Howard the Duck Hates Women (<--Clickbait)

Continuing my year-long experiment to only buy comics with at least one female creator.  This week has some great comics I can buy, but some of my favorite comics I can't, and quite a few of them!

Yep:

• Coffin Hill 17 Writer: Caitlin Kittredge -- This continues to be a badass book.
• Convergence Nightwing Oracle 1 Writer: Gail Simone Art: Jan Duursema -- Thanks to the @LCSValkyries for the recommend.
• Convergence Batgirl #1 Writer: Alisa Kwitney -- Love Kwitney! Thanks to the @LCSValkyries for the recommend.
• Saga 27 Art: Fiona Staples -- Duh.
• Southern Cross 2 Writer: Becky Cloonan -- One of my fave new comics.
• The Surface 2 Colorist:Jordie Bellaire -- Still onboard with this one, and a perfect example of a book I wouldn't have found if it weren't for this experiment, and seeking out work by Bellaire
• Captain Marvel 14 Writer: Kelly Sue DeConnick -- Double-duh.
• Max Ride First Flight Writer: Marguerite Bennett -- Another great example of the experiment working in my favor. Can't wait to check this out.
• Updated: Astro City 22: Originally I had this on the "nope" pile--but I was corrected by none other than Busiek himself--Wendy Broome is one of the colorists! Yay!

@feministallies Colored by Alex Sinclair and Wendy Broome. Also edited by Kristy Quinn & Jessica Chen, but you may not be counting that.
— Kurt Busiek (@KurtBusiek) April 8, 2015

Nope:

• Rebels 1 Cover: Tula Lotay   Colorist Jordie Bellaire
• This one is a special exception: I could buy it per my experiment rules, but I continue to refuse to buy comics written by Brian Wood, even when he's working with some of my favorite people in Lotay and Bellaire
• Abe Sapien 22: Continuing pain, and knowledge that I'll likely cheat and buy the trade after my experiment is over.
• Sleepy Hollow Origins 1: The show is a campy pleasure, so I'm sorry I'm missing out. 
• Astro City 022: Sigh.
• Jupiter's Circle 001 (Mark Millar)
• Nameless 003 (Grant Morrison)
• ODY-C 004 (Fraction)
• Convergence The Question 001 (Greg Rucka). Sad there are no women working on this book, since I love Montoya so much. 
• Rat Queens 010
• Darth Vader 004
• Howard the Duck 002: Twelve people working on this book. All dudes.

Avengers: Millennium -- All Dudes, All the Time

Continuing my year-long experiment to only buy comics with a woman artist or writer...

Buy Pile:

• Lady Killer #4: Joelle Jones continues to knock this one out of the park, I bet.
• Names #8: Cover: Celia Calle
• Hinterkind #17 Cover: Marguerite Sauvage 
• No Mercy #1 Writer: Alex De Campi   Art: Carla Speed McNeil  -- Love De Campi's work on the Grindhouse comics, so can't wait to see what she does with the real world.
• Dark Tower Drawing Three House Cards #2 Writer:Robin Furth -- This is definitely a guilty pleasure, seeing Furth continue to expand King's rich world. At what point to the comics eclipse the books? 

If I Can Find the Variant:

• Cluster #3 Variant Cover colorist Jordie Bellaire -- Hopefully I can find this variant, although it's becoming clear that, during this experiment, variants might not work out; ruins the flow if I can't find an ish.
• Uncanny Inhumans Variant cover by Siya Oum -- I'm new to Oum's work, but I hope I can find it!

Nope Pile:

• Hellboy And The B.P.R.D. #5: This one continues to hurt. Some of my favorite characters of all time.
• Millennium #3: I loved this show, even though I didn't watch X-Files. This one stings.
• Black Science #13: The art is just fantastic in this book--sorry I've had to give it up.
• The Dying and the Dead #2: Hickman is one of my favorite writers. I'm sure I'm missing out here.
• Nailbiter #11: I'm cheating on this one, because my partner buys it every week.
• Southern Bastards #8: I've read every ish of Scalped, so missing out on Aaron's writing is difficult.
• Kanan Last Padawan #1: I'm not a big Star Wars fan, but I've been liking the Rebels show, and the new Star Wars comics. 
• Empire of the Dead Act Three #1: Not a huge zombie fan, but this looks so fun and fucked up. Sorry I'm missing it. Also, Andrea Mutti is a guy, which took me a while to figure out. Sorry Andrea!
• Avengers Millenium 001: Comic Vine lists 17 creators for this comic, given the variants and editors. All. Men. It's like they're not even trying.

Buy Comics By Women

This week in my year-long experiment to buy comics with at least one woman on the creative team means that I still get to read most of what I want, but I don't get to read some stuff that is likely really good. Once again I'm pleasantly surprised by the number of women working on the comics that I want to read, and sad at the glaring omissions. 

The Nope Pile
God is Dead 31
Past Aways 1 (matt kindt!)
Drifter 5 
Wytches 5
Darth Vader 3 (Gillen!)

The Valiant 4 (Lemire! matt kindt!)

The Buy Pile
Hit 1957 1 Art: Vanesa Del Rey
Suicide Risk 23 Art: Elena Casagrande
Conan Red Sonja 3 Writer:Gail Simone
Grindhouse Drive in Bleed Out 3 Writer: Alex De Campi Art: Afua Richardson
Red Sonja 15 Writer:Gail Simone Cover: Jenny Frison  
Autumnlands Tooth and Claw 5 Colorist: Jordie Bellaire
The Fuse 11 Colorist:Shari Chankhamma
Wicked + Divine 9 Colorist: Marguerite Sauvage
The Dark Tower: Drawing of the Three House of Cards 1 Writer:Robin Furth
Divinity 001 Cover:Jelena Kevic-Djurdjevic

Drifter and Wytches really hits me where it hurts, as I love some hard-boiled sci-fi and some Scott Snyder. But how can I complain when I get a Grindhouse book, a Red Sonja cover by Jenny Frison, and get to keep reading one of the most underrated titles out there, Suicide Risk?

Lots of Comics Artists Who Are Also Women

Another week of The Experiment (spending a year only buying comics that have at least one woman as writer or artist), and something I'm a little surprised by is creeping into my consciousness: I was already reading a lot of books that had women working on them.  And: There are a lot of women working as inkers, cover artists and colorists in comics. 

Here are the books I'm allowing myself to buy this week:
Alex + Ada -- artist Sarah Vaughn
Burning Fields -- colorist Joana Lafuente
Giant Days 001 -- artist Lissa Treiman
Lumberjanes -- Writer: Shannon Watters   Art: Carolyn Nowak
The Kitchen -- Art: Ming Doyle   Cover: Becky Cloonan
Sensation Comics featuring Wonder Woman -- Art: Noelle Stevenson
Outcast -- art and cover by Elizabeth Breitweiser
Manhattan Projects Sun Beyond The Stars -- Jordie Bellaire, colorist
Red One -- colorist Rachel Dodson
Zero -- art by Jordie Bellaire
Captain America and the Mighty Avengers -- Rachelle Rosenberg, colorist
Princess Leia 002 -- colorist Jordie Bellaire; Rachel Dodson inks

All New Captain America #5 -- if I can find the Marguerite Sauvage variant cover

Nope Pile:
B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth 
Frankenstein Underground 
Millenium 

The Fly Outbreak

That nope pile is so dinky! And aside from BPRD, I'm not too broken up I don't get to read the others. I'm kind of glad my experiment turns out this way some weeks, so I can get through the weeks where I don't get to read most of the comics that I want that week. 

One more note: Is Jordie Bellaire the hardest working artist in comics? 

With Male Privilege Comes Male Responsibility

A few weeks back I found out a writer that I used to love, but whose comics I had given up because of misogynistic douchebaggery, has a new book coming out, and three of my favorite female artists are working on the book. I wasn't likely to read Brain Wood's "Rebels" at any rate, since it looks like Tea Party Porn to me, but, but, but: Andrea Mutti! Jordie Bellaire! Tula Lotay! -- All of 'em on one book! My first instinct was to tweet out to any/all of them and ask why they were working with him--but of course that instinct is also misogynistic douchebaggery itself, y'know? These are grown-ass women, and they make their own decisions, know more about him and about comics than I do, and I don't have a "right to know".  But that was my instinct. Trying to own that. 

Now the completely convenient non-apology from Chris Sims comes out, and even though I also wasn't interested in reading his new X-Men book anyway, I find a promotion quote from one of my fave writers (also a woman) on his website.  And again, my lizard brain responds with: "I WANT TO KNOW WHY!!!!"

And Rachel Edidin, a friend of Sims, has a bunch of answers to the 'why?' question, most of which basically say "this shit is complex". You should read what she wrote: It's pretty great.

I know that. I know Brian Wood is a human being who can make mistakes. I know that Chris Sims is a dude who was steeped in the same bullshit misogynist culture that all of us are, and that we can make room for nuance, and forgiveness, while still keeping room for not-forgiving (which is why Edidin's take is so great). And I think that women in the industry, and women who are fans, get to make whatever decisions they want without me butting in--of course they do, of course they do, of course they do--that is part of the whole point of feminism. 

But as pro-feminist men, I'm not sure we get the same options. I think we have to give up some shit, whether it's reading what might be a great comic, or something more serious, like choosing a different fucking career from the one where we behaved very, very badly. It's male privilege that allows a dude like Sims to think that he can still deserve to write for mainstream comics after behaving like that, especially given the timing of his sorta-apology--and male privilege for men to continue to support men like him. As long as men still have so much more power in the comics industry than women do, as long as women are still underrepresented as writers and artists, then men need to hold the feet of other men to the fire. I'm not going to get on women who understand these men and want to work with them, but I'm still going to get on the men who hire these dudes, and the men who buy their comics, because it's not acceptable that the only repercussions from bad behavior are a slap on the wrist.  

Why Am I Not Reading East of West?

One of the most interesting things about my experiment of only buying comics with at least one woman creator is that I'm discovering a lot of colorists!  One of the other interesting things is how many of my absolute favorite comics don't have any women working on them. I'm having to give up some of the best comics being created, I think. That's the downside. The upside: Still reading some of the best comics being created, and also discovering different writers and artists (though mostly artists).

The Nope Pile:

• Rachel Rising: This one hurts, and it seems kinda unfair putting a comic that is created solely by one person in this experiment, but for now I'm doing it.
• Abe Sapien: Even after the great interaction with Scott Allie I had this week, there are no women working on this fantastic comic, so it stays off of the buy pile. 
• Astro City: Another painful one. This has consistently been one of the best comics (and has been coming out pretty regularly in its Vertigo run!), and I definitely feel like I'm missing out. 
• East of West: I have to ask myself, at this point, if this experiment makes sense. East of West is one of those books that should have an even larger following, I think--it's imaginative, beautifully drawn, twists and turns in ways I can never predict. I hope a woman comes on board at some point soon so I can return to reading this one.
• Star Wars: I'm not the biggest Star Wars fan, but I was enjoying this one, before the experiment started. 

Buy Pile:

• Cassanova: Acedia -- Cris Peter as colorist
• Bill and Ted's Most Triumphant Return -- Whitney Cogar, colorist
• Coffin Hill -- Caitlin Kittredge, writer
• Red Sonja -- Gail Simone, writer
• Star Trek -- Claudia Balboni, art
• Postal -- Covers by Linda Sejic
• Shutter -- Leila deLuca, artist
• Captain Marvel -- Kelly Sue DeConnick, writer
• Ms. Marvel -- C. Willow Wilson, writer
• The Surface -- Jordie Belaire, colorist
• Sheltered -- Shari Chankhamma, colorist
• Silver Surfer -- Laura Allred, colorist

Buy-if-I-can-find-the-variant-cover:  New category because there are so many this week. Turns out that his could be an expensive experiment if I take it to it's conclusion. Not sure if I'll find/buy these, but I'll ask about them at my LCS:

• Thor -- Stephanie Hans, alt cover
• Howard the Duck -- Sara Pichelli variant cover
• Spider-Gwen -- Sara Pichelli variant cover
• Cluster -- Jordie Bellaire, colorist on Declan Shalvey's variant cover

The Gender Gap from One Editor's Perspective

So here's a thing that is happening to me: Someone who has worked on some of my favorite comics of all time is chatting with me about his experiences as a comic editor (of some prestige and for 20 years or so) as regards hiring women artists, writers and editors. That's a pretty cool early result of my year-long experiment of only buying comics that are written or drawn by women.  It started when I suddenly realized that my experiment meant that I wasn't going to be able to buy some of my favorite comics of all--the Hellboy family of comics, including B.P.R.D., Hellboy in Hell, Abe Sapien and the like. It made me curious, since I've been reading the books for a while and couldn't remember when I've read one that involved a woman creator, and after some looking around, I couldn't find any female creators for any of the books. I reached out to Scott Allie, who I knew would know the answer.  Allie was kind enough to get back to me! It turns out I was wrong, but sadly not by much:

@feministallies True, we haven't worked with a lot of women. Jo Chen, @splinister @beckycloonan Michelle Madsen.
— Scott Allie (@ScottAllie) March 4, 2015

Curious, I asked if there were some coming up.  Allie said no, but was cool with discussing the subject in a non-twitter-sized format:

@feministallies @artofmmignola No immediate plans. Happy to discuss in a forum allowing for more nuance...
— Scott Allie (@ScottAllie) March 5, 2015

It's kind of incredible to me that the Editor-in-Chief of a comics company would bother responding to tweets from a stranger, and then exchange some emails--I think it says something not only about how great comics are as a medium, but also about how important companies like Dark Horse are, and folks like Allie. And I'd venture to say that Allie has been a strong ally for women in the industry (my words, not his) in various ways: Not only hiring female editors and other talent, but also getting out there and talking about problems with the industry regarding the gender gap. He gave an interview last year with Jill Pantozzi at The Mary Sue that addressed women in comics--characters and creative talent--in which the very subject of women in the Hellboy books was addressed, and it sums up a lot of what Allie indicated to me in his emails. I highly recommend reading the interview in The Mary Sue in full, because Allie details a lot of the work he's done regarding getting more women in the industry jobs. His ideas around the why and wherefore of a distinct lack of women creators on the Hellboy books is summed up in the article as well:

Allie: Absolutely. The goal is not to fill a quota. It’s to reflect reality. We’ve been given a little bit of a hard time, you know, by a handful of people online, literally a few, that BPRD doesn’t have more female creators involved. Despite everything else I’ve said here, I don’t think myself a hypocrite for saying that I haven’t made an explicit effort to hire women to write or draw [Mike]Mignola’s books. I haven’t made that a specific priority. I’ve looked for the right people to work on the books. A few times that’s led me to women, but I’ve not made it a quota. Nor have I done that on Buffy—it’s just that on Buffy, the pursuit of quality has more often led me to women. Is that because of the themes of Buffy? Or is it about what Buffy needs to be, creatively? I don’t know. It only occurred to me recently, when the diversity thing kicked up after Image Expo, that the first two comic book seasons of Buffy—real comics, all of them—were drawn by a black man, and the current season is drawn by a woman. That wasn’t intentional, it wasn’t a decision we made before we hired our talent, but it’s appropriate.

However, when hiring for editorial staff, I do make it a priority to bring in women. When you’re hiring writers and artists—when I am, anyway—I’m hiring them for what they’ve done, assuming that they will continue to do work of that calibre. When I’m hiring a young assistant editor, I’m hiring them on a hunch. I don’t really know what they’re capable of. I’m guessing, based on whatever factors I can take in. So it’s easier for me to let gender play a part. I’m not going to hire a less talented female penciler over a more talented male penciler, because I’m not looking to fill quotas—I believe I can judge those talents with some objectivity. Whereas with a potential assistant editor, I’m guessing, it’s way more subjective, and it feels like an appropriate place to take a hunch and say, We need another voice in the mix.

Allie has obviously put a lot of thought into this, and has made strides to get more women in comics. He also could have just said to me: Here, let me google it for you and you can go read The Mary Sue article! But instead he engaged. That is a good indicator to me that he's got a genuine interest in making things better. I also don't fault his basic strategy--having more and more women editors will mean more female writers and artists in comics, undoubtedly. But I'm also interested in why he doesn't go further, and try different things (and not just him, of course, but editors in comics in general).  

Choosing the best person for the gig is something that's hard to argue against--problem is, it's becoming more and more clear that we all have unconscious biases. All of us, not just the jerks. The people who are out-and-out misogynists have it, pro-feminist men have it, people doing good work have it. Hell, women have it against women, sometimes. It's a thing.  Why not try out some tools for avoiding unconscious bias as often as possible? The New York Philharmonic discovered that even well-meaning folks have unconscious bias, and gender-neutral hiring techniques caused the hiring of women to go up 40%. Allie has a thoughtful response to this idea:

But I won’t be a one-issue editor, I won’t hire with the sole motive of balancing this inequity, or put that motive above all else. My job, the thing I got into this work with the desire to do, is to make good books. That’s hard enough to do, in my opinion. If I work to create other obstacles and hoops to place between me and my goal, to further my personal political agenda, I am doing it wrong. In terms of hiring an editor or an assistant editor or a writer, the hoops I’d have to jump through to prevent myself from knowing the applicant's gender would prevent me from knowing other important things about them. So anyway, no, I can’t imagine a circumstance under which I’d do the equivalent of that double blind thing the orchestra did, though I’m glad it worked for them. 

Now, none of this means that we shouldn’t do things like Womanthology or the stuff Gail is doing with Red Sonja or Vampirella. There’s plenty of room for books like that, and, as importantly, there’s enough amazing talent out there that you can make those books great. And doing those things will help foster talent that we’ll all use in various ways on other projects. -- from an email

I don't work in comics. I don't even work in publishing. I've never been a paid editor, and that's why Allie's point of view is valuable to me--it has to be hard to make good comics, and to do so for so many years, so I empathize with the desire to not add extra work to that. It's pretty likely that I'll never know just how hard it can be do put out good books so consistently. I also think that, as men who have benefited in whatever ways from the unconscious biases of others, we have an added responsibility to do extra work to shift our workplace cultures. Maybe "double-blind" hiring can't work for a comics editor, but there have got to be some more ways of keeping unconscious bias to a minimum. Hiring women editors to do talent hiring will almost certainly help, something Allie is an strong advocate for, but as it stands, there is a way in which male editors who take this position reinforce the idea that it's the women who do get hired who will have to do the bulk of the work changing the culture, which is part of how the gender gap harms women. Also, as Allie himself pointed out to me, historically Dark Horse has had lots of the editors-in-chief who are women (Barbara Kesel, Diana Schutz and Melanie Crawford Chadwick, for example), which underlines to me the idea that hiring women editors just isn't enough to change the culture as regards gender.

I'm grateful that folks like Allie are making great comics, and thinking about these issues (and other issues of diversity, which I haven't touched on here). I think that we can be fans, and support comics pros, yet still ask these questions, still push them to create more and more diversity, to close the gender gap as quickly as possible. This interaction with Allie makes me hopeful, even though of course we may disagree on the details -- I'm going to miss these books for the year that I'm doing my experiment, and I'm hopeful that as things shift, such an experiment won't be useful anymore. 

Week Two: A Year of Buying Comics by Women

Last week I officially started my experiment of spending a year only buying comics that have one or more women creators.  I'll repeat that this is just an experiment--I'm not advocating for others to do this, or that it's the way to get the culture of comics to be less sexist. I wanted to try it out to see how it would feel, for me. It's akin to Judith Levine's Not Buying it, or even more similar experiments, like only reading novels by women for a year.

This week there are a lot of comics that I want to read, that I have to leave off the buy pile because of this experiment:


No Women Creators Pile:
god is dead     
uber     
day men hellboy and the bprd 1952
big man plans
black science
rat queens
descender 
nameless 
All new hawkeye

The Buy Pile:
Revival -- regular covers by Jenny Frison
Saga -- art by Fiona Staples, cover by Fiona Staples
lady killer -- words, art and cover by Joelle Jones
names -- regular covers by Celia Calle
[Update] princess leia -- Jordie Bellaire, colorist
[Update] blackcross -- cover by Tula Lotay and cover colors by Jordie Bellaire, if I can find 'em
[Update] Rat Queens -- cover by Jenny Frison, if I can find it

Some thoughts about this week: 

• First off, that's a small-ass buy pile. I have some new webcomics on my radar thanks to The Ormes Society, including the fantastic Agents of the Realm. 
• Second thought: It looks to me like the Hellboy line of comics will be off-limits for me all year, since (correct me if I'm wrong) it looks like there has never been an artist or writer on any of the Hellboy books. I hope I'm wrong about that, and/or it changes soon.
• I'm missing out on some awesome comics with this experiment.
• It's tough to find who lettered an issue online. Any hints on this? 
• Lots of coloring is being done by companies, rather than individuals. Huh. 
• There's something wrong with an experiment like this that doesn't let me read Rat Queens. [Update] If I can find the Jenny Frison cover, I can do Rat Queens!
• On the other hand: Nobody involved in creating the Princess Leia comic is a woman?  [Update] I WAS WRONG: Jordie Bellaire is the colorist!
• [Update] I'm going to count variant covers done by women, if I can find them either hard copy or digital.

 

A Year of Buying Comics Created by Women

I really like reading comics--and one of the things that has gotten me back into comics after a few years of not buying them has been the influx of women creators.  I have been buying comics on-and-off for about 20-25 years. I'd estimate that about 90% of those comics were written by, drawn, colored and lettered by men. This is a ballpark figure, of course, but I think it's probably pretty close to the real figure. There's nothing amazing about this--I am a product of Marvel/DC marketing in a lot of ways, I'm over 40 years old, and those comics have historically been overloaded with creators (and readers) who are male.

Given I've spent so many thousands of dollars on male-created comics, I thought I'd try an experiment: For a year I'm only going to buy comics that have at least one woman working on them.

I'm taking the idea that this is an experiment to heart--I'm not advocating that this can fix gender inequality in comics in any way, that everybody should do this, that it will even really make a dent in the problem. Instead, I want to check out my "stuff" around gender in comics: How important is it to me to support women in comics? What does it look like to support women in comics? How important is representation in the material (e.g. Captain Marvel has her own book!) , and how important is representation in the creation of that material (Lumberjanes was created by all women!)?

Here are, loosely, my rules:

• I'm going to only buy comics that have a woman involved in the creation of the book at one of the following levels: writer, artist (drawing and/or coloring), letterer.

• I'm going for "consistently has a woman involved", so if a guest-artist is a dude, but usually it's drawn by a woman, I won't skip the issue

• I'm going to mostly read stuff I would have read anyway, but since I'll be missing out on some good books, I'll probably expand my reading choices, too

• I'm going to try this for a year. I've been doing it informally for January and February so far, so I'll do it until January 2016.

• I'll keep weekly lists of the comics that I *want* to read, but can't, because there are no women involved in them.

• I'll probably also talk a bit about the books that I *can* read.

• I'll do a weekly summation of how the experiement is turning out.

The first thing that comes up for me is that some of my absolutely favorite comics ever will now be off my pull list, at least for now. No Sex Criminals. No BPRD. No East of West. FUCK!

Also, some books with great female protagonists will be off-limits: Copperhead. Rat Queens. Lazarus. SPIDER-GWEN. FUCKITTY FUCK!

I also considered counting editors who are women as ok for the buy pile--but while editors are so often the unsung heroes of comic books, I think comics companies, especially the "big two", often fill their ranks of editors with women far before they hire more women as creators, in the same way that, say, tech companies fill their marketing departments with women, but not their coding departments. This is something I want to highlight for myself.

I'm also fascinated by just how many books I *can* still read--if I had tried this experiment 10-15 years ago, I would have not been reading many books (or I would have been reading a bunch of incredible books I haven't heard of yet?).

Rasputin: Gread Writing, but Still Women in Refrigerator Writing

Alex Grecian knows a lot about violence, and a lot about comics. His novels  about "Scotland Yard's Murder Squad" are well-received best sellers. His comic book, Proof, ran for over 28 issues. He's an avowed pacifist--which rings true; who better to write about the horrors of violence than someone who doesn't think violence is ever a good solution to a problem? His bona fides regarding comics and violent characters are obviously solid.

I also suspect he knows more than most folks do about the historical (and mythologized) Rasputin, given that his new comic, debuting in October from Image Comics, is set to explore Rasputin from new angles.  He certainly knows more about Rasputin than I do. I'd only run across Rasputin because of a smattering of interest in a few Russian plays and novels, and, of course, the wholly fictionalized account of Rasputin as a villain from the Hellboy comics.

When I saw Image's tweet about an article by Grecian about his new comic, I clicked--I don't love all of Image's books, but that's like saying I don't like all of the fiction in the library: One of Image's best attributes is that they choose to publish good stuff, regardless of genre. I wasn't surprised that the link took me to playboy.com--the tamest of adult men's magazines--Playboy seems to be in the midst of re-branding itself as feminist-friendly. I even thought, upon seeing the first art in the interview juxtaposed with a link to "22 Insane Profile Pictures from Russian Gals on Dating Sites" to be depressingly fitting: Did Playboy's algorithms have a sense of humor? 

Being a fan of learning about writers' processes at least since I used to read Kameron Hurley's blog, Brutal Women, which (among other things) detailed the process of writing her first book, I was glad to learn a bit about why somebody would tackle Rasputin in comics form, especially given the mountains of books written about the man. It was difficult to stick with Grecian's words, however, given the stunning art by Riley Rossmo was right there.  Scrolling down through the panels, however, I was taken aback by the choice of panels to appear in this article in Playboy.com. We're treated to a scene of intense domestic violence, and Rasputin's father beats his wife to unconsciousness and perhaps death right in front of the young man.  After his father leaves, Rasputin then heals his mother in a dramatic fashion in the final panel we're shown.   These few pages of the comic, especially within the context of both Playboy and the recent video involving Ray Rice, made me immediately think of Women in Refrigerators phenomenon:

The term describes the use of the death or injury of a female comic book character as a plot device in a story starring a male comic book character. It is also used to note the depowerment or elimination of a female comic-book character. Cases of it deal with a gruesome injury or murder of a female character at the hands of a supervillain, usually as a motivating personal tragedy for a male superhero to whom the victim is connected. The death or injury of the female character then helps cement the hatred between the hero and the villain responsible.  

On the few pages we're given, we see the beginnings of the "hero" (or in this case, anit-hero?) Rasputin, as he is immersed in the violence of the villainous father, and heroically saves his mother's life.  I'm not going to show the mom getting the shit beat out of her by the father here, but you can check it out at the original post.  I think Rasputin looks remarkably superhero-ish here, which seems to be something of the point of this new book.




Given the information I had, I tweeted the following:

the panels in this article make the new Rasputin comic from @alexgrecian look like standard women-in-fridges fare. http://t.co/BMzjSMnyk5
— MenNeedFeminism (@feministallies) September 11, 2014

 
Which led to the following discussion:

@feministallies Guess you'll have to read the whole thing. No refrigerators. Happy to send you a preview.
— Alex Grecian (@alexgrecian) September 11, 2014

.@alexgrecian Sure if you want-but I hope you see how choosng panels showing a woman beaten to death by her husbnd in @Playboy is not great?
— MenNeedFeminism (@feministallies) September 11, 2014

@alexgrecian @Playboy which is still not an answer to the question: was choosing those panels for an adult men's magazine a good choice?
— MenNeedFeminism (@feministallies) September 11, 2014

Regardless of the rest of the issue plays out, the choice to show these particular pages on the Playboy site seems inappropriate at best to me.  Even if the rest of the book shows that this isn't a case of Women in Refrigerators, as a preview, this is (great) art showing a husband beating his wife to a bloody pulp on the floor; the power of such images seems like a poor choice for a set of preview art--in a culture where dudes like Ray Rice exist, we need to give context to any art that shows domestic violence against women, context that by definition can't be given in a preview, probably.

So does the rest of the book show my intuitions were wrong or unfair? What about "the actual story"? Well, even though it seemed the offer of a preview read wasn't on the table any longer, Grecian's agent at Image was kind enough to reach out and send me a preview copy, asking for nothing else but an objective review, and to avoid any spoilers. I read it last night, letting it sink in, and again this morning. It's a well-written book, with art to match. I'll probably pick it up in October, and give it at least a few issues to see if it's for me.  That said, it is textbook women-in-refrigerator comics. Rasputin's mother is there only as a plot device--her beating motivates Rasputin later on to be less-than-kind to his father a bit later on in the book. The father is more fleshed out--we know infinitely more about him than we do about his mother.  Later on, the adult Rasputin we see briefly in this first issue is still affected by his now-dead father, appearing as a ghostly figure. 

Does his mother's beating give emotional resonance to the protagonist? Mabye--but that is central to the whole point of the women in refrigerator concept: Harming/killing women characters is too often done in comics as a shortcut to add emotional resonance--it's a shortcut that has been used so often that volumes have been written about it. Can harm to women characters in comics be done in a way that is not an example of " 'friging'? Of course. Mignola's Hellboy and B.P.R.D. comics are full of women characters who come to harm, but they're not examples of 'friging because they're allowed to actually be characters, not there just to motivate the (usually male) protagonist. Here, we're not given much about Rasputin's mom to work with.

So it turns out this is a solid first issue, and also a prime example of Women in Refrigerators. It didn't have to be both.

Grateful for Female Friends

Found myself this week feeling especially grateful for all of the female friends I currently have in my life, and also for the female friends I had growing up. Been thinking a bit about it because of two stories that dug deep into my brain: Gus Van Sant's film Paranoid Park, and the graphic novel Sentences: The Life of MF Grimm, by Percy Carey, wherein the male protagonists seem almost wholly separated from women as friends.

Paranoid Park is a fictional account of a white, middle class high-school skater boy navigating not only his parents' divorce, but also the aftereffects of a severe trauma. No spoilers here, but he is surrounded mostly by his male skater friends, who aren't particularly good at even noticing he's been through a trauma, and who respond to any deviations from traditional masculinity by wondering if somebody "is a faggo".   The only girls his age in the film he interacts with are his girlfriend, who really only sees him as something of a fashion accessory, and a friend-who-is-obviously-smitten-with-him that he mostly blows off. (To be fair, this second girl is one of the only positive influences in his life.) The movie does a good job of conveying the isolation he feels because of the secret he doesn't feel he can divulge, but also the basic isolation that kids growing up can feel--and especially focuses on the isolation boys feel as they try to fit into the straight jacket of traditional masculinity. 


Sentences: The Life of MF Grimm is a beautifully illustrated autobiographical comic about Percy Carey, otherwise known as MF Grimm, who was/is a hip-hop star of some renown. (Carey is now president of Arch Enemy, a comic company that puts out some interesting stuff, which goes to show this man knows how to create success in just about whatever he does.) He pulls no punches in the telling of his story (and his story includes a lot of literal punches), and my favorite aspect of his writing was that he sets the tone by explicitly laying out some of the culture he was immersed in to those of us who might not be familiar with it-- the culture of a not well-off black kid in the United States. One of the only women he talks about in the book, his mother, is central to the story of his life: She always has his back, and is the central person in his life who teaches him to take shit from no one. (The scene where she punches out a stranger who pinches her ass was one of the best parts of the book, if also heartbreaking.) But that one page on his mom, with the exception of a few words about his grandmother's death, is basically the only time any relationships with women are talked about. Carey seems to have lived a life among men, to the extent that almost all of the formative moments he has chosen to tell about were about the men in his life. If he had friends who were women, he left them out of this book. 

Which brings me to what I have always been grateful for, but feel more strongly these days: All of my female friends. A few of them are ex-girlfriends, but most of them are just people I clicked with on some level, and they have offered me (as I look back) lenses through which to look at the world that I would never have had access to if I had kept my friendship circle to mostly men. Sure, as a man who is romantically interested in women, sometimes friendships with women are sometimes more...complex. There's the sentiment, which I learned from When Harry Met Sally, that men want to sleep with all of their women friends:



And of course this sentiment isn't limited to movies from the 80s. Here's the same idea, in a relatively modern discussion:



To whatever extent that stereotype may hold true, I'd say it's partly because we don't encourage men to be "just" friends with women. ("Just"--because somehow friendship is less-than romantic relationships?) There are too few blueprints for and examples of mixed-gender friendships, especially among straight folks.  

So a thank you to all of my women friends, past, present, and future. 

You Don't Get to Be Kathleen Hanna

It hasn't quite even been a year since the whole Schwyzer meltdown, and we already have the newest "top feminist dude" showing his true misogynist colors. When Schwyzer's truths became impossible to ignore (and, sadly, I did ignore them for far too long), I began some deep rethinking of how I go about practicing feminist ideals in my daily life, and online. Clymer's bullshit has pushed me back into rethinking things, yet again.

I came to feminism through theory (women's studies classes), through lived experience (raised by a bad-ass single mother), and through folks like bell hooks who provided both theory and insight into practice (Feminism is for Everybody).  I knew enough women who wanted men to do some of the hard work of feminism that I began to consider myself an ally. Enough women thought I was an ally that I felt justified in that. Now I see lots of women supporting a dood like Clymer who (to me) clearly isn't fit to lead a gender equality site that I'm starting to doubt (as many other have before me) whether "ally" is even a useful term.  For quite a while I didn't see why men can't be leaders in some feminist fights, but I'm starting to get it now, with slow, dawning understanding. 

And after all the good ideas put forth by many people around why men shouldn't lead anything in feminist movements, it was finally this rather simple analogy that brought it home to me, for which I'll forever be grateful to @heatherurehere on twitter:

"The women of Bikini Kill let guitarist Billy Karren be in their feminist punk band, but only if he's willing to just "do some shit." Being a feminist dude is like that. We may ask you to "do some shit" for the band, but you don't get to be Kathleen Hanna."--@heatherurehere on twitter

Sure, sometimes men listen more to men, and that's one reason why men have to be a part of feminist movement. And patriarchy harms men, which is another good reason for men to be pro-feminist. There are myriad important reasons for men to support feminism. But do we need men to lead gender equality sites? Nope. Do we need men to lead Slutwalk? Nope. 

I still think that men need to connect with other men, and folks of all genders, to build communities, to support each other, all while doing feminist work. I still haven't found that supportive community, really, though lots of new friends on twitter do a good deal of that work.  So I'll keep blogging, and talking with people in Real Life, and amplifying the voices of women, but I'm not even comfortable calling this thing Feminist Allies any longer. I'll call it Feminism Helps Men for now, and see where that takes me. 

Quick Review: Daddy, a Memoir from Madison Young

I feel oddly mixed about Madison Young's memoir, Daddy. It starts off strong with insights into Young's art, work and relationships with family, other artists and her partners--and she really bares her soul, which almost always makes an interesting memoir. Very intimate details about her relationships are given, with some thought, but something about the style of writing left me wanting a good deal of the time. The book begins and ends with much self-examination, and these are the parts I liked the best. Yet the bulk of the book is a series of loosely related life events, which is kind of how we all live our lives, but that choice didn't give me the meaty, explicit connections that I like in memoirs.

On the other hand, it is this style that lends the books some of its strength--when we look back at our lives, we can try to force a simple, coherent narrative, but that's always a bit contrived. Young leaves her life messy in this memoir, and that's to be commended, even if as a reader it sometimes wasn't as satisfying.

I suspect that future memoirs, if she continues writing them, will be better than this one as she hones her writing craft--a book centering on the founding of Femina Potens would be most welcome, for instance, as the bits and pieces we get about it skim the surface. I want to hear (even) more about how feminism, art, submission and motherhood have intersected (or not!) in her life. There is a conceit here that the book is about Young's Daddy, yet is also about her, and that works for what this book is. But I also would love to hear more about her feminism, art and porn work apart from her partner's place in her life, though it's possible that separating her partner from all of that isn't possible(?).

Links:
The book's site: http://daddythememoir.wordpress.com/

50 Shades of Kink (A Little Review)

Tristan Taormino's Fifty Shades of Kink starts out with an honest explanation of why a book like this may be needed now more than ever:

 "Let's say you read Fifty Shades of Grey or another erotic, kinky novel like Carrie's Story by Molly Weatherfield or The Marketplace by Laura Anoniou.  You Enjoyed these fictional accounts of dominance and submission, power and lust, pleasure and pain, hot sex and incredible orgasms. You enjoyed them a lot."  

Instantly setting the tone and at the same time letting the reader know that this isn't just a book written to jump on what must be the money bandwagon of titling something "50 Shades of..."  Instead, this is a book written for the throngs of people who have been recently introduced to kinky ideas from the explosion of kinky fiction that has been happening for the last few years. Kinky books have been around a lot longer, of course, but I think nobody can contest that their popularity has reached a tipping point. And this book is a great way for folks riding that new wave of kinky books to explore what playing in a kinky world might look like for them.

Why is this sort of book feminist? Or, is it? I know enough kinky feminists of various genders to believe pretty deeply that kink can definitely be one tool in the toolbox for feminists. (See also recent-ish posts about The Feminist Porn Book.  I also understand that this is not a universally held view among feminists (what is?).  The straightforward, gender-neutral style of Taormino's book makes a good implicit argument for the former.  

The first section tackles a bunch of myths that sometimes surround BDSM and kinky culture--she explains that myths about all submissives having low self-esteem, about all BDSM being straight-up abuse, that all dominants are sociopaths and like like are just that: myths. She then dives right into how important consent is, and, more importantly, gives a few examples of how folks can begin to conscientiously navigate consent in a kinky relationship. To me, that's feminist as hell. 

This book is definitely a primer. It's written as a solid intro, in quick, plain-language sections without a lot of special jargon (and explanations when jargon is used):

"Play is a common term used to describe the practice of BDSM, as in, "I want to play with a bondage expert so I can learn more about it." It can also be used as an adjective:  "My play partner caned me really well at Susan's play party.  I'm glad I set up that play date!"

Because I Love Wonder Woman, and Couldn't Resist

Taormino doesn't stop there though--I suspect even seasoned kinky folks could get something out of it (aside from buying it for prospective play partners!):

"Cowhide floggers are versatile, and they can create a soft to medium sensation with a tiny bite.  Elk is thicker than deer, and an elkskin flogger creates a heavy, deep, penetrating thud, so it's better for experienced floggers..." 

Another nice style choice for the book is the fact that, unlike some kinky books I've read, Taormino doesn't default to the men-as-dominants, women-as-submissives (mythical) stereotypes, even leaving much-needed room for genderqueer folks by generally steering clear of gender pronouns throughout. This isn't a book for straight people, or queer people, for men, women or genderqueer folks--it's a book for anybody with a growing interest in kink. All this and an into from another favorite feminist writer, Rachel Kramer Bussel. 

Highly recommended.


Linky goodness:
Buy directly from Cleis press here. 
Buy from Amazon here.
Taormino's website is here.
Tristan also has a fantastic podcast that I listen to a lot: Sex Out Loud

Listening to Lorelei Lee

"I didn’t choose this profession as a political act. You will not hear me say that I decided to get naked because I believed it would be sexually liberating or empowering. I’m not going to tell you that when I took off my clothes in front of the camera for the first time, I immediately knew I was on a path to self-discovery. The journey of the last ten years was not something I planned, and the truth of my experience is much more complicated than the public discourse on pornography and sex—shouted out in large, bright headlines from magazine and newspapers—would have you believe. What I can tell you is that as I continued to do this work—as I came up against my own ideas about femininity, power, and sex—I found strength in the part of my identity that developed out of my experiences as a sex worker. I found a manifesto of my own ethics, and I found that, to my surprise, I believe deeply in the positive power of sexually explicit imagery.

I am a feminist, and I am a pornographer. I have been paid for sexual performances of every kind. After a lot of reckoning, I’ve come to believe that the work I continue to do makes the world a better place for women to live in."--Lorelei Lee, The Feminist Porn Book

I can't see how any anti-porn feminist could read that and reject Lee's experience as genuine. Also don't know how you could read that and not want to read the rest of her piece in The Feminist Porn Book. 

A Taste of Power

Reading Elaine Brown's autobiographical A Taste of Power, and it's a fantastic read.  Learning a lot about some history of the Black Panthers, and of my town, Oakland. It's also a bittersweet reminder of how things have changed, and how they haven't, and of how difficult it is to even conceive of revolutionary change.  In her first speech to party members after taking (really, she did have to take it) control of the party, she maps out what revolutionary change could look like:

"We're going to set a revolution example here.  And the example we lay down in Oakland will be the spark that lights the prairie fire.  We will carry our torch to another city, and then another.  Each time, each place, the people will take their lead from us, the revolutionary vanguard.  Just as the people have demanded and institutionalized our Free Breakfast for Children and sickle-cell-anemia programs, they will demand socialized medicine and decent housing.  Soon they will begin to take control of their local political machinery.  Then they will attack the economic structure in each city.  Bit by bit, city by city, they will whittle away at the capitalist foundation.  Eventually, a time will come--not in our lifetimes, Comrades--but a time will come when the people will understand their power and the pigs' machinery will be unable to accommodate their demands.  That is when the people, black people and poor white people and oppressed people all over America, will rise up like a mighty tide and wash clean this beachfront of capitalism and racism, and make the revolution!"

Fantagraphics Conversation: Why Are So Few Women Being Publsihed in 2014?

I really like comic books. I really like independent publishers. I really like gender equality. These three things kinda don't go together sometimes. Comic books have historically had a gender equity problem, both in terms of the creator-side of things, and on the side of the buying public. This is not a new truism.  It's one of the reasons that we want and need great sites like The Mary Sue and Women Write About Comics.  Things are sloooowly getting better: I can now buy several mainstream comic books written or drawn by women every week, something that just wasn't happening 20 years ago.  

Fantagraphic Books is a fantastic publisher of comic books. They're having some financial difficulties, as many (many!) independent publishers are, and they came up with a great way to have their fans support their upcoming publishing season with a Kickstarter that allows folks to basically pre-order a book, with lots of bells and whistles attached (signed copies!).  It sucks that they have to do things this way, but it's great that it looks like they'll almost certainly make their goal.  Go check out their Kickstarter and support them.

Having said all of that:  It looks like only 4 or so of the over 30 books they are publishing in 2014 are created by women. (This could be off by a few, as I'm just going by first names.)  I would feel much more motivated to support them as an independent publisher if their roster reflected more diversity than that. Luckily, Kickstarter allows one to email a project creator, so I did: 

Love this idea, but why so few women creators? Makes it harder to shell out support $$ (though I'll still preorder some on Amazon) when editorial choices around gender are out of touch with your readership...

Fantagraphics publishes a lot of fantastically odd stuff that wouldn't otherwise get published, and I suspect (though I don't know) that more women read their books than read the more "mainstream" comics.  I think their creators should better reflect that. Also, I like to read books made by women, and when there are only four to choose from in an upcoming season of publishing by Fantagraphics, that's not much of a choice (though, let's be honest, the four they are publishing are AWESOME).  

Gary Groth from Fantagraphics responded with a surprisingly boilerplate response that one might hear from Marvel or DC (or The New York Times) when called out on it:

We appreciate your support but the season was created based on the work we have lined up as well as the books people have submitted to us. Please don't discount the amazing work of Eleanor Davis, Ester Pearl Watson, Carol Swain and Joyce Farmer who have work in this season (which is half of our publishing year). All four in this season are veteran Fantagraphics cartoonists with several books out from us, meanwhile a few of the men are new to the publishing world like Lane Milburn and Conor Stechschutle. Fantagraphics also has many women in editorial and managerial positions who influence the season as well make sure we are printing the comics you want to read created by the best cartoonists in the world.

We are publishing these books based on the quality of the work, not the gender of the creator. We would publish amazing comics like those of Eleanor Davis if she was an inanimate object.

This ticks off all of the boxes regarding what amount to excuses for not getting more women on the creators' roster:
"Hey, we have published women in the past!" --Check
"Hey, we are publishing four books by women this year! They've all worked for us in the past! -- Check 
"We're publishing cool stuff by men who wouldn't otherwise be published, maybe!" -- Check
"We employ women as editors!" -- Check
"We're genderblind! We just publish the best stuff. Who knows why men do comics better than men!" -- Check
 
I know it's difficult. You have to make a shift in thinking when trying to diversify as a publisher, or as an editor. You have to do some footwork to encourage a more diverse pool of people to submit stuff. And for a small publishing house that is already struggling, that's a lot to ask.  But geez, if we can't get more diversity out of independent publishers, where should we try to get it?

Jen Vaughn, a cartoonist who also (at least) blogs for Fantagraphics also had a response:

As a working female cartoonist, I probably know more than you do about this particular issue than you do unless Jeff is progressive name.

There is now a list of many, many, many cartoonists we've published on the front page. Feel free to look through all those and if you see some female names you don't recognize, check out their artwork and comics!

As always we appreciate the debate, let me know if you have any other questions.

-Jen Vaughn

In a way, this is more of the same, but with the "added value" of having come from a working female cartoonist.  Unfortunately, it doesn't answer my question at all--it's just a variation of the "but we DO publish SOME women" response, and I responded with that in mind:

Hi Jen--

It's great that Fantagraphics has published women, and is publishing women (yay!). That doesn't explain why only 4 out of over 30 books coming out in 2014 are by women. It's basically saying (and Gary echoed this in his reply to me) "Hey, we publish the best comics, no matter who they are by. Looks like dudes just submit better stuff!" -- which is the kind of cop-out reply that we've heard from Marvel, DC and, well, The New York Times book review (so, ok, you're not alone).

In your experience, and I do value that, of course(!), why would a publishing company publish mostly books by men in a year?

 Again, I love Fantagraphics. I'm happy they're likely going to make their Kickstarter goal easily. I also think that having the female to male creator ratio so low is crappy, and avoidable. Perhaps not easily avoidable, but avoidable. Editorial staffs in all kinds of publishing are slowly making these changes, or at least becoming aware of them. I want Fantagraphics to be held to the same standard--I'll support y'all more the more diversity in gender you have on your roster each year.