Liked this comic! Wish it was even longer and more detailed!
Hope/expect the creators will also talk more about comics diversity in multiple dimensions, not only gender! Where are the lesbians and queers?! More women of colour?! (as creators, editors, publishers, characters, fans, etc!)
Excitedly awaiting more!
Expansion/Clarification:
I do have to expand/clarify/correct this narration in the panel where a woman is in the comics store: "Female readers especially found comics shops daunting, given the emphasis on superheros in the 1980s and 1990s."
I was shopping in comics shops in the 1990s as a teenage and twenties-age gal, and I can tell you that the problem was not just or primarily the emphasis on superheros.
The problem was freakin' sexism on all levels in the USA/Canada comics retail environment and the creater-end and company-end of the USA/Canada industry!
The emphasis on superheroes above all else _was_ a problem, partly because the vision of superheroes at the time was much narrower in certain ways compared to now (in terms of gender, race, sexuality, etc., and in terms of being little-influenced by Japanese manga), and partly because comics are not limited in any way to superheroes. That's like implying all novels are murder mysteries.
The retail environments were often (though not always) terrible: crowded, ill-lit, sometimes dirty and/or smelly, covered with half-naked boob-and-butt superheroine posters, usually staffed by straight cis comics-fan guys who happened to have no interest in anything except mainstream superhero comics, and who had no interest in helping any customers, let alone a woman (who clearly can't a be "real" comics fan.)
But I still kept going into comics stores. However, I did take learn to take my business to the best-organized and best-lit ones. They were still often covered in boob-and-butt superheroine posters.
Unless I went to the highbrow alternative comics store, which had lots of awesome stuff, but was sometimes covered in half-naked alt-heroine posters or comics-covers, for the benefit of the straight guys who like alternative comics. At least they carried various queer comics...
So I hope that this kind of thing might be explored with more complexity in another installment of the series!
Also, the history presented here does not address the implosion of the comics distributor section of the USA/Canada comics industry --an event which was quite significant! It decimated distribution options for any company or creator who did not want to depend on or rely on the interests of what I will call the Big 3 of the time (Marvel, DC, Image). This caused terrible problems for independent and alternative creators and companies, where a lot of interesting women were publishing work! It allowed Diamond Comics to establish a monopoly on distribution, and deny distribution to smaller-run publishers and creators in ways that were quite problematic!
Wish that had been included. Maybe the significance of the Distributor Wars will be addressed if/when the series talks about the early years of web comics and the impact of the internet?
Liked this comic! Wish it was even longer and more detailed!
Hope/expect the creators will also talk more about comics diversity in multiple dimensions, not only gender! Where are the lesbians and queers?! More women of colour?! (as creators, editors, publishers, characters, fans, etc!)
Excitedly awaiting more!
Expansion/Clarification:
I do have to expand/clarify/correct this narration in the panel where a woman is in the comics store: "Female readers especially found comics shops daunting, given the emphasis on superheros in the 1980s and 1990s."
I was shopping in comics shops in the 1990s as a teenage and twenties-age gal, and I can tell you that the problem was not just or primarily the emphasis on superheros.
The problem was freakin' sexism on all levels in the USA/Canada comics retail environment and the creater-end and company-end of the USA/Canada industry!
The emphasis on superheroes above all else _was_ a problem, partly because the vision of superheroes at the time was much narrower in certain ways compared to now (in terms of gender, race, sexuality, etc., and in terms of being little-influenced by Japanese manga), and partly because comics are not limited in any way to superheroes. That's like implying all novels are murder mysteries.
The retail environments were often (though not always) terrible: crowded, ill-lit, sometimes dirty and/or smelly, covered with half-naked boob-and-butt superheroine posters, usually staffed by straight cis comics-fan guys who happened to have no interest in anything except mainstream superhero comics, and who had no interest in helping any customers, let alone a woman (who clearly can't a be "real" comics fan.)
But I still kept going into comics stores. However, I did take learn to take my business to the best-organized and best-lit ones. They were still often covered in boob-and-butt superheroine posters.
Unless I went to the highbrow alternative comics store, which had lots of awesome stuff, but was sometimes covered in half-naked alt-heroine posters or comics-covers, for the benefit of the straight guys who like alternative comics. At least they carried various queer comics...
So I hope that this kind of thing might be explored with more complexity in another installment of the series!
Also, the history presented here does not address the implosion of the comics distributor section of the USA/Canada comics industry --an event which was quite significant! It decimated distribution options for any company or creator who did not want to depend on or rely on the interests of what I will call the Big 3 of the time (Marvel, DC, Image). This caused terrible problems for independent and alternative creators and companies, where a lot of interesting women were publishing work! It allowed Diamond Comics to establish a monopoly on distribution, and deny distribution to smaller-run publishers and creators in ways that were quite problematic!
Wish that had been included. Maybe the significance of the Distributor Wars will be addressed if/when the series talks about the early years of web comics and the impact of the internet?