First [I mean, as far as I'm going to discuss today], you've got this bullshit at SDCC:
http://dcwomenkickingass.tumblr.com/pos ... cinterview
http://io9.com/5826557/how-batgirl-took ... -pr-crisis
The room remained mostly male by a large majority. I watched the presentation, first of the Justice League comic, then as solo cover after solo cover was put up on the big screen. And it started to feel almost surreal, because every single one of the covers had a man on it. The only woman I saw was Wonder Woman, on the far side of the Justice League cover - I have no idea why she was left out of the solo-title line-up - but every one of the solo titles they showed had a man on it. I already knew that DC wasn’t exactly female-friendly. But somehow, seeing it like that was really startling. When I got up to ask the question, I was feeling almost *bewildered*, which is why it came out as, “Where are the women?” This line got cheered. Johns responded that DC had more iconic female characters than anyone else, and also said that he loved Mera, who was a great character and ‘right there next to Aquaman’. The first woman Johns mentioned in response to my question wasn’t Wonder Woman, it was a character defined by her relationship to one of the male superheroes.
I responded to that, thinking out loud and noting that a lot of their female heroes are associated with another hero. For example, BatGIRL/Batman, SuperGIRL/Superman, Wonder GIRL…Wonder WOMAN, who I said was the only REALLY iconic DC female hero I could think of off the top of my head.
The audience didn’t like that. They immediately began yelling at me, shouting out their favorite female heroes, Huntress, Starfire, etc. In terms of iconic status, are Huntress and Starfire on the same level as Wonder Woman? I certainly hadn’t heard of them before I got into comics.
The room became extraordinarily hostile to me very, very quickly. People started booing and yelling at me to sit down. I shrugged and said, “Well, now I’m going to get yelled at.” I wasn’t upset so much as I was *confused*. Didn’t these people want to see more kick-ass women? If they loved these characters so much, why were they getting angry at me for asking DC why there weren’t more of them?
Seriously?
Then this:
http://graphicpolicy.com/2011/08/01/the ... t-problem/
Yesterday, things came to a head on the #comicmarket discussion on Twitter. #comicmarket was started by Larry’s Comics and a few others to foster discussion among retailers, fans, publishers, artists and writers in how to improve the comic book industry. In doing so, it has become a public resource, growing each week. It has become a public relations tool, showing off what the comic book industry has to offer. Unfortunately, that came to a screeching halt, as the same Larry’s Comics who helped start the forum for discussion also belittled it and those who participate by posting what can only be described as racist comments.
The discussion began over the rumor of the next “ultimate” Spider-Man being black. Larry thought it was a publicity attempt and then proceeded to post the following:
There’s no excuse for those comments. They are unwelcoming to new participants, combative and racist. Unfortunately the comments didn’t end there. Some other “open minded” individuals piped in when a few of us called out the comments.
Just like race jokes, comments about AIDS also crosses a line.
There’s so many issues with this incident. The first is the clear tone deaf reaction by Larry’s Comics. He deleted the offending tweets not because they were wrong, but because he didn’t want to deal with responding to them. But, that’s what he’s been doing all day today.
Et cetera, et cetera.
I laughed at Frank Cho's remarks on that panel, but is he actually like that for real, or was he putting on a show?
