about this crap. Nobody is stopping anybody from making comics. It’s never been easier. If it’s good it’ll find an audience. Few women are in comics because most women don’t give a damn about comics. Deal with it. Most of the people who edit Wikipedia are obsessive geeky dudes with poor social skills.

Nobody owes you a living. You don’t have some right to get paid for your hobby.

Most comics creators are dudes because to get good you have to obsessively practice hours on end as a kid. Same reason most guitarists are dudes, etc, etc. Most teenage girl don’t want to do that.

There’s a certain class of teenage dudes who enjoy spending most of their time alone obsessively practicing. Very few girls are that socially maladjusted. So they spend their time having friends and a life and a boyfriend, etc, etc.

Men and women are different. Nobody believes in this left-wing blank slate nonsense anymore. Read some science. Deal with reality. The comics world is overwhelmingly male because the talent-base is overwhelmingly male.

@Joe, over 140 women are involved in Womanthology.

I read the interview over at Bleeding Cool and while I understand that he chooses the best that is put under his nose and pitched to him he doesn’t seem to give much thought as to why very few women choose to pitch to Image. He acknowledges very few women do make pitches to Image but doesn’t see this a a problem, concern, or even an issue…just a funny anecdote about the way it is.

@ B.Clay Moore Every aspiring creator knows of Image Comics, that isn’t the point. The point is that women don’t apply there, he knows it and isn’t concerned why. He doesn’t know if there is an image problem with Image or what the reason is. You would think he would want to know or have some staffer investigate.

“Much of Image’s staff is female.” Funny how you define “much” or did you just make that up to prove a unsupportable point?

Love the he-man woman-hating comments, by the way. You stay classy, Newsarama.

<———— Pulled back in.

I don't think Eric is saying any of the stuff some of you are accusing him of saying. Again, most of this seems like self-fulfilling propagation of debating. Maybe read what Clay is saying instead of shouting at him.

Do up & coming creators who have never had anything published REALLY think they're gonna make a chunk of money off their first books at Image? Really? Really?

What world are you living in? Because I wanna live there, too.

Putting together a comic book is very, very hard work (I know because I am trying). I understand people want financial compensation for their time, but some of you need to re-read the definition of "artist".

@Shaenon: We're not all like that! I may think this argument is completely over-blown, but some of the views on here are pretty despicable. Also, I like your site.

Thanks,
–J.

“The question isn’t why doesn’t DC go out and recruit female creators. The question is why aren’t more females interested in pursuing the path that most people follow toward creating genre/superhero comics.”

What? No! That would only be true if there were no female talent pool in comics. But there is. Sure, some of them may not have followed “the path” that others did (whatever path that is because I don’t actually know that there is such a thing; I can think of any number of people in mainstream comics who just sort of “appeared”– what Image book did Geoff Johns do before Stars & STRIPES? I don’t remember that Image book…).

But that doesn’t mean they’re not out there– they are. They may have broken in at IDW, Top Shelf, Oni, or any number of graphic novel publishers instead of through Image, but so what? Even if the numbers aren’t as high as we’d like and they’re not conforming to the “program” everyone else is on, the talent pool still exists nonetheless and can / should be utilized appropriately.

The reason I ask…when people have compiled these lists of women who “should be” doing books for DC, I see a lot of talent that does not match DC’s current standards or, perhaps more appropriately, preferences with regard to style.

In other words, if these women being bandied about were men with the exact same styles, they’d have no prayer of working for DC.

And when women whose work does line up with DC’s sensibilities are named, most of them have either been approached by DC or are working on something already.

You can have a parallel argument about exactly what DC is looking for in terms of style, and how that’s part of the problem, but I don’t see a lot of “qualified” (accepting that “qualified” is subjective to DC’s desires) women being ignored.

@ Clay. I misunderstood when you wrote “staff.” I didn’t not assume you would shift the goal post and move from an obvious discussion about artists/writers interviewing with a publisher, to include behind the scenes staffers. The discussion was about the talent, and you helped show that while many women are on staff – very few of them are on the talent side.
My question, which still unanswered, is why do so few women choose not to pitch to Image? Everyone is aware that are many talented women in comics and yet they don’t seem to head over to Image. I am curious why.

@Alexa “Women don’t pitch to Image because, as Shaenon points out, the money is all back end.”
Shaenon only was speaking for herself not all women. Don’t overgeneralize her statement. If what you say is true, then please answer why concerns about back end money is gender based – as men apply to Image.

@justsaying:

1) A lot of people outside the “typical” comics reader loop is unaware that Image accepts submissions. Sounds odd, I know, but I hang around parts of the internet with a lot of female creators on them, and only about a month or so ago, these creators were excitedly “passing around” Image’s submissions policy as though it were news. Many people think (and can hardly be blamed for it) that if Marvel and DC don’t accept submissions, you’re better off looking at the bottom rung of publishers rather than the third or fourth rung.

2) Every website that tells people how to pitch a comic emphasizes checking out a company’s recent output before pitching to them. Aside from Morning Glories and the Luna Brothers’ output, what can you honestly say Image has put out in the past five years that would have much outright appeal to most women? Something that just by looking at the cover and reading the solicit a woman would think “yeah, this is like what I’m doing!” Because think of the prominent creator-owned books that women have put out over the past 20 years+: Air, Finder, Blue Monday, Starstruck– any of those striking you as books Image would put out? Even A Distant Soil, whose TPBs are published by Image, had been running for 13 years before it got there.

Now take a generation of girls who grew up on manga and webcomics, show them Image’s output and ask if they’d like to publish through them, with an entirely back-end deal. Whereas aspiring male creators are much more likely to have grown up on some Image comics, and so when they think of where to submit to, they have affection for Image, and associate it with its own hoopla about being the triumph of creator-owned comics.

Considering how insular comics culture is, this should not come as a surprise.