secondlina | Geekesses are princesses

For some reason, men seem to think holding a pencil requires balls.
Go to any special comic meeting and the idiot in charge of the interviews will spot you, hunt you down and ask you the same damn question the've been asking for 20 years thinking they are helping out a feminist statement doing so.

Okay.

I'm wondering why this is still a question that needs to be asked.

In european and american comics, the place of women is still relatively minimal. In european, comics for girls tend to be either unisex comics or sinfully girly ones. The comic audience is still men. I remember reading Spirou (the france equivalent of Jump but for french comics) and they had this special about women in comics. They showed a bunch of "comic heroines" and did a little article about female comic autors. The comic heroines almost all came from series where they serve as eye candy on the side. The article showed a few women from the beginning of the comic book industrie, followed by a gap in time and then a few more artists. American comics have the same odd problem. Comic for girls tend to be unisex (like runaways) or girly (Mary-oh-shoot-me-now-jane). I appreciate the quality of the unisex comics but i'm not sure I appreciate the girly side too much, especially since a lot of those girly comics and written and illustrated by men.

I remember reading an article about the artist from Y: the last man who is female. She was telling the journalist how she was denied to work on several series because her artwork was "girly" Girly? GIRLY?!! It's the most basic american style ever! It's very similar to fable's drawing style...So how is it girly?

Manga is by far the comic industrie that gives the most space to women, which is most likely why so many of the anime fans are girls. They can relate more to that product. Even then though, Japan is a pretty darn sexist country: Ozamu Tekuza had to cross dress one of his heroins so that she could ride a horse and fight with a sword without putting some of the reader's parents into comatose shock.

So what is the place of woman in the comic world? I'm not sure. Their place in the fanbase is obviously growing as the place of geek-ess is becoming less and less diminitive socially and more and an association with a group of people. Geek is not something that marginalizes you anymore. The internet helps a lot. Most of the internet is porn, but a very good segment is dedicated to fandom. Inside the panels, some women still dress with string. I don't think that will ever change. I mean, they style make Jame bond style movies. It's difficult to stop treating women like objects. Men are also starting to be treated like objects in the media too. It's definitly a problem to be looked into.

As for woman in comiking. Humm. That role is growing too. In Japan and Europe, there is a lot of mangaka and bédéistes who are female. However not all of them can find serious work, often because of their "girly (?????)" style. (un)Suprisingly, the american comic business is still pretty hard to get into. It's totally a boy's club there. But then again, it's also a very dog-eat-dog world, so it's hard for everybody. Being the "weaker" (sic) sex just makes you look like an easier victim.

-Secondlina

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Lack of girl comic artists and good comics for girls is certainly is problem in North American comics. I didn't read comics as a kid, but there wasn't really a big selection for me except for Betty and Veronica (which I still do read once in awhile).

However, I do think it's only a matter of time before things change. With the internet, there's a lot more exposer for girl comics and artists. As

rowenathewitch said it also depends on trends, because the same problem has occured in North American cartoons. In the 80/early 90s there were cartoons like She-Ra, JEM, Tanko and the Guardians of magic for girls to watch that weren't too girly. But later, the number dropped and there weren't many cartoons directed at girls that weren't unisex or super girly like the WINX cartoon.

However, now the selection is a bit better. There's Atomic Betty, Kim Possible, The Life and Times of Juniper Lee, etc. Also, in the unisex cartoons there is a much larger selcetion of female characters like in Avatar. I realize that the cartoon industry is a probably different fromt he comic industry, but I do think it's only a matter of time before female comic artists and comics directed at girls get notice more. The real question is how long do we have to wait.

Also, you should check out Achiru's online manga Raven http://acorn.chorwong.com/raven/index.html

She's also a female Canadian manga artist and she's on deviantart http://-achiru-.deviantart.com/

Did I just hear you reference Tanko and the Guardians of Magic? Wow..I thought I was one of the only people to have even seen the show. You might laugh but I actually kind of liked the show when I was younger. It was fun.

I was wondering if anyone else would know about that show.

I loved that show, I even had one of the few action figures that were made. It's too bad that it didn't last very long.

Out of curiousity, did you ever seen the cartoon called "The Magician". That's another, not well known and yet very cool cartoon, that I greatly enjoyed.

Yeah actually! That's another obscure one. It was extremely fun and barely lasted anytime on TV. It was another one of those blink and you missed it shows. I think it maybe was on..six months here in my area.

Yeah, same here. I don't know why it didn't take off, I thought it was a great show. The show originally came from Germany. What really annoys me though is that apparently there were about 13 episodes that were never aired over here.

This person, who lives in Germany, made summaries of those episodes and even took screencaps. I wished they had been shown over here, because they sounded like good episodes. Missing Episodes

Geekesses are princesses

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