As we've discussed here, in the past few years the number of women who've flooded into comics as fans has been amazing (even as the numbers in sales have plunged, which I don't get - except that I don't think anybody actually pays for the comics they read anymore*), and the web presence of female fans seems gargantuan, no matter how you slice it. Anecdotally, on my routine trips to Austin Books and Comics, I see far more women now than what one saw in comic shops as recently as 2004. Of course, I think ABC works hard to make the shop friendly to anyone who walks in the door.**
Why are there more women into comics than a few years back?
I suspect that a few dozen factors are at play, from the social changes we've seen in schools, parents no longer walking around enforcing ideas about what "girls are supposed to be like in order to get a man", a generation of parents raised on geek and sci-fi culture who think its keen when their children of either sex start geeking out. But I also believe the marketing of sci-fi to a uni-sex audience really took off in the late 90's. The 20-somethings of today were the kids playing with Pok-e-mon, reading Manga on the floor at Borders, and coming of age in a world where the 2002 Spider-Man movie was considered good entertainment for everyone (and not some anomaly).
The Age Differential
Obviously 20-something women didn't come of age in the same timeframe as my female peers, and I'll drop a spoiler on my own column below by saying that I suspect there's a gap in age between new fan and the average age of a comics working stiff that seems to be causing an interesting perception problem for DC (Marvel once again somehow inexplicably escapes criticism on this front despite looking more or less exactly like DC).
The guys running DC (keep in mind, DC is, in fact, run by a woman and has had a female President from 1976-2002 and again from 2009 to as-of-this-writing) are in their late 40's-early 50's. While artists tend to be all over the map in terms of ages, writers are, in general, not very young. Sterling Gates comes off as a kid, and he's about 30, but the median age has to be pushing 40.
If you're not seeing a lot of 20-something writers at DC and Marvel, part of that stems from how DC and Marvel hire writers. As the most corporate of the companies, DC and Marvel generally only hire writers with proven track records in published work. These companies don't take just any solicitation, they hire writers that have an established track record and don't usually stunt-hire.
You kind of have to think of it like baseball's farm system. Marvel is the New York Yankees and DC is... I dunno, The Cubs. They have a squad of people that work for them, and when they have an opening (and they aren't just trading free agents back and forth or whatever) they call up new talent from the farm teams. Rest of comics industry: this is you.
So what does this have to do with the Con and social media?
Sunday morning there was a surge on Twitter and other places about the take by DC Comics when a fan asked "Are you committed to hiring more women?"
Its a fair question. It absolutely is a fair question. But when one asks such a question, the answers are not as easy as the "yes", the fan is hoping for, and I think one needs to be ready to consider all the variables.
According to Newsarama, Dan Didio responded with: "I'm committed to hiring the best writers and artists as possible".
In a lot of ways, that's a completely fair answer, even if he's not giving a satisfactory answer. If fans want to hear Dan make pledges about changing company policy, I don't think you're going to hear it at a Con panel in response to a person wearing a costume. He answers to a bunch of people in suits, and their math looks a lot different from CosPlaying fans.
But... How does one respond without coming off without sounding like the white establishment telling African-Americans "you need to be patient" about Civil Rights in 1963?
What may be different here is that comics are a business, and I think that informs the answer a bit. Comics aren't a right, and breaking into them is only a faint echo of the social justice issues tied up in, uh, the complete disenfranchisement of people based upon the color of their skin. And if you want to have a conversation about minorities in comics, let's do that sometime...
Stats and numbers
But rather than get to heady about social justice, I'll examine this from another angle (and I'm going to get flamed for this): Have women made the jump from fandom into trying to work at DC and Marvel? Are the women DC and Marvel are not hiring even out there?
I like a good j'accuse as much as the next person, but there are a few things to consider (and from the point of view of an enormous media conglomerate).
- How many female creators of honest-to-god comics are there?
- How many women are seeing their work presented in Previews?
- Of those in Previews, how many are working on something that fits anywhere near with the product DC is putting out there? ie: how many women are actually working in the farm leagues?
If you're DC and Marvel and WANT to call up a female writer, how many 30-something women are there out there who you can call upon?*** Yes, this is an uncomfortable and unhappy point for everyone, because, no doubt, its going to get charges of all sorts lobbed my way - but I just looked through offerings at DCBS.com (basically Previews) for the month of September for non-DC and non-Marvel comics of all sorts, and the people putting together comics out there are staggeringly, overwhelmingly male.
If you want to see change here, there are two ways this is going to happen. Either you can hope DC changes, or you can move from fan to creator and be the change.
I am reminded of a scene in Preacher where Herr Starr is talking to a crack commando unit about dealing with hi-jackers and terrorists, and his instructions begin with "Kill the women first". His point is that any woman who believed in the cause enough, who fought hard enough and became enough of a bad-ass to earn the notice of their macho peers and get accepted as one of them - those women were likely one of the deadliest people in the terrorist cell and needed to be eliminated first.
And for decades and decades women have worked in comics and kicked ass. In many of these cases (Gail, Jill Thompson, Amanda Conner), these women are among the super-death-ninjas of their field. But they didn't just talk about women in comics, they talked about it while working toward getting noticed in comics.
Small pockets of great artists and writers doesn't change the problem with the imbalance across the industry, but a lot of women were willing to put up with its problems and make inroads for the talented youngsters of today. And lets not even get into what women put up with through the Golden and Silver Age when work went uncredited. So... Respect, people.
I also am not really sure if the younger crowd understands the point I was trying to make above, but until very recent history, comics were considered something for icky boys. Not nerds or geeks or whatever cute names we call ourselves now. It was for geeky boys. I think I knew exactly one woman in college who read comics (we talked Invisibles and whatnot from time to time). These women are now the 30-somethings DC could be calling on, and they are something of the rare magical unicorn that keeps coming up. Your Jill Thompsons of the world didn't just slug it out in industry, they ignored social convention when getting into "geeky" things was not actually hip even among the counter-culture crowd. It was just plain geeky. That's a pretty impressive commitment.
I think we're seeing the end of a long tail on a generation or two that was raised being told comics were bad for you (I have my own stories of being 12 and the wars comics caused at my house).
I HOPE that the influx of a female fanbase means that those fans do what their forebears of both genders have done and make the leap from fan to professional. But right now... there just aren't that many women working in what DC and Marvel do. Are the 20-somethings of today going to show the passion in numbers enough that they change the game?
Yeah, I know its a comic, but is it a comic?
One hears a lot about web strips, etc... But as of this writing, DC and Marvel have to be considering web strips more about getting in line to replace the creators of Cathy or Marmaduke, not about putting creators on Teen Titans - ie: is the aspiring creator working in the milieu of DC or Marvel, or doing something completely unlike the work they do?
You may have noticed what DC and Marvel comics basically look like, so I'd suggest that anyone wanting to work for the Big 2 hold off on dreams of taking their super-original indie approach to comics and master what DC and Marvel do well. And when you've sold some comics, I promise, they'll consider it (or at least Karen Berger will).
DC needs to start taking this shit seriously.
If what I'm hearing and seeing in pics from the Con is any indication, there is a market growing insanely fast under DC's nose that loves their characters, seems to be willing to dress up as them, fly to Comic-Con, stand in line and ask questions at panels, will buy their comics****, loves those comics enough to take it personally when a low-selling title they like gets canceled (seriously, I just go through the five stages of grief in my head and on my lonesome when stuff I like gets canceled. I don't start webpages for Stephanie Brown or, in my case, The Heckler.).
They don't need you, you obviously need them, if sales are any indication. And I know its stepping outside of your usual MO to hire people without years of slogging it out elsewhere, but where are 70% of your current writers getting you?
When you get home from the Con, maybe its time to think about that audience (and I know Mr. Morrison was trying to insert levity into the conversation with the dress comment, but it was dismissive). Do you have a better answer? And what part of the New 52 initiative wasn't just aimed at selling the same characters to the same kind of fanboys?
If DC isn't aware of the issue they have, and how they add fuel to the fire every time they redesign a female to have the least amount of coverage possible, they need to get with the damn program. Its time to start acting like entertainers trying to reach a mass audience and not some imaginary comic shop audience from 1997.
In Conclusion
For a small industry, superhero comics are a complex eco-system. I want to believe in the characters and their stories, but at the end of the day, DC and Marvel are both companies.
You know, not long ago women were also considered to not be particularly funny, and the past few years of TV have made us sort of forget that notion. I'd point to some comments Community show-runner Dan Harmon had to say about including women in the writers' room, because it sounds pretty similar. He now has a half-female writers staff despite the abundance of men in the industry.
And the male writers across the board, from top to bottom, in their most private moments drinking with me, when they’re fully licensed to be as misogynist, reactive, old-boy-network as they want, all they can say is, 'This turned out to be a great thing.'Diane Nelson is in a position of power at DC unlike anything we've ever seen before, and she has the opportunity to get some outside the box thinking done to sell comics, or heads will roll. Leadership from the top can't be all wrong if it means the business does better. I'll be curious to see what changes she makes if this New 52 business doesn't make a dent.
*if you don't pay for the product, you do not count as a "reader". Just FYI. If you ARE downloading comics illegally and want to see change, you already wiped out your own vote.
**except Nazis. They hate those guys.
***yeah, I'm judging the living hell out of you if you torrent comics, movies, or TV illegally. You are a bad person.
****downloading pirated copies of comics, by the way, is not a good way to convince anyone you are their demographic.
Dan Didio answered as well as any manager put on the spot could do but the point the congoers were trying to make and Dan Didio was trying to avoid isn't as obvious.
ReplyDeleteI don't think DC and Dan Didio has an agenda to not hire women writers and editors. The issue is that the industry is so small and incestuous that the only people hired are the ones that either make such a splash on the independent scene that their talent is obvious (Robert Kirkman, Brian Michael Bendis) or the ones that toiled through the long internships and created real connections with the editors of the time.
The real question people should have asked Dan Didio is how many other people (men and women) have you asked to "pitch" a title, storyline or character. DC basically did not have a real application/interview process. There are a number of women scifi/fantasy genre writers that would have killed to pitch a Wonder Woman story. Or heck a Batman story. Given the ultra-secretive process which DC decided which titles to revive, release or publish with the new 52, there's a sincere doubt that they let any new blood to give them a pitch to evaluate for consideration. How can you say you'll hire the best people when the vetting process for hiring is that editorial unilaterally decides which characters get consideration and then they hire from the DC bullpen? To put in sports terms, DC isn't drafting new talent, holding walk-on tryouts or putting together a farm system. Instead, DC is merely hiring free agents that they already had relationships with. How is that really trying to hire the best out there? DC is limiting the term "best" to the "best that we are familiar with right now in our rolodeck". And, of course, if you are women not named Devon Grayson, Amanda Connor or Gail Simone you are out of luck.
--NTT
Well, one thing I've seen a lot of online, and I have no way to confirm this, is that DC did, in fact, basically ask a huge number of people to pitch and a whole bunch of the women people are name dropping just didn't pitch. People are dropping names of people with current, ongoing stuff, which may have meant those people were busy at the moment or didn't see any reason to work with Didio's team.
ReplyDeleteKeep in mind, the people pitching also had no idea this was for a whole new universe. There were serious NDA's, and the pros were as surprised as the public when DC announced the New 52 effort. They made the announcement BEFORE work had started on many of these titles.
And, I'd elaborate on your point. You have to assume that a lot of people pitched, and a lot of people got turned down. We know big name male writers were turned down such as Brian Wood, so I'd point more toward "Didio had a vision of what DC would look like, and what several people pitched didn't fit".
In a way, if DC is tumbling by April, that may be good news. It means that Dan was finally able to do things completely his way and failed, and he'll be replaced.
I'd previously used the farm system analogy above, and DC could have pulled from the smaller publishers. I admit I rolled my eyes that so much of the talent was comprised of Didio's Yes-Men of the "Countdown" fiasco. I sincerely hope its not another "Countdown", but... who knows?
Devon Grayson, by the way, hasn't worked at DC in years as far as I know. I have no idea what she's doing.
And, yeah, a lot of fantasy writers, etc... would like to pitch Wonder Woman.
ReplyDeleteBut none of those people have ever actually READ Wonder Woman. There's a major difference between knowing her from bumper stickers and t-shirts and vague memories of a show they watched 30 years ago and 70 years of Wonder Woman comics.
And, yeah, it totally DOES matter.
As per pulling from other media... that hasn't worked at DC (and barely at Marvel). Alan Heinberg supposedly loved Wonder Woman, but couldn't be bothered to actually write her comic when he was given the job (see the One Year Later Wonder Woman flub where the title ceased print for almost a year). Jodi Picoult, millionaire novelist, not only completely botched her Wonder Woman run, but didn't finish it. And its not Wonder Woman, but Felicia Henderson's Titans was the equivalent of watching 8 year olds in bumper cars and assuming that was F1 racing.
As mediocre as much of DC's output has been, pulling from outside the medium has been largely problematic as writing for comics is a pretty specific skill. And you have to build on the fanbase you already have.
And given the difficulty bringing her to movies and TV, I think its indicative of what a challenge the characters actually is to write because we don't know how she works, but we sure recognize when its wrong.
I'm not against bringing in folks from other media, but star name = readable comic hasn't been a formula I've seen work very often.
In fact, the one Superman book published in the last 10 years I just never bought was when John Cleese supposedly wrote "Superman: True Brit" (he didn't do anything but give a few ideas to a ghost writer in the end). I love Cleese, but it was a ridiculous stunt.
I've heard Card's Iron Man is okay. But I think that's been an exception to my experience, especially with the icons of superherodom.
I don't keep up with industry news all that well so if Didio and company actually had an open pitch process than I stand corrected. I do question how open it actually was.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely true that comics writing isn't as easy as people think and that certain iconic DC characters, notably WW, are incredibly hard to write. However, we're not given any compelling argument why Brian Azzarello is going to be any better than all the other previous writers in this new DC including a pretty good run by Greg Rucka.
Alan Heinberg actually was pretty good. I remember reading his first two issues and genuinely liked it alot. I don't know the history or reason for his absence. He just might be terrible at keeping his contractual obligations. It surprises me that DC let him get away with a full year of not writing a major title. That's pretty shocking.
Jodi Picoult is not a genre writer and probably the reason she was hired was because of her rep as a contemporary female fiction writer.
At the end of the day I get it. It's a business and DC needs to get product out. If that requires using your same old bullpen that's fine. However, you can't say you're using the best that's out there when some of your "best" have proven themselves time and time again to be mediocre writers and captains of some pretty bad-selling and failing previous titles.
-NTT
I think DC had a "by invitation" pitch process, but they just didn't know the magnitude of what was happening.
ReplyDeleteThat said: I actually read something last night that led me to believe that both DC and Marvel are doing this thing where they let multiple writers think they're about to take over a book, let them do a draft or two (and I'd assume an outline of what they'd like to do), and then suddenly one or more writers finds out they don't actually have the job.
Pretty scummy. But its also what I think happened a bit during the DC pitch process. It was by invitation, and a year ago, that more or less meant you had the book. Not so much anymore.
Heinberg's run... you know, I read it, but after the first issue, I have no idea what happened.