January 14, 2015 • 40 mins
When the Underground Comix Revolution happened in the 1960s, women still weren't welcome in comics circles, but it didn't stop them from making their art and telling their unique stories. In the second half of a two-part podcast, Cristen and Caroline trace the rise of women like Lynda Barry and Alison Bechdel in indie comics to the current clamor for more women in today's mainstream comic book industry.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from how Supports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline. And this is part two of our
two partner on women in comics and Cartooning because A
it would be really challenging to fit everything about the
(00:26):
history and current status of women in cartooning into one podcast,
but b because when we mentioned that we were going
to do this topic, we got so much positive feedback
from stuff Mom Never Told You fans, So I think
that people wanted perhaps a two partner on this. I
(00:48):
think they did too, because I mean one would not
be enough. Considering when we asked on Twitter at Mom's
podcast and on Facebook for people's favorite lady cartoonists and
comic book artists, we received so many names and should
(01:12):
should I read a few carols? Yeah, let's let's hit
some well. One of the favorites that was mentioned a
lot Noel Stevenson, Fiona Staples, Kate Beaton of course from
Hark of Vagrant, Gail Simone from Birds of Prey, from
the Comic Book World. We also had Linda Barry, Ross
chast Katie Cook, Emma Rios, Emily Carroll, and on and
(01:33):
on and on, including Sarah c Anderson. Yeah, Sarah c Anderson,
who sent us a fabulously sweet letter saying that she
had listened to our our Women Funny episode and appreciated
that we confirmed that, yes, shockingly, women are funny. And
(01:54):
then she said, have you considered doing an episode on
women in comics and cartooning? And I was able to
fire off an email and tell her, Sarah, we are
doing a two parter, and yeah, she not only um
piped up when we put it out there on social
media about like who were your favorite cartoonists, but she
(02:15):
also was someone that came recommended and with her letter
to us, she included uh, copies of her comics and
they are hilarious and adorable. And as I told Sarah
and in the email to her, I've actually seen your
comics before online. Like I have chuckled to myself about
her strip about wanting to stay in her in your pajamas,
(02:37):
I can fully identify with that as well as the
one about not being able to pronounce words because you
are a bookworm and you've only read them, so you
don't know how to say them. Oh, what's happened to
me too, it's embarrassing it's happened to me on this podcast,
But I comfort myself with knowing that, well, at least
I knew the word yeah, you knew what it meant, yeah,
(03:00):
to know how to say it. But considering though all
of the names, and honestly, those were just a handful
of the dozens and dozens and dozens of names that
we've gotten, we're compiling all of them into a post
at stuff Mom Never Told You dot com so we
can all share and find new amazing comics and artists. Um.
(03:20):
But it seems like, based on this, it's a great
time to be a woman in cartooning or illustrating or comics.
Were kind of blending all of them together for the
purpose of simplicity in this podcast, Too Parter, and we
received a number of cartoonists, illustrators, and comic book artists. Um.
(03:42):
And it seems like it's a great time because there
are all these women making all these hilarious and beautiful
and insightful and poignant pieces of work and getting some
high level recognition for it. Yeah. Like Alison Bechdel, for instance,
she created Dikes to Watch out For and Fun Home.
She received a MacArthur grant In and of course Beckdel.
(04:05):
You should recognize her name from the Bechdel test, which
Kristen and I talked about. It's basically the test that
you can put to movies to say, are there at
least two women characters who talked to each other about
something other than men? Yeah, and you would be surprised
how a few films past that test. And I actually
read Fun Home after we did that podcast on Beckdel,
(04:27):
and if you haven't read it, it's a fantastic graphic
novel that's actually been turned into a musical now as well,
and I have a feeling it's been optioned for a
film too. Um, but it's great and you should read
it and revel in her incredible storytelling through drow Rings
draw Rings well. Also, inten Jen Sorenson became the first
(04:51):
woman to ever win the her Block Prize for political cartooning,
and we talked a little bit about women in political
and editorial cartoons in part one, really just focusing in
on suffrage cartoons in the early twentieth century, and also
in the past couple of years in the mainstream comic
(05:12):
book industry, there's been a lot of talk and action
regarding women and comics. Because one of the giant things
that happened is that Marvel writer Jason Aaron received a
lot of praise and a lot of hate from making
for a woman. And this is not like creating a
(05:34):
new god or goddess. This is making the character of
four a woman instead of a man now. And this
is following on the heels of the debut of the
new Miss Marvel now a Pakistani teenager, Kamala Khan. And
while all this is going on, you have industry women
like Kelly Sue Deconi, who is a writer, not an artist,
(05:57):
but was one of the women called out by stuff
Never told You fans um. She retooled female Captain Marvel
to be stronger and more heroic rather than just set dressing.
And the comic has also been really leading the charge
to address gender dynamics within the industry at large. So
(06:18):
there's a lot of conversation, a lot of calling out
of perhaps uh systemic sexism happening, um examinations of the
depiction of female characters in comic books. So this is
definitely an important time for gender and comics and cartoons. Yeah,
because I mean, the creators of Miss Marvel themselves were
(06:41):
shocked at just how popular, just how strong the response
to her was. Um and for instance, thor, I mean,
if we're talking about how common main women characters are,
four is just the eighth Marvel title to feature a
lead female protagonist. So small strides, yeah, and I mean
(07:02):
small strides indeed, because nonetheless, the Capital C comics industry
and its audience does remain overwhelmingly male dominated. And um
Walt Hickey over at the five thirty eight blog did
a really detailed statistical analysis of this and found that
as of August, men out number women nine to one
(07:26):
behind the scenes at both these and Marvel, and about
the people working on comics in the past year. We're
also white. So not only is their little gender diversity,
there's also little racial diversity as well. And as we
sort of touched on in our part one episode, the
more people that you bring into a medium, the more
(07:48):
different types of people you bring in, the more perspectives
you're going to get. And so obviously that's going to
be a theme of our discussion. But uh, Tim Hanley,
who's a comic historian and Reese Archer noted that women
at DC and Marvel make up only of colorists and
nearly no letterers, he said, with female writers and artists
(08:10):
are sporadic at best. And there are more female editors
twenty four per and assistant editors forty point eight percent,
but still lacking in the artist and colorist area. Yeah,
I mean in those those percentages of the editors and
assistant editors are up since the nineties. UM, But for
d C and Marvel, female characters who occur at least
(08:34):
ten times make up only thirty point nine percent of
the DC universe and thirty point six percent of the
Marvel universe. And so that's one of the reasons why,
like you said, I mean, you bring a greater diversity
of people to the table, chances are you're going to
get a greater diversity of people on the page. But
we are really focusing though on those people at the table,
(08:56):
not so much on the characters on the page, and
moving away from comic books for a moment and into
newspapers because yes, cartoons still exist in newspapers, and yes,
newspapers also still exists, UM, but it's hard to find
a woman cartoonist at a newspaper. UM. New Yorker cartoonist
(09:21):
and cartoonist historian lies that Donnelly estimates that there are
only two women editorial and political cartoonist, drawing from major
newspapers and at the New Yorker, for instance, only eight
out of the more than fifty cartoonists or women. Yeah,
And we went over to the National Cartoonist Society's web
page try to do a gender count over there. And
(09:43):
the National Cartoonist Society got to mention in part one
of our comic series talking about how it launched in
ninety six but was only open to men for the
first year until women and some men came to their defense,
being like, hey, maybe we should to open up our doors.
And as I was going through the website looking for numbers,
(10:05):
I ended up on their history page, and Caroline, it
was just so telling looking at photos from their history
and it's so hard to find a woman. I mean,
obviously in the very early years that it's all men
in the photos. Um, So looking at numbers today, I
counted up forty nine women out of more than six
(10:28):
hundred members. So and that's including women like say Kathy
guys White, who created the Kathy comic that we actually
talked about in a podcast A couple of summers ago.
So just for established cartoonists and comic book artists out there,
still it's it is overwhelmingly male dominated. But that's not
(10:51):
to say that women aren't invested in comics, right, I mean,
you know, as again, as we talked about in our
first episode on this, women and girls have been interested
in comics and cartoons since the very beginning. It's only
sort of around World War Two that it became not
so cool for girls to be sort of involved, whether
(11:15):
in the industry itself or in the actual consumption of
comics and cartoons. And so a recent Facebook data survey
found that forty six percent of self identified comics fans
are women. Now, when I saw that statistic, I wondered
whether some people, say, like comics die hards, the fans
(11:38):
who really consider themselves fans who buy the two issues,
one so that it can remain in its plastic sleeve
and the other that they can actually read, whether they
might sneer a little bit at that percentage, in the
same way that similar percentages about women and gaming are
often sneered at because oh, well, those women are just
playing candy crush. They aren't, you know, up all night
on Xbox Live because I have a feeling based on
(12:02):
the kinds of names that we were getting from stuff
I'm never told you fans about their favorite women comic
artists and comic strips, a lot of them are digital,
their web comics, and digital has really changed the current
comics game. Not to say that there there weren't also
plenty of more traditional comic book artists that were called
out as well. Um, but that's one thing that we're
(12:25):
going to talk about later on the show, is about
how digital has, I think, in a really positive way,
not only opened up comic creation to more people, but
also perhaps opened up readership and appreciation and consumption of
comic books to women in a way that we haven't
(12:47):
seen in previous decades. But before we get into all
of that, Caroline, we've got to take a quick break
and it will come right back. So the top of
the podcast, you know, we cited a lot of really
interesting things that are happening with women and comics and
cartoons today, but we also have to revisit how we
(13:09):
got here, and a lot of our information is coming
from two great places. One Where are the Working Women
in Comics? By Vanetta Rogers, which was featured on news
Rama and to Wesley Channelt's thesis, working the margins women
in the comic book industry and so where we are
today has a lot to do with the Comics Code
(13:31):
of the late nineteen fifties, whose censorship discouraged a lot
of the material that used to attract a lot of
female readers. And on top of that, it often sanitized
female characters and overaly emphasized g rated romance. I mean,
before the Comics Code, women were really getting into some
(13:51):
of the racier, the darker kinds of comics that Frederick
Wortham and Seduction of the Innocent was out to ban. Now,
on top of that, as we move into the seventies
and eighties, comic book sales move away from the news
stand and you have the growth of direct market systems sales,
(14:14):
and so with that you have the rise of comic
book stores and these spaces really become I mean, we
can all probably summon up the stereotype of the comic bookstore.
It's kind of like the stereotype of the record store,
where it's mostly guys who are going to challenge you
on how much you really know, especially if you are
(14:34):
a girl walking into those spaces, and for a lot
of girls and women who otherwise would be fans of
comics and would pick one up at the newsstand felt
alienated from walking into a comic book store. Right. Trena Robbins,
who we cited a lot in the first episode, Who's
a cartoonist and a cartoonist historian. In an interview with
(14:55):
Collectors Weekly, she talked about this evolution of things moving
out of moving away from the news standard into these
comic book stores. She said that they were awful that
women didn't want to go into these spaces because they
were quote like porn stores. Yeah, I mean I remember
experiencing the same kind of thing in high school when
I started to get interested in graphic novels more so
(15:18):
than traditional comic books. And there was this fantastic comics
store downtown where I grew up, and I wouldn't go
in there though without a friend, because I was too
nervous to talk to the cashier or to ask any
questions at all, because it was very much like if
if I was I mean, I would try to pick
(15:39):
out the right T shirt to wear just to give
myself a little outside cred And I mean it was
it was an intense kind of thing. So that definitely
rang true in my experience. But if we go back
though to the sixties and seventies, it is interesting to
see how with Marvel and d C both attempted to
(16:00):
provide more diversity on the page. They did feature a
few more black and female characters. For instance, in nineteen
seventy five, we have the debut of Storm in X Men,
and that was the first major black heroine, and that
was under Marvel. And then, you know, in our first
episode we talked about how Marvel and DC already weren't
(16:22):
that great in terms of employing women. They lagged behind
their contemporaries, most of whom ended up getting wiped out
by the Comics Code of the late fifties. But so
in the seventies and eighties, the employment situation for women
was basically non existent. But stan Lee did in the
early nineteen seventies try to attract women to work for him,
(16:43):
but not many of them lasted more than a few years. Yeah,
it didn't really work, and even the hiring process was
rather controversial. He apparently had to sit sit the fellows
down and be like, look, guys, we're gonna hire a
couple of women. It's no big neal. We can still
fart jokes the major fear I do have and that
(17:05):
and that is my award winning Stanley impression as well.
But you can see though, as that's going on in
the background, and then you also have the direct market
system rising both in terms of production and consumption, it
understandably becomes this highly gendered kind of boys club kind
of thing. Yeah. So while all this is going on, though,
(17:29):
what's really interesting about comics in the nineteen sixties is
that it's basically basically like, well, whatever mainstream Marvel and DC,
underground comics with an X is really where it's at. Yeah, this,
I mean, they really were sort of providing a counterculture
answer to those big superhero comic behemoths. But that doesn't
(17:53):
necessarily mean that women were super welcome in these underground groups. Yeah,
and this is kind of the unfortunate thing, I mean,
because you have all of these alt newspapers that are
popping up, particularly of course in New York, but particularly
on the West Coast in places like San Francisco, and
(18:14):
so you have our Crumb and others starting to do
these weird kinds of comics and then you also have
women doing weird kinds of comics, but the guys were like, ladies,
we don't want your weird comics. So um. Nonetheless, though,
Hillary L. Shoot, who wrote Graphic Women, Life, Narrative and
Contemporary Comics, talked about how during the Underground Comics Revolution,
(18:37):
this was the first time women were really using comics
as a form of personal expression, which was especially facilitated
by that kind of experimentation with form and style. But nonetheless,
they were kind of having to do it on their
own because I mean, the underground scene was I mean
(18:57):
it was basically an underground boys club as well. Yeah,
we definitely need to get back to Trina Robbin's the
cartoonist and now cartoonist historian um. In nineteen seventy two,
after the huge success of the first ever all women
comic book anthology called It Ain't Me Babe, Robbins and
others ended up forming the Women's Comics Collective, which is
(19:19):
based in San Francisco. And we should know that that's
women spelled w I M M E N, and that's
also comics with an X, and so ladies are doing
it for themselves. Well they have to, yeah, but it
is incredible to see how it ain't me babe immediately
sold out, And so some of these smaller publishing companies
(19:40):
start to pay attention, and some of these all weeklies
start to pay attention. And so you also, then though,
have women being like, well, not only do we make
this stuff, but we can also publish this stuff ourselves.
So you have for instance, Joyce Farmer and Lynn Chevally
forming publishing company Nanny Goat per Auctions, which was really
(20:02):
started to give women more of a platform. So, not
surprisingly along those lines, female sexuality is front and center
in a number of these underground comics penned by women,
one of which has a fantastic rhyming title that I
can't say on the podcast, but let's just say it's
(20:22):
along the lines of breasts and vaginas yeah yes, talking
about ladies yeah um, and other women to talk about
ladies um. Were women including ROBERTA. Gregory and Mary Wings
who were lesbian comic book artists emerging during this time,
and they pinned things like dynamite damsels and come out comics, etcetera, etcetera.
(20:43):
And apparently this was a really important platform for lesbians
at the time as well to be able to tell
their own stories, express their own sexuality and their own attractions.
And this was something that Trina Robbins was talking about,
and I can't remember which artists she was calling out,
but it was a street woman who came up with
(21:05):
an idea for a comic about lesbians and like, oh,
we needed depict lesbians. I'll draw this. And then some
lesbians were like, hey, no, you're not going to tell
our stories. And they were like, oh, yeah, absolutely not here,
you do make these and so they did. And so
with this, women's profiles really begin to rise, particularly within
(21:28):
these indie circles, and by the time we get to
the nineteen eighties, going back to the mainstream for the moment,
there are still very few women at d C and Marvel,
But in the Sunday Funnies you have Kathy Guy's Wife's
Kathy comic. You also have Lynn Johnson with for Better
for Worse, which a number of Sminty fans called out
(21:49):
as well, but really all weeklies were where it was at. Yeah,
because the whole attitude kind of around women in mainstream
comic strips, not to even get into comic books, was
that like, oh, well, why do we need more why
do we need more women's voices. That's like a niche group, right,
women niche group. Well, And even thinking about the women
(22:12):
in the Sunday Funnies, there's Kathy who I mean, you
know it's Kathy, right, She's not exactly a revolute, a
feminist revolutionary. And then in even in like Lynn Johnson's
For Better for Worse, it's usually women in domestic roles,
or you have say Blondie, who's the wife, but she's
she's sexy, she's she's busty. Yeah, And I can't remember
(22:35):
what sources was coming from, if I feel like it
was in the Collector's Weekly article that we've cited where
someone one of the cartoonists was talking about how you know,
men's voices are considered neutral and they're just everyone's voice,
and so they can write about whatever. Their comic strip
can be about men or people in general, it can
be about whatever, whereas women almost have to talk about
(22:59):
being a woman, what that's like because they don't have voices,
They don't have the luxury yet, because there's so few
of them, they don't have the luxury yet of just
oh I'm a woman, but I happen to be drawing
a cartoon strip about whatever that they almost have to
make it so gendered. Well, and this was where all
weeklies really came in to give more of a platform,
(23:20):
a broader platform even than just uh, these independent comics
or zines at the time for women like Lynda Berry,
who I have a feeling a lot of podcast listeners
have been waiting for us to mention um. She was
highly influential in the Alto comic world. I mean just
in general, not just because she was a woman. She
(23:41):
was a massive pioneer and her series Ernie Pook's comic
as c O. M e K was kind of her
big breakout. She's also fun fact, Bessie's with Matt Graining
of The Simpsons, and they were all kind of, you know,
drawing stuff at the same time, and he was like, hey,
you should you should publish this Ernie Pook thing. You're like,
(24:02):
all right, fine, and then it became huge and she's
still she's still making comics today. Well, you also had
artists like Nicole Hollander who did the Sylvia comic, and
of course Alison Bechdale with Dikes to Watch out For,
and then Jennifer Camper with Rude girls and dangerous women,
and those are just a few of the bigger names
(24:25):
that were coming out of the alt and independent comics scene,
which leads us then into the nineties and two thousand's
when I mean we've sort of hit the bottom when
it comes to the depiction of women and men as
well in more mainstream superhero kinds of comics, because this
is when you have these impossibly bust the sexy women
(24:50):
and also these impossibly super muscular, ripped dudes who were
dominating the pages of mainstream comics. And it's no wonder
then that's starting in the early nineties. Graphic novels bring
so much relief to the whole thing. It's like, oh wait, oh,
(25:11):
we're back to storytelling, and oh look, it's beautiful artwork
as well, and we don't have these these intense pecks
and breasts everywhere. Yeah, I mean the types of graphic
novels that you know, I think you're referring to. It's
like it's almost like walking into a quiet room after
being screamed at visually. I mean, I remember, I wish
(25:31):
I could remember the name, but I remember one graphic
novel that I read in high school that I borrowed
from a friend. That was all about like love and relationships,
and it was very like melancholy and sweet. Definitely no
busty babes or ripped dudes featured in that at all,
and no offense any busty babes or ripped dudes listening.
(25:52):
Oh absolutely, We're purely talking about the ones that are
on paper. Yes, Um, So it was a really big deal.
Then that Mouse by Art Spiegelman wins the Pulitzer and
because of that, graphic novels all of a sudden get
the attention from all of these publishers being like, oh, well,
graphic novels, okay, this must be this must be important.
(26:16):
So sort of on the heels of that, you have
a lot of attention being paid to Marjane's Strappi for Persepolis,
which was another favorite called out by a lot of
Sminty fans um, as well as Esther Pearl Watson's Unlovable.
And as we move back into the mainstream and into
comic books, Gayle Samoans Birds of Prey launches at d C,
(26:43):
and Simone is responsible for coining the term that Kristin
and I have mentioned before in the podcast Women in refrigerators, Kristen,
you cared to define that. Sure. Essentially, it's this catchphrase
that Simone developed to highlight the disposability of so many
female characters, even strong female characters in comic books. It's
(27:04):
essentially like they would get to a point to where
they were almost too strong for the plot, and they
would sometimes literally and sometimes metaphorically be tossed into a
refrigerator and done away with. Yeah, make way for a
new busty babe, But they're disposable, so they're their death
is just part of the plot. But Birds of Prey
was and is really cool because this was an all
(27:26):
female superhero group. So women were kind of like, yes, finally,
and yeah they're busty. Sure they're busty, but they were
women grime fighters, and it seemed like Birds of Prey
started to mark a turning point and hey, let's pay
more attention to some ladies on the page. And then
in the late ninety nineties we see Japanese manga become
(27:48):
a huge crossover hit in America. And I don't know
that anime or manga's popularity has dwindled at all, no,
but it probably opened up more girl readers and consumers
to animation, cartoons, illustration, etcetera. And we should probably go
back at some point end to vote an episode to manga.
(28:09):
I know a number of fans uh called out a
number of female manga artists that they really love, and
we've gotten requests before to look at gender dynamics in
manga and anime. So that's something to look forward to
later in the year. Um. But now moving more to today, Yes,
(28:30):
it's clear that Marvel and DC are are attempting to
get a little women friendlier, but there's still plenty of
progress to be made, and there are also some women
in the industry who are a little tired of the conversation. Yeah.
Christina Strain, who's a colorist for Marvel Comics, was basically
saying that, um, you know, you guys are all creating
(28:54):
this controversy. The media won't stop talking about the lack
of women in the comics industree, and it just makes
it worse for everybody. She said, Right now, there's the
swell of ill will towards men in comics, and she
says she gets it, but quote, it's furthering the stereotype
that comics will be incredibly hostile towards women, when that's
(29:14):
just not at all the truth. Comics are about skill.
If you're talented and you're able to work with a
team to create awesome comics, you will get hired. And well,
I totally see where u Strain is coming from, and
I know that it must be frustrating as a woman
who was in on often criticized industry to continue to hear, oh,
your industry is terrible for people like you. I mean,
(29:37):
I see where she's coming from, But I still think, Okay, well,
if it were just about skill, would we not have
more women in the industry in general? Yeah? Well, I mean,
well then there's a question of pipeline of well, maybe
it's the perception of hostility that's stopping skilled and talented
(29:57):
women for even going for it because they don't even
want to have to possibly deal with that too. So
I mean, I don't think it's I mean, I don't
think these issues are ever just as simple as well,
it's just skill, it's just talent, and that's it. I mean,
clearly there are problems with perception in general. This is
(30:19):
something that Terry Moore, who's a self publisher UM highlighted
talking about this. UM acknowledging, yes, there has certainly been
a lot more material out there aim towards male readers,
and unfortunately, he said, most of the public thinks comics
are only about superheroes and action oriented characters. Those of
us who read them though, no different. And I think
(30:42):
that that's starting to become more and more of a
theme as the digital world becomes revolutionizes the comic book industry, obviously,
because print publishing in general is on the decline, and
with the rise of digital it seems like more women
are are coming to comics through that, whether that's by
(31:03):
making them or by consuming them. Yeah, I mean I
can say that personally, I have never been I mean,
aside from chasing down Brenda Starr in the newspaper every
day when the paper came to my parents house when
I was in middle school, I've never been a huge
consumer of comics, comic strips, comic books, whatever, um. But
in more recent years, over the past couple of years,
(31:26):
I have loved a bunch of different digital comics. Things
that women are doing that wouldn't be considered traditional comic
books or comic strips or things like that, but they're
telling a really personal life story, like Ali Brash with
Hyperbole and a half where she's dealing with a very
serious topic, which is depression, but she's illustrating it in
such an adorable and accessible way that it makes it
(31:49):
entertaining and you sort of get a slice of someone's
life in the process. Well and interesting too to see
how it's a lot of these people making web comics
and developing a digital following and then they're coming into print.
It's kind of the reverse um but notable to the
going back to Miss Marvel for instance, the sales of
(32:10):
that have been beyond expectation, and especially on digital um
And there was a recent survey out of Comicsology which
found a growing female comic readership on You Guessed It
digital platforms. So interesting to see how that's happening. And
there are in addition to Hyperbole and a half, there
(32:32):
are so many women penned web comics out there to
get to know and love online, such as Noel Stevenson
who I mentioned earlier with Pneumona, Kate Beacon's Heart of Vagrant,
which is hilarious, Spiked Troutman's Templar Arizona, Fiona Staples, who
co created with Brian Cabon the Saga series and then
(32:54):
Kate Leth with Kate or Die and so many others.
Like I said, if you head over to stuff I
Never told you dot com, we're going to compile all
of your suggestions with links to all of the web
comics or the comic book Artists site so that you
can check them out and see what women are doing
and drawing. Because the answer is so much. So what
(33:17):
do you think, Caroline, from going from Rose O'Neill in
the late eighteen hundreds all the way up to say
an Ali Brash today, what what? What do you think
is the status of women in cartoons? Well, I do
really think it's interesting to watch this rise and fall
(33:37):
that has seemed to happen over the past hundred or
so years. Because when O'Neil was popular with her QP drawings, um,
it wasn't unusual or unexpected for girls and women to
enjoy that type of art and that type of medium
and and collect them and color them in themselves. And
(33:58):
then we hit this point in in in and after
World War Two where gender and gender divisions were so
important and everything had to be black and white, and
women were sort of pushed aside, and like Hey, this
isn't a girly thing to do. This is all action
and adventure and superheroes and fighting Hitler. This isn't for
you to enjoy. And so it's really nice and interesting
and reassuring to see that with the rise of the
(34:20):
digital medium and more people relying on it, that more
women now not only have access to comics around the world,
but they can create their own and give voice to
something that other people can relate to. Like in the
sixties when we had that comics with an ex revolution
and women, especially lesbian women, could finally say, here's my story.
(34:42):
I want to tell you my story in my own words.
Now you can have women like Ali Brash telling her story. No,
I'm going to tell you what depression is like, and
so many girls and women out there can say, oh,
I feel that way too well. And considering too the
delight and fandom that was sparked what we just asked
folks for recommendations and their favorites. It also seems to
(35:04):
be hearkening back to the time in the late teen
hundreds in the early nineteen hundreds that Tina Robbins talked
about or Trina Robbins, excuse me, talked about where you
would have I mean, where these women cartoonists were superstars
and people would collect them in scrap books. And no,
we don't need them in scrap books anymore. But they're
pinned all over Pinterest now right exactly, And they these
(35:26):
women are attracting you know, they're their own fans. So
I think there's obviously and almost always still progress to
be made. But I think it's a pretty good time. Yeah,
any time that women can share their stories in their
own voices. I mean it stinks that it always seems
to have to be through the underground, you know, and
(35:48):
through their own publishing memes, and it's not through something
like d C. But I feel like even their strides
are being made. Oh absolutely absolutely, And it's not going
back to too Sarah see Anderson. Not all these stories
but also humor. Yeah, so many funny ladies. So now
we wanted to hear from you. Who are your favorites?
(36:09):
Whose names did we overlook? There were Again, there were
so many suggestions that we got we did not have
time to read out every single one. Um, So if
you are a fan or a creator, we would love
to hear from you. Mom stuff at how stuff works
dot Com is our email address. You can tweet us
at mom Stuff podcasts, or messages on Facebook, and we've
(36:31):
got a couple of messages to share with you right now. Well,
I've got a letter here from Laurie about our episode
on Night Shift Moms. She says, I've been working the
night shift for over twenty eight years. I started out
doing it when I was just nineteen, thinking that it
would be a fun adventure, and it really was. I
(36:53):
work in emergency rooms as a respiratory care practitioner. After
I got married to my high school sweetheart at twenty three,
I continued to job because it also paid well and
we had only one car and a large college debt,
so I would drive to work at night and pass
the car keys to my husband in the morning so
he could go to college. Than at twenty five, I
had my first child and we couldn't afford childcare, so
I continued the night shift and passed the keys and
(37:15):
the baby with each shift change. I felt that my
husband got the better deal there. He just had to
feed the baby and put him into bed at night,
but when I got home, I was only napping when
he napped, and then back to work. Again. But when
the second child came along two years later, I was
averaging about three hours of sleep a day, but felt
like the women you mentioned in your program that at
least my baby saw me during the day and we
(37:36):
never had to deal with sitters and childcare issues. Over
the years, something ended up happening to me as well.
My circadian rhythm moved. I was now hardwired to being
up at night. I discussed this with my physician and
she felt that I shouldn't flip my schedule back and forth,
as that may cause more harmed my system. So to
this day, I work seven on seven off and I
(37:57):
don't flip my clock back to the day shift. When
I'm off, I get a lot done at night, catch
up on the laundry, another quiet housework, and grocery shopping
is a dream. I agree that working the night shift
has some disadvantages. I did have a cancer scare when
I was twenty nine, of the thyroid variety, but it
was caught early and I'm fine now. Also, my husband
has never liked that I worked the night shift. He
(38:18):
understands this, but he misses me and I missed him too.
We've been married twenty four years and I kind of
believe that having to be away from him may for
us have strengthened our relationship. I always have interesting things
to talk to him about on my week off, and
we do get every other week to hang out together,
and if there's something special we want to do, I
will get up early to accommodate him. For me, I
(38:38):
don't know any different. My early memories are being up
at night. Maybe I'm one of those people. The hardest
thing for me, and I'm sure you touched on this,
was that it's hard to have friends when you work
the night shift. I have a few, but it seems
like I rarely see them because of my schedule. I
just thought you'd like to hear from someone who has
done this all her life, and even with all the
hardships that may have caused sleepless days in a grumpy hub,
(39:00):
and I still feel that what I did has been
the best thing I could have done for my family.
I think I'll always be a night bird. So thanks, Lorie. Well.
I have a letter here from Janna. She says, my
mom has been a nurse for twenty five years and
has worked both day and night shifts in that time.
She does twelve hour shifts and commutes about an hour
(39:20):
each way, so I did not get a lot of
time with her growing up. It was especially hard during
my teen years when she was working almost exclusively night shifts.
A mix of my tired mother and teenage hormonal drama
was a bit of a recipe for disaster when it
came to sleepovers. Everyone else could have them but me.
The horror. Now that I'm in my mid twenties, I
see the sacrifices that she made for me and my dad.
(39:43):
She worked so hard to be the best provider and
mom she could be. I'm so thankful for her dedication.
She truly taught me what it means to work hard
and to earn what you get. Thanks for your salute
to the unsung heroes who work well we sleep. So
thank you, Jennifer right a hand, and thanks everybody who's
written into us. Mom stuff at how stuff Works dot
Com is our email address and for links to all
(40:04):
of our social media as well as all of our blogs, videos,
and podcast with our sources so you can learn more
about women and the history of cartooning. Head on over
to Stuff Mom Never Told You dot com for more
on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how
stuff works? Dot com
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from how Supports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline. And this is part two of our
two partner on women in comics and Cartooning because A
it would be really challenging to fit everything about the
(00:26):
history and current status of women in cartooning into one podcast,
but b because when we mentioned that we were going
to do this topic, we got so much positive feedback
from stuff Mom Never Told You fans, So I think
that people wanted perhaps a two partner on this. I
(00:48):
think they did too, because I mean one would not
be enough. Considering when we asked on Twitter at Mom's
podcast and on Facebook for people's favorite lady cartoonists and
comic book artists, we received so many names and should
(01:12):
should I read a few carols? Yeah, let's let's hit
some well. One of the favorites that was mentioned a
lot Noel Stevenson, Fiona Staples, Kate Beaton of course from
Hark of Vagrant, Gail Simone from Birds of Prey, from
the Comic Book World. We also had Linda Barry, Ross
chast Katie Cook, Emma Rios, Emily Carroll, and on and
(01:33):
on and on, including Sarah c Anderson. Yeah, Sarah c Anderson,
who sent us a fabulously sweet letter saying that she
had listened to our our Women Funny episode and appreciated
that we confirmed that, yes, shockingly, women are funny. And
(01:54):
then she said, have you considered doing an episode on
women in comics and cartooning? And I was able to
fire off an email and tell her, Sarah, we are
doing a two parter, and yeah, she not only um
piped up when we put it out there on social
media about like who were your favorite cartoonists, but she
(02:15):
also was someone that came recommended and with her letter
to us, she included uh, copies of her comics and
they are hilarious and adorable. And as I told Sarah
and in the email to her, I've actually seen your
comics before online. Like I have chuckled to myself about
her strip about wanting to stay in her in your pajamas,
(02:37):
I can fully identify with that as well as the
one about not being able to pronounce words because you
are a bookworm and you've only read them, so you
don't know how to say them. Oh, what's happened to
me too, it's embarrassing it's happened to me on this podcast,
But I comfort myself with knowing that, well, at least
I knew the word yeah, you knew what it meant, yeah,
(03:00):
to know how to say it. But considering though all
of the names, and honestly, those were just a handful
of the dozens and dozens and dozens of names that
we've gotten, we're compiling all of them into a post
at stuff Mom Never Told You dot com so we
can all share and find new amazing comics and artists. Um.
(03:20):
But it seems like, based on this, it's a great
time to be a woman in cartooning or illustrating or comics.
Were kind of blending all of them together for the
purpose of simplicity in this podcast, Too Parter, and we
received a number of cartoonists, illustrators, and comic book artists. Um.
(03:42):
And it seems like it's a great time because there
are all these women making all these hilarious and beautiful
and insightful and poignant pieces of work and getting some
high level recognition for it. Yeah. Like Alison Bechdel, for instance,
she created Dikes to Watch out For and Fun Home.
She received a MacArthur grant In and of course Beckdel.
(04:05):
You should recognize her name from the Bechdel test, which
Kristen and I talked about. It's basically the test that
you can put to movies to say, are there at
least two women characters who talked to each other about
something other than men? Yeah, and you would be surprised
how a few films past that test. And I actually
read Fun Home after we did that podcast on Beckdel,
(04:27):
and if you haven't read it, it's a fantastic graphic
novel that's actually been turned into a musical now as well,
and I have a feeling it's been optioned for a
film too. Um, but it's great and you should read
it and revel in her incredible storytelling through drow Rings
draw Rings well. Also, inten Jen Sorenson became the first
(04:51):
woman to ever win the her Block Prize for political cartooning,
and we talked a little bit about women in political
and editorial cartoons in part one, really just focusing in
on suffrage cartoons in the early twentieth century, and also
in the past couple of years in the mainstream comic
(05:12):
book industry, there's been a lot of talk and action
regarding women and comics. Because one of the giant things
that happened is that Marvel writer Jason Aaron received a
lot of praise and a lot of hate from making
for a woman. And this is not like creating a
(05:34):
new god or goddess. This is making the character of
four a woman instead of a man now. And this
is following on the heels of the debut of the
new Miss Marvel now a Pakistani teenager, Kamala Khan. And
while all this is going on, you have industry women
like Kelly Sue Deconi, who is a writer, not an artist,
(05:57):
but was one of the women called out by stuff
Never told You fans um. She retooled female Captain Marvel
to be stronger and more heroic rather than just set dressing.
And the comic has also been really leading the charge
to address gender dynamics within the industry at large. So
(06:18):
there's a lot of conversation, a lot of calling out
of perhaps uh systemic sexism happening, um examinations of the
depiction of female characters in comic books. So this is
definitely an important time for gender and comics and cartoons. Yeah,
because I mean, the creators of Miss Marvel themselves were
(06:41):
shocked at just how popular, just how strong the response
to her was. Um and for instance, thor, I mean,
if we're talking about how common main women characters are,
four is just the eighth Marvel title to feature a
lead female protagonist. So small strides, yeah, and I mean
(07:02):
small strides indeed, because nonetheless, the Capital C comics industry
and its audience does remain overwhelmingly male dominated. And um
Walt Hickey over at the five thirty eight blog did
a really detailed statistical analysis of this and found that
as of August, men out number women nine to one
(07:26):
behind the scenes at both these and Marvel, and about
the people working on comics in the past year. We're
also white. So not only is their little gender diversity,
there's also little racial diversity as well. And as we
sort of touched on in our part one episode, the
more people that you bring into a medium, the more
(07:48):
different types of people you bring in, the more perspectives
you're going to get. And so obviously that's going to
be a theme of our discussion. But uh, Tim Hanley,
who's a comic historian and Reese Archer noted that women
at DC and Marvel make up only of colorists and
nearly no letterers, he said, with female writers and artists
(08:10):
are sporadic at best. And there are more female editors
twenty four per and assistant editors forty point eight percent,
but still lacking in the artist and colorist area. Yeah,
I mean in those those percentages of the editors and
assistant editors are up since the nineties. UM, But for
d C and Marvel, female characters who occur at least
(08:34):
ten times make up only thirty point nine percent of
the DC universe and thirty point six percent of the
Marvel universe. And so that's one of the reasons why,
like you said, I mean, you bring a greater diversity
of people to the table, chances are you're going to
get a greater diversity of people on the page. But
we are really focusing though on those people at the table,
(08:56):
not so much on the characters on the page, and
moving away from comic books for a moment and into
newspapers because yes, cartoons still exist in newspapers, and yes,
newspapers also still exists, UM, but it's hard to find
a woman cartoonist at a newspaper. UM. New Yorker cartoonist
(09:21):
and cartoonist historian lies that Donnelly estimates that there are
only two women editorial and political cartoonist, drawing from major
newspapers and at the New Yorker, for instance, only eight
out of the more than fifty cartoonists or women. Yeah,
And we went over to the National Cartoonist Society's web
page try to do a gender count over there. And
(09:43):
the National Cartoonist Society got to mention in part one
of our comic series talking about how it launched in
ninety six but was only open to men for the
first year until women and some men came to their defense,
being like, hey, maybe we should to open up our doors.
And as I was going through the website looking for numbers,
(10:05):
I ended up on their history page, and Caroline, it
was just so telling looking at photos from their history
and it's so hard to find a woman. I mean,
obviously in the very early years that it's all men
in the photos. Um, So looking at numbers today, I
counted up forty nine women out of more than six
(10:28):
hundred members. So and that's including women like say Kathy
guys White, who created the Kathy comic that we actually
talked about in a podcast A couple of summers ago.
So just for established cartoonists and comic book artists out there,
still it's it is overwhelmingly male dominated. But that's not
(10:51):
to say that women aren't invested in comics, right, I mean,
you know, as again, as we talked about in our
first episode on this, women and girls have been interested
in comics and cartoons since the very beginning. It's only
sort of around World War Two that it became not
so cool for girls to be sort of involved, whether
(11:15):
in the industry itself or in the actual consumption of
comics and cartoons. And so a recent Facebook data survey
found that forty six percent of self identified comics fans
are women. Now, when I saw that statistic, I wondered
whether some people, say, like comics die hards, the fans
(11:38):
who really consider themselves fans who buy the two issues,
one so that it can remain in its plastic sleeve
and the other that they can actually read, whether they
might sneer a little bit at that percentage, in the
same way that similar percentages about women and gaming are
often sneered at because oh, well, those women are just
playing candy crush. They aren't, you know, up all night
on Xbox Live because I have a feeling based on
(12:02):
the kinds of names that we were getting from stuff
I'm never told you fans about their favorite women comic
artists and comic strips, a lot of them are digital,
their web comics, and digital has really changed the current
comics game. Not to say that there there weren't also
plenty of more traditional comic book artists that were called
out as well. Um, but that's one thing that we're
(12:25):
going to talk about later on the show, is about
how digital has, I think, in a really positive way,
not only opened up comic creation to more people, but
also perhaps opened up readership and appreciation and consumption of
comic books to women in a way that we haven't
(12:47):
seen in previous decades. But before we get into all
of that, Caroline, we've got to take a quick break
and it will come right back. So the top of
the podcast, you know, we cited a lot of really
interesting things that are happening with women and comics and
cartoons today, but we also have to revisit how we
(13:09):
got here, and a lot of our information is coming
from two great places. One Where are the Working Women
in Comics? By Vanetta Rogers, which was featured on news
Rama and to Wesley Channelt's thesis, working the margins women
in the comic book industry and so where we are
today has a lot to do with the Comics Code
(13:31):
of the late nineteen fifties, whose censorship discouraged a lot
of the material that used to attract a lot of
female readers. And on top of that, it often sanitized
female characters and overaly emphasized g rated romance. I mean,
before the Comics Code, women were really getting into some
(13:51):
of the racier, the darker kinds of comics that Frederick
Wortham and Seduction of the Innocent was out to ban. Now,
on top of that, as we move into the seventies
and eighties, comic book sales move away from the news
stand and you have the growth of direct market systems sales,
(14:14):
and so with that you have the rise of comic
book stores and these spaces really become I mean, we
can all probably summon up the stereotype of the comic bookstore.
It's kind of like the stereotype of the record store,
where it's mostly guys who are going to challenge you
on how much you really know, especially if you are
(14:34):
a girl walking into those spaces, and for a lot
of girls and women who otherwise would be fans of
comics and would pick one up at the newsstand felt
alienated from walking into a comic book store. Right. Trena Robbins,
who we cited a lot in the first episode, Who's
a cartoonist and a cartoonist historian. In an interview with
(14:55):
Collectors Weekly, she talked about this evolution of things moving
out of moving away from the news standard into these
comic book stores. She said that they were awful that
women didn't want to go into these spaces because they
were quote like porn stores. Yeah, I mean I remember
experiencing the same kind of thing in high school when
I started to get interested in graphic novels more so
(15:18):
than traditional comic books. And there was this fantastic comics
store downtown where I grew up, and I wouldn't go
in there though without a friend, because I was too
nervous to talk to the cashier or to ask any
questions at all, because it was very much like if
if I was I mean, I would try to pick
(15:39):
out the right T shirt to wear just to give
myself a little outside cred And I mean it was
it was an intense kind of thing. So that definitely
rang true in my experience. But if we go back
though to the sixties and seventies, it is interesting to
see how with Marvel and d C both attempted to
(16:00):
provide more diversity on the page. They did feature a
few more black and female characters. For instance, in nineteen
seventy five, we have the debut of Storm in X Men,
and that was the first major black heroine, and that
was under Marvel. And then, you know, in our first
episode we talked about how Marvel and DC already weren't
(16:22):
that great in terms of employing women. They lagged behind
their contemporaries, most of whom ended up getting wiped out
by the Comics Code of the late fifties. But so
in the seventies and eighties, the employment situation for women
was basically non existent. But stan Lee did in the
early nineteen seventies try to attract women to work for him,
(16:43):
but not many of them lasted more than a few years. Yeah,
it didn't really work, and even the hiring process was
rather controversial. He apparently had to sit sit the fellows
down and be like, look, guys, we're gonna hire a
couple of women. It's no big neal. We can still
fart jokes the major fear I do have and that
(17:05):
and that is my award winning Stanley impression as well.
But you can see though, as that's going on in
the background, and then you also have the direct market
system rising both in terms of production and consumption, it
understandably becomes this highly gendered kind of boys club kind
of thing. Yeah. So while all this is going on, though,
(17:29):
what's really interesting about comics in the nineteen sixties is
that it's basically basically like, well, whatever mainstream Marvel and DC,
underground comics with an X is really where it's at. Yeah, this,
I mean, they really were sort of providing a counterculture
answer to those big superhero comic behemoths. But that doesn't
(17:53):
necessarily mean that women were super welcome in these underground groups. Yeah,
and this is kind of the unfortunate thing, I mean,
because you have all of these alt newspapers that are
popping up, particularly of course in New York, but particularly
on the West Coast in places like San Francisco, and
(18:14):
so you have our Crumb and others starting to do
these weird kinds of comics and then you also have
women doing weird kinds of comics, but the guys were like, ladies,
we don't want your weird comics. So um. Nonetheless, though,
Hillary L. Shoot, who wrote Graphic Women, Life, Narrative and
Contemporary Comics, talked about how during the Underground Comics Revolution,
(18:37):
this was the first time women were really using comics
as a form of personal expression, which was especially facilitated
by that kind of experimentation with form and style. But nonetheless,
they were kind of having to do it on their
own because I mean, the underground scene was I mean
(18:57):
it was basically an underground boys club as well. Yeah,
we definitely need to get back to Trina Robbin's the
cartoonist and now cartoonist historian um. In nineteen seventy two,
after the huge success of the first ever all women
comic book anthology called It Ain't Me Babe, Robbins and
others ended up forming the Women's Comics Collective, which is
(19:19):
based in San Francisco. And we should know that that's
women spelled w I M M E N, and that's
also comics with an X, and so ladies are doing
it for themselves. Well they have to, yeah, but it
is incredible to see how it ain't me babe immediately
sold out, And so some of these smaller publishing companies
(19:40):
start to pay attention, and some of these all weeklies
start to pay attention. And so you also, then though,
have women being like, well, not only do we make
this stuff, but we can also publish this stuff ourselves.
So you have for instance, Joyce Farmer and Lynn Chevally
forming publishing company Nanny Goat per Auctions, which was really
(20:02):
started to give women more of a platform. So, not
surprisingly along those lines, female sexuality is front and center
in a number of these underground comics penned by women,
one of which has a fantastic rhyming title that I
can't say on the podcast, but let's just say it's
(20:22):
along the lines of breasts and vaginas yeah yes, talking
about ladies yeah um, and other women to talk about
ladies um. Were women including ROBERTA. Gregory and Mary Wings
who were lesbian comic book artists emerging during this time,
and they pinned things like dynamite damsels and come out comics, etcetera, etcetera.
(20:43):
And apparently this was a really important platform for lesbians
at the time as well to be able to tell
their own stories, express their own sexuality and their own attractions.
And this was something that Trina Robbins was talking about,
and I can't remember which artists she was calling out,
but it was a street woman who came up with
(21:05):
an idea for a comic about lesbians and like, oh,
we needed depict lesbians. I'll draw this. And then some
lesbians were like, hey, no, you're not going to tell
our stories. And they were like, oh, yeah, absolutely not here,
you do make these and so they did. And so
with this, women's profiles really begin to rise, particularly within
(21:28):
these indie circles, and by the time we get to
the nineteen eighties, going back to the mainstream for the moment,
there are still very few women at d C and Marvel,
But in the Sunday Funnies you have Kathy Guy's Wife's
Kathy comic. You also have Lynn Johnson with for Better
for Worse, which a number of Sminty fans called out
(21:49):
as well, but really all weeklies were where it was at. Yeah,
because the whole attitude kind of around women in mainstream
comic strips, not to even get into comic books, was
that like, oh, well, why do we need more why
do we need more women's voices. That's like a niche group, right,
women niche group. Well, And even thinking about the women
(22:12):
in the Sunday Funnies, there's Kathy who I mean, you
know it's Kathy, right, She's not exactly a revolute, a
feminist revolutionary. And then in even in like Lynn Johnson's
For Better for Worse, it's usually women in domestic roles,
or you have say Blondie, who's the wife, but she's
she's sexy, she's she's busty. Yeah, And I can't remember
(22:35):
what sources was coming from, if I feel like it
was in the Collector's Weekly article that we've cited where
someone one of the cartoonists was talking about how you know,
men's voices are considered neutral and they're just everyone's voice,
and so they can write about whatever. Their comic strip
can be about men or people in general, it can
be about whatever, whereas women almost have to talk about
(22:59):
being a woman, what that's like because they don't have voices,
They don't have the luxury yet, because there's so few
of them, they don't have the luxury yet of just
oh I'm a woman, but I happen to be drawing
a cartoon strip about whatever that they almost have to
make it so gendered. Well, and this was where all
weeklies really came in to give more of a platform,
(23:20):
a broader platform even than just uh, these independent comics
or zines at the time for women like Lynda Berry,
who I have a feeling a lot of podcast listeners
have been waiting for us to mention um. She was
highly influential in the Alto comic world. I mean just
in general, not just because she was a woman. She
(23:41):
was a massive pioneer and her series Ernie Pook's comic
as c O. M e K was kind of her
big breakout. She's also fun fact, Bessie's with Matt Graining
of The Simpsons, and they were all kind of, you know,
drawing stuff at the same time, and he was like, hey,
you should you should publish this Ernie Pook thing. You're like,
(24:02):
all right, fine, and then it became huge and she's
still she's still making comics today. Well, you also had
artists like Nicole Hollander who did the Sylvia comic, and
of course Alison Bechdale with Dikes to Watch out For,
and then Jennifer Camper with Rude girls and dangerous women,
and those are just a few of the bigger names
(24:25):
that were coming out of the alt and independent comics scene,
which leads us then into the nineties and two thousand's
when I mean we've sort of hit the bottom when
it comes to the depiction of women and men as
well in more mainstream superhero kinds of comics, because this
is when you have these impossibly bust the sexy women
(24:50):
and also these impossibly super muscular, ripped dudes who were
dominating the pages of mainstream comics. And it's no wonder
then that's starting in the early nineties. Graphic novels bring
so much relief to the whole thing. It's like, oh wait, oh,
(25:11):
we're back to storytelling, and oh look, it's beautiful artwork
as well, and we don't have these these intense pecks
and breasts everywhere. Yeah, I mean the types of graphic
novels that you know, I think you're referring to. It's
like it's almost like walking into a quiet room after
being screamed at visually. I mean, I remember, I wish
(25:31):
I could remember the name, but I remember one graphic
novel that I read in high school that I borrowed
from a friend. That was all about like love and relationships,
and it was very like melancholy and sweet. Definitely no
busty babes or ripped dudes featured in that at all,
and no offense any busty babes or ripped dudes listening.
(25:52):
Oh absolutely, We're purely talking about the ones that are
on paper. Yes, Um, So it was a really big deal.
Then that Mouse by Art Spiegelman wins the Pulitzer and
because of that, graphic novels all of a sudden get
the attention from all of these publishers being like, oh, well,
graphic novels, okay, this must be this must be important.
(26:16):
So sort of on the heels of that, you have
a lot of attention being paid to Marjane's Strappi for Persepolis,
which was another favorite called out by a lot of
Sminty fans um, as well as Esther Pearl Watson's Unlovable.
And as we move back into the mainstream and into
comic books, Gayle Samoans Birds of Prey launches at d C,
(26:43):
and Simone is responsible for coining the term that Kristin
and I have mentioned before in the podcast Women in refrigerators, Kristen,
you cared to define that. Sure. Essentially, it's this catchphrase
that Simone developed to highlight the disposability of so many
female characters, even strong female characters in comic books. It's
(27:04):
essentially like they would get to a point to where
they were almost too strong for the plot, and they
would sometimes literally and sometimes metaphorically be tossed into a
refrigerator and done away with. Yeah, make way for a
new busty babe, But they're disposable, so they're their death
is just part of the plot. But Birds of Prey
was and is really cool because this was an all
(27:26):
female superhero group. So women were kind of like, yes, finally,
and yeah they're busty. Sure they're busty, but they were
women grime fighters, and it seemed like Birds of Prey
started to mark a turning point and hey, let's pay
more attention to some ladies on the page. And then
in the late ninety nineties we see Japanese manga become
(27:48):
a huge crossover hit in America. And I don't know
that anime or manga's popularity has dwindled at all, no,
but it probably opened up more girl readers and consumers
to animation, cartoons, illustration, etcetera. And we should probably go
back at some point end to vote an episode to manga.
(28:09):
I know a number of fans uh called out a
number of female manga artists that they really love, and
we've gotten requests before to look at gender dynamics in
manga and anime. So that's something to look forward to
later in the year. Um. But now moving more to today, Yes,
(28:30):
it's clear that Marvel and DC are are attempting to
get a little women friendlier, but there's still plenty of
progress to be made, and there are also some women
in the industry who are a little tired of the conversation. Yeah.
Christina Strain, who's a colorist for Marvel Comics, was basically
saying that, um, you know, you guys are all creating
(28:54):
this controversy. The media won't stop talking about the lack
of women in the comics industree, and it just makes
it worse for everybody. She said, Right now, there's the
swell of ill will towards men in comics, and she
says she gets it, but quote, it's furthering the stereotype
that comics will be incredibly hostile towards women, when that's
(29:14):
just not at all the truth. Comics are about skill.
If you're talented and you're able to work with a
team to create awesome comics, you will get hired. And well,
I totally see where u Strain is coming from, and
I know that it must be frustrating as a woman
who was in on often criticized industry to continue to hear, oh,
your industry is terrible for people like you. I mean,
(29:37):
I see where she's coming from, But I still think, Okay, well,
if it were just about skill, would we not have
more women in the industry in general? Yeah? Well, I mean,
well then there's a question of pipeline of well, maybe
it's the perception of hostility that's stopping skilled and talented
(29:57):
women for even going for it because they don't even
want to have to possibly deal with that too. So
I mean, I don't think it's I mean, I don't
think these issues are ever just as simple as well,
it's just skill, it's just talent, and that's it. I mean,
clearly there are problems with perception in general. This is
(30:19):
something that Terry Moore, who's a self publisher UM highlighted
talking about this. UM acknowledging, yes, there has certainly been
a lot more material out there aim towards male readers,
and unfortunately, he said, most of the public thinks comics
are only about superheroes and action oriented characters. Those of
us who read them though, no different. And I think
(30:42):
that that's starting to become more and more of a
theme as the digital world becomes revolutionizes the comic book industry, obviously,
because print publishing in general is on the decline, and
with the rise of digital it seems like more women
are are coming to comics through that, whether that's by
(31:03):
making them or by consuming them. Yeah, I mean I
can say that personally, I have never been I mean,
aside from chasing down Brenda Starr in the newspaper every
day when the paper came to my parents house when
I was in middle school, I've never been a huge
consumer of comics, comic strips, comic books, whatever, um. But
in more recent years, over the past couple of years,
(31:26):
I have loved a bunch of different digital comics. Things
that women are doing that wouldn't be considered traditional comic
books or comic strips or things like that, but they're
telling a really personal life story, like Ali Brash with
Hyperbole and a half where she's dealing with a very
serious topic, which is depression, but she's illustrating it in
such an adorable and accessible way that it makes it
(31:49):
entertaining and you sort of get a slice of someone's
life in the process. Well and interesting too to see
how it's a lot of these people making web comics
and developing a digital following and then they're coming into print.
It's kind of the reverse um but notable to the
going back to Miss Marvel for instance, the sales of
(32:10):
that have been beyond expectation, and especially on digital um
And there was a recent survey out of Comicsology which
found a growing female comic readership on You Guessed It
digital platforms. So interesting to see how that's happening. And
there are in addition to Hyperbole and a half, there
(32:32):
are so many women penned web comics out there to
get to know and love online, such as Noel Stevenson
who I mentioned earlier with Pneumona, Kate Beacon's Heart of Vagrant,
which is hilarious, Spiked Troutman's Templar Arizona, Fiona Staples, who
co created with Brian Cabon the Saga series and then
(32:54):
Kate Leth with Kate or Die and so many others.
Like I said, if you head over to stuff I
Never told you dot com, we're going to compile all
of your suggestions with links to all of the web
comics or the comic book Artists site so that you
can check them out and see what women are doing
and drawing. Because the answer is so much. So what
(33:17):
do you think, Caroline, from going from Rose O'Neill in
the late eighteen hundreds all the way up to say
an Ali Brash today, what what? What do you think
is the status of women in cartoons? Well, I do
really think it's interesting to watch this rise and fall
(33:37):
that has seemed to happen over the past hundred or
so years. Because when O'Neil was popular with her QP drawings, um,
it wasn't unusual or unexpected for girls and women to
enjoy that type of art and that type of medium
and and collect them and color them in themselves. And
(33:58):
then we hit this point in in in and after
World War Two where gender and gender divisions were so
important and everything had to be black and white, and
women were sort of pushed aside, and like Hey, this
isn't a girly thing to do. This is all action
and adventure and superheroes and fighting Hitler. This isn't for
you to enjoy. And so it's really nice and interesting
and reassuring to see that with the rise of the
(34:20):
digital medium and more people relying on it, that more
women now not only have access to comics around the world,
but they can create their own and give voice to
something that other people can relate to. Like in the
sixties when we had that comics with an ex revolution
and women, especially lesbian women, could finally say, here's my story.
(34:42):
I want to tell you my story in my own words.
Now you can have women like Ali Brash telling her story. No,
I'm going to tell you what depression is like, and
so many girls and women out there can say, oh,
I feel that way too well. And considering too the
delight and fandom that was sparked what we just asked
folks for recommendations and their favorites. It also seems to
(35:04):
be hearkening back to the time in the late teen
hundreds in the early nineteen hundreds that Tina Robbins talked
about or Trina Robbins, excuse me, talked about where you
would have I mean, where these women cartoonists were superstars
and people would collect them in scrap books. And no,
we don't need them in scrap books anymore. But they're
pinned all over Pinterest now right exactly, And they these
(35:26):
women are attracting you know, they're their own fans. So
I think there's obviously and almost always still progress to
be made. But I think it's a pretty good time. Yeah,
any time that women can share their stories in their
own voices. I mean it stinks that it always seems
to have to be through the underground, you know, and
(35:48):
through their own publishing memes, and it's not through something
like d C. But I feel like even their strides
are being made. Oh absolutely absolutely, And it's not going
back to too Sarah see Anderson. Not all these stories
but also humor. Yeah, so many funny ladies. So now
we wanted to hear from you. Who are your favorites?
(36:09):
Whose names did we overlook? There were Again, there were
so many suggestions that we got we did not have
time to read out every single one. Um, So if
you are a fan or a creator, we would love
to hear from you. Mom stuff at how stuff works
dot Com is our email address. You can tweet us
at mom Stuff podcasts, or messages on Facebook, and we've
(36:31):
got a couple of messages to share with you right now. Well,
I've got a letter here from Laurie about our episode
on Night Shift Moms. She says, I've been working the
night shift for over twenty eight years. I started out
doing it when I was just nineteen, thinking that it
would be a fun adventure, and it really was. I
(36:53):
work in emergency rooms as a respiratory care practitioner. After
I got married to my high school sweetheart at twenty three,
I continued to job because it also paid well and
we had only one car and a large college debt,
so I would drive to work at night and pass
the car keys to my husband in the morning so
he could go to college. Than at twenty five, I
had my first child and we couldn't afford childcare, so
I continued the night shift and passed the keys and
(37:15):
the baby with each shift change. I felt that my
husband got the better deal there. He just had to
feed the baby and put him into bed at night,
but when I got home, I was only napping when
he napped, and then back to work. Again. But when
the second child came along two years later, I was
averaging about three hours of sleep a day, but felt
like the women you mentioned in your program that at
least my baby saw me during the day and we
(37:36):
never had to deal with sitters and childcare issues. Over
the years, something ended up happening to me as well.
My circadian rhythm moved. I was now hardwired to being
up at night. I discussed this with my physician and
she felt that I shouldn't flip my schedule back and forth,
as that may cause more harmed my system. So to
this day, I work seven on seven off and I
(37:57):
don't flip my clock back to the day shift. When
I'm off, I get a lot done at night, catch
up on the laundry, another quiet housework, and grocery shopping
is a dream. I agree that working the night shift
has some disadvantages. I did have a cancer scare when
I was twenty nine, of the thyroid variety, but it
was caught early and I'm fine now. Also, my husband
has never liked that I worked the night shift. He
(38:18):
understands this, but he misses me and I missed him too.
We've been married twenty four years and I kind of
believe that having to be away from him may for
us have strengthened our relationship. I always have interesting things
to talk to him about on my week off, and
we do get every other week to hang out together,
and if there's something special we want to do, I
will get up early to accommodate him. For me, I
(38:38):
don't know any different. My early memories are being up
at night. Maybe I'm one of those people. The hardest
thing for me, and I'm sure you touched on this,
was that it's hard to have friends when you work
the night shift. I have a few, but it seems
like I rarely see them because of my schedule. I
just thought you'd like to hear from someone who has
done this all her life, and even with all the
hardships that may have caused sleepless days in a grumpy hub,
(39:00):
and I still feel that what I did has been
the best thing I could have done for my family.
I think I'll always be a night bird. So thanks, Lorie. Well.
I have a letter here from Janna. She says, my
mom has been a nurse for twenty five years and
has worked both day and night shifts in that time.
She does twelve hour shifts and commutes about an hour
(39:20):
each way, so I did not get a lot of
time with her growing up. It was especially hard during
my teen years when she was working almost exclusively night shifts.
A mix of my tired mother and teenage hormonal drama
was a bit of a recipe for disaster when it
came to sleepovers. Everyone else could have them but me.
The horror. Now that I'm in my mid twenties, I
see the sacrifices that she made for me and my dad.
(39:43):
She worked so hard to be the best provider and
mom she could be. I'm so thankful for her dedication.
She truly taught me what it means to work hard
and to earn what you get. Thanks for your salute
to the unsung heroes who work well we sleep. So
thank you, Jennifer right a hand, and thanks everybody who's
written into us. Mom stuff at how stuff Works dot
Com is our email address and for links to all
(40:04):
of our social media as well as all of our blogs, videos,
and podcast with our sources so you can learn more
about women and the history of cartooning. Head on over
to Stuff Mom Never Told You dot com for more
on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how
stuff works? Dot com
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