Tagged: Amy Reeder

Joe Corallo: Meltdown In Los Angeles!


This past week, I went out to LA for the first time. It was primarily to attend fellow ComicMix movie reviewer Arthur Tebbel’s wedding, and he had even movie popcorn as a snack during the cocktail hour.

I flew in on Thursday where I spent most of the day either meeting or hanging out with queer comics creators. They like The Golden Girls out there too. Sidenote: that was also the name of the cheerleader squad where I went to high school. And no, they were not senior citizens.

The second day I was there was the kickoff of Long Beach Comic Expo. While I wasn’t able to go during the show proper, I did have the time this past Friday to attend their first ever Comic Creator Conference organized by Wannabe Press. This was an event for comics professionals and those trying to break in to learn the ropes from professionals. It had an impressive line-up: Joe Illidge gave the keynote speech, and Beth Scorzato from Lion Forge, Amy Reeder and Mark Waid were among the other speakers.

What was equally impressive was the rain. I rode up from West Hollywood with some other comics creators and it took about two and a half hours to get to Long Beach while going over flooded roads and hoping for the best. As a result we missed Joe Illidge’s keynote speech, which was quite disappointing. The harsh rain kept more than a few people at home as well.

Additionally, some people ran late who had every intention of being early and the torrential downpour adversely affected the sound equipment. And to make up for some lost time at the Comic Creator Conference, the panels were cut in half to about 20 minutes or so.

I originally thought it might have been nice if they were the original length, but after talking to The Beat’s Heidi MacDonald, she sold me on how it ended up being a real positive. Having the shorter panels kept them concise and got people the time to see them all if they wanted. As soon as we arrived and got to the panel room myself and most of the attendees stayed until they wrapped up the last panel. While this format was made to accommodate an unforeseen situation, it’s something the organizers should consider repeating next year if they do this.

Before Arthur’s wedding on Saturday I took a trip over to Meltdown Comics. I’ve heard a bunch about it and it wasn’t too far from where I was staying so I felt I owed it to myself. It’s a big shop with a nice, diverse selection. What I was most attracted to was the indie comics and zines from local creators section. I made it a point to pick a few up.

One of them is called Low Light by Tristan Wright. It’s a 28-page oversized comic about a young woman who misses what she thinks is her last train home only to discover a strange train pulling into the lonely station. From there she meets some interesting characters that flesh out a bizarre world that we can only happen upon through the odd hours and happy accidents that ever-so-rarely crash into each other. I definitely recommend you check out Tristan Wright’s work. You can check out a preview of Low Light on the website under Late Night Special in the comics section.

I also picked up one of the Melt-thology zines; number 28 to be exact. This is a series of in house zines made up of one page comics drawn by dozens of creators in one day then made available at Meltdown. The one I picked up was mostly dedicated to sending off 2016, and it was the send off it deserves. I think this is a pretty great idea that other stores like Carmine Street Comics here in New York City should be doing. Or maybe Desert Island.

Another one of the comics I picked up, The Mad Mind Of Anton Sebaum, was drawn by Jude Vigants, one of the creators I rode up with to the Comic Creator Conference. Small world. Check out his stuff.

It was a really nice trip and I’m looking forward to going back and discovering more. Hopefully it will have stopped raining by then.

 

Molly Jackson’s Brunch – With a Side of Comics!

Marvel Women

I was out with some friends for brunch this past weekend. Brunch is a standard weekend event in the NYC area now, and it seems like a month rarely passes where I don’t have brunch plans on the horizon. The unannounced purpose of this brunch was to get to know a friend’s new girlfriend. So of course, I bring up comics as a get to know you topic. (Brunch tip: One always needs go-to conversation topics for brunch outings.)

She gave me a sad, but not surprising answer to my query. She said as a child, she found comics disappointing because there were no female writers creating stories and the female characters, dressed in very revealing costumes, didn’t represent her at that point in her life. This exact argument should be familiar to anyone who has read almost any article about women or minorities in comics, ever.

Of course, I immediately began rattling off graphic novels with female creators, important social topics, or just amazing storytelling. Afterwards, when I was on my way home, I realized that I keep this running list of graphic novels to recommend to people who specifically complain about lack of diversity in comics. A list for those people who can only think of Gail Simone when you quiz them about women in comics. Gail is great, but there are so many other women in comics; in part because of all that she has done.

Now I suspect the people I’m talking about aren’t regular readers of ComicMix. Frankly, if you tune in here on a daily basis, we’ve totally sold you on diversity in comics. Yay us!  But now comes the hard part. Teaching others that yes, there is growing diversity in comic creators!  Right now is the potential for a boom of diverse creators in comics. As the political climate affects change, fans are becoming more focused than ever on who are the storytellers. However, just because it is getting better doesn’t mean it’s a solved problem but we can make it better through our voices and our wallets.

With our dollars, we can continue the trend of well-rounded and well-dressed that is building thanks to Batgirl, Faith, and Ms. Marvel.  We can encourage female creators like Amy Chu, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Jennifer Hayden, Amy Reeder, Gail Simone, Mags Visaggo, or the many more that I’ve run out of space for.

So the next time you are in a crowd (or out to brunch), ask the question about comics.  See who says comics don’t represent them and then show them that they can.  Encourage reading comics written by diverse creators and together, we can show publishers that diversity matters.

Joe Corallo: Knowing Your Place

Hellcat Patsy WalkerThe other day at a comic shop I saw a flier for the upcoming Patsy Walker, A.K.A. Hellcat! #1. It was advertised having writer Kate Leth and artist Brittney Williams attached. I think it’s great that the two of them are on this book, as I enjoy the work they’ve put out over at BOOM! Studios. However, it did start getting me thinking about the direction the comic industry is going. A direction that it may not want to go in.

We’ve seen the big two added more books with a woman lead. This has been great. A lot of them have at least one woman creator attached as well. We should absolutely be thrilled by that and support those efforts.

Just off the top of my head I can think of Amy Reeder on Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, Kelly Sue Deconnick’s recent Captain Marvel run, G. Willow Wilson and and Sana Amanat’s work on the new Ms. Marvel, Marguerite Bennett on the all woman’s Avengers team titled A-Force, and of course Patsy Walker, A.K.A. Hellcat! just at Marvel.

Over at DC we have Amanda Conner on Harley Quinn, Amy Chu on Poison Ivy, Ann Nocenti followed up by Genevieve Valentine on Catwoman, Gail Simone followed up by Babs Tarr on Batgirl, Meredith Finch on Wonder Woman, Annie Wu on Black Canary, Marguerite Bennett and Marguerite Sauvage on DC Bombshells and Emanuela Lupacchino on Starfire.

That’s a pretty hefty list for right off the top of my head, and I could have even missed one or two. We should be proud of the comic industry for having more women being involved in the creative process. However, you’ll also see the problem I was getting at before. All of the women creators are working on comics starring women… and not much else.

Just to be clear, I am not at all speaking on behalf of any of the creators listed, or making any judgments on the work they choose to do. I think they’ve been doing incredible work, and I’ve picked up most of the mentioned titles that are currently available. My concern lies with the pattern of the big two pairing up women on women lead books while not doing that with books that have a man in the lead.

It’s very possible that some of these instances they asked creators the characters they wanted to work with and these are the results we have. I highly doubt that was every single instance. We have had a long history of men, particularly straight cis white men, writing women in comics. Many of which have been great. I thoroughly enjoyed Charles Soule on She-Hulk and Brian Azzarello on Wonder Woman. However, I’m starting to get concerned that we’re moving more towards compartmentalizing creative teams, and that’s not a good thing.

How many women can you name who’ve worked on Batman? Sure, you might have thought Devin Grayson right off the bat. You’ll probably be racking your brain for a while after that though. Becky Cloonan did a fill in issue on Scott Snyder’s run a few years ago. And yes, Genevieve Valentine is currently one of the eight writers on Batman and Robin Eternal, the other seven being men. We haven’t had a woman creator have a lengthy run on either Batman or Detective Comics. Mostly fill-ins.

Okay, how about Superman? Louise Simonson had a huge impact on the character. She was integral to the Death of Superman storyline, and she created Steel. You’re gonna need to think real long and hard to come up with too many more names than that. Sure, Ramona Fradon did many of the Super Friends comics, but that’s most of it. Justice League comics are even more male dominated. As are The Flash, Green Lantern, and so forth. Ramona did work plenty on Aquaman and Plastic Man, but we did already mention her.

How about over at Marvel? Let’s start with Spider-Man. Sara Pichelli did co-create Miles Morales with Bendis, but beyond that there isn’t much else. Louise Simonson did some work on Spider-man as well, but I did already mention her with Superman. And those examples aren’t exactly examples of long runs on Amazing Spider-Man or even Spectacular Spider-man.

And the X-Men? Louise Simonson and Ann Nocenti did a lot of work in the X-Universe, but again, both of them have already been mentioned for other contributions. I can also add Majorie Liu for her work on Astonishing X-Men, but you get the idea.

Again, to clarify, I am not knocking or belittling any of the contributions these creators have made. I admire the work they have all done and continue to do. I’m highlighting all of this to make the point that this is still a very male dominated industry, that women have not had all the same opportunities over the years as men whether it was deliberate or not, and that this should change. I also understand that the comic book industry is small. Smaller than I think we realize sometimes. Even still, this situation could be better.

I’m not asking for Superman to spin the earth backwards in time and fire the DC editorial teams of yesterday and replace them all with women. I’m not asking for Kitty Pryde to project herself back in time to do the same thing at Marvel. The past is the past. It was a different time, and there is very little we can do just dwelling on that. What we do have to do is acknowledge the past and understand it as we move forward.

I think Scott Snyder is doing great things with Batman, but maybe when he’s done with the title Genevieve Valentine or Amy Chu might have some great ideas of where to take him next. After seeing the kind of work that Amy Reeder has done on her title Rocket Girl with Image, maybe she’s got a great run for someone like Iron Man that she could be working on. Maybe the next big Superman creator will be a woman none of us have heard of yet.

I believe the best stories are yet to come. Many of the popular comic characters are decades old and have mostly been handled by male creators. One way to revitalize these decades old characters would be to get creators with different perspectives.

As a queer man have enjoyed a great deal of comics that involve exclusively straight characters. People from all backgrounds enjoy all sorts of stories. Someone with a different background could help flesh out other characters in these stories as well. Superman, Batman, Spider-Man and many others have both men and women in their stories, and people from all walks of life.

It’s not only important to have representation in the main character or characters, but characters off to the sides and in the backgrounds as well. More women tackling comics like those I mentioned could be a way to help revitalize these titles, and hope it’s something that’s being considered.

 

 

Molly Jackson: Comic Signings – The Great Connector

Last month, I was going through a pile of old comics. At the time I was getting ready for a signing, and looking for an issue of Incredible Hulk #1 for writer Jason Aaron to sign for me. While I was going through my many piles, I found some gems I had forgotten about, including some signed issues.

You are probably wondering how I could forget about my gems. Since I am lucky enough to live in NYC, I spend a large amount of time and money going to every comic book signing I could. I had a variety of reasons for going. Some events I went to because of the book, some for the creative team and some just because I had nothing better to do. What’s $4 for an issue just to hang out with cool people for an hour or four?

Doing this, I’ve met great people who became good friends and exposed myself to amazing writers and artists. I’ve found a plethora of new series to read and collect. In fact, a chunk of my favorite graphic novels are ones I bought at a signing or comic panel event.

I can’t express how grateful I am for all the people I’ve bonded with during a five-hour outdoor wait in 30-degree weather for a comic book signing. I enjoy the time spent waiting on line, arguing with people about a character arc or TV show. I’ve argued and joked with people without knowing their name! I’ve done food runs for strangers and trusted my new best friends to watch my spot in line for a potty break. I’ve even huddled together with strangers for warmth under an umbrella.

And then, finally getting to meet the person we were all waiting for! Most of the time, I know their work but on occasion, I’ve had to fake my excitement. Still, that’s how I have met writers and artists that I love now. Like going to an panel and signing for a little know writer named Scott Snyder or one I attended for artist Amy Reeder. And there was a time at a con that I hung out with a then-little known writer, Charles Soule, just chatting about his graphic novel. By going to almost everything I could, I met and supported people throughout different points in their careers. You never know who you are going to meet.

I don’t get to go to as many signing or comic events now, due to my day job. Still, I try to go when I can, and especially to the ones I don’t know much about. It’s a great way to learn about new series. That’s how I get to find gems in my collection like Saga #1 signed by Brian K. Vaughn I found. (Yeah, I can’t believe I forgot about it either.) So, go and check out the signings in your area. You never know if you are going to meet the next big star or your next best friend.

 

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