The Manly Comic Industry
July 27th, 2011Much like our other target audience, politically charged liberty-lovers, the comic community seems to lack in female leadership and influentials. Just recently a great story came out from the beloved Kickstarter, that once helped us hire actors and shoot Silver Circle. Female comic artists and writers have been using Kickstarter to raise funds to expose their work. The article makes a good point, by explaining the gender roles at comic conventions due to industry influence.
From experience, the typical comic convention consists of skimpy outfits on women and capes for men. Here’s a recent account from the WIP.net with a gender lens from a Wizard World Convention this year. When it comes to industry leaders like DC and Marvel their booths are extravagant with graphics and mega SWAG. They are usually “manned” with marketing contractors with some “booth babes” to add some pizazz. However, I have noticed a bit of a decline in booth babes over the past year. I’m not sure if it was due to cutting marketing budgets or more people were finding out that this tactic was less effective than in the past. Are we evolving or something?
The women working together to form fundraising projects have the latter in mind and well as hopes and dreams just like the rest of the comic artists in the industry. I’d like to give a hat tip to all of the women pursuing their comic careers through unique paths and giving the mainstream routes the bird.
The most popular Kickstarter project, recently, was Womanthology which has generated over 1,000 “backers”, and they’ve raised over $67,000! In an industry where only 10% of the creative work is from women, alternative outlets like Kickstarter are a great service to the outsiders trying to make their way in.
Good luck ladies.
