93 thoughts on “The HU Lady List”

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2. Thank for this post, Shaenon, and all the recommendations.

3. Mary Fleener’s Life of the Party collection and Gabrielle Bell’s Cecil & Jordan In New York both made my top ten. Carol Tyler’s Late Bloomer and You’ll Never Know were serious candidates for my top ten. I used “favorites” rather than “best” in how I considered my list. A couple of Megan Kelso books also received strong consideration.

4. When I read the top 115, I first thought “wow, that’s a lot of english-speaking stuff…” then after that settled, I thought “and almost only men !”

   While it can be argued that american and european comics were always largely created by men for boys (which makes 9 in 115 about right in terms of proportion), it’s not the case in Japan, and I believe quite a few Japanese female authors have more reason to figure in that list than “Daredevil – the whatever arc”.

5. I think American and European comics are, and have historically been, made by men and for men (and boys) in disproportionate numbers relative to other media. I’d argue that this is part of the reason for comics historic aesthetic underachievements too; it’s limited the audience and number of genres attempted, and made the whole endeavor more insular and less ambitious. It’s changed some in recent years, especially with the opening to the Japanese market, where there are as you say many more women creators. But I think the list shows fairly clearly that women, as audience and as creators, remain a minority in US comics culture. Which needs to change.

6. There are encouraging signs, like this: http://www.themarysue.com/womanthology-kickstarter/

   But there are also LOTS and LOTS of discouraging signs.

7. ————————
   Shaenon Garrity writes:

   As a lady who frequently rants about lady issues, I have been selected by the Hooded Utilitarian to write a piece about lady cartoonists that will somehow not make all ladies reading it roll their eyes and groan….
   ————————

   So, is using “ladies” no longer anathema to feminists? Or is it OK when a woman uses it?

   As for the paucity of women creators in Top 100 lists, one can gripe endlessly about how the Patriarchy is keeping Trina Robbins from being rightfully considered as great a comics talent as Jack Kirby, Marjane Satrapi as worthy as Alex Toth, Wendy Pini to be as brilliant as Crumb…

   …but the sad fact is that, for a variety of reasons, women as a group have not been particularly interested in or able to pursue careers in comics; therefore their representation is rather sparse. And expecting females of modest talents, or those whose oeuvre is pitifully sparse, for all its brilliance, to be shoehorned in over males who’ve been both outstanding and massively productive hardly does them a favor.

   (On related veins, check out Germaine Greer’s “The Obstacle Race: The Fortunes of Women Painters and Their Work” — http://www.amazon.com/Obstacle-Race-Fortunes-Women-Painters/dp/1860646778 , http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/05/09/specials/greer-obstacle.html — and the thread at http://www.truth-out.org/node/4269#comment-259959247 )

   In contrast, women are exceptionally well-represented as novelists; indeed, the very first novel — and an acclaimed literary work — “The Tale of Genji,” was written by a woman. Even in times when the Patriarchy was in bloom (even if not to the grotesque extent that in, say, Islamic fundamentalist countries):

   ——————————
   Female authors were substantial producers of Victorian fiction. Of the 878 novelists listed in John Sutherland’s 1989 guide to Victorian fiction, 312 are by women…Women authors dominated the circulating libraries, commercial enterprises which loaned books to readers for fees and were the major sources of sales for the classic Victorian three-volume novel…
   ——————————-
   http://www.jstor.org/pss/378713

   Heavens! Could it be that even male chauvinist Victorian publishers weren’t averse to hiring women, when the latter could produce commercially viable work? And do you think old-time comics publishers would have shot themselves in the foot by rejecting women capable of producing comics that sold? (Whom, as in many other places to this day, they could have gotten away with paying less than for male creators…)

8. Mike, who says it and how it’s used obviously matters.

   Your suggestion that economic considerations would keep sexism from comicdom is nonsense, to put it kindly. Men in the comics industry might reject qualified women for many reasons — because they sincerely believe women are inferior; because they want to protect male jobs; because they are uncomfortable working with women. There are other less pleasant reasons as well. As for the Victorian period…you know many women authors used male pseudonyms or wrote anonymously, right? There was a definite stigma against women working. The fact that women overcame that and made some of the greatest works of literature is a triumph for them, but it’s not a blanket justification of the sexism of the Victorian era, and it’s certainly not a justification of the sexism of the comics industry a couple generations later and on another continent.

   Your comments, both here and in general, are actually a really good illustration of the ongoing sexism of the comics community. On many topics, you’re a thoughtful and knowledgeable commenter. Whenever the subject of women in comics come up, you you end up sounding…well, let’s be kind and say needlessly defensive.

   For example, you scoff at the idea that patriarchy and sexism has something to do with women’s underrepresentation in comics…and then you go on to attribute that to “various factors”. What are those factors, Mike? God given genetic predisposition to not draw comics? If so, how come Japanese women seem to be immune?

   There have been many extremely talented women who have created comics. It is not insane to think that some of those women (like Moto Hagio) are more talented than many of the men on the list (believe me, I prefer Moto Hagio to Calvin and Hobbes and Krazy Kat by a wide margin.) It’s also the case that women have not done as much work in comics as men…and the reasons for that have a lot to do with institutional sexism and insular male genre considerations.

9. Uh, Mike, Marjane Satrapi and Persepolis did make the list. She was at #49. Toth didn’t make the list, unless you include him with the EC Comics War Stories. And I don’t think most of the people whose votes went to that had him specifically in mind.

   I don’t know if this makes Satrapi better than Toth, but she’s certainly more fashionable.

10. Is it controversial to suggest that Satrapi’s book is more fully realized than the vast majority of work by Toth? (I don’t actually have an opinion on this; haven’t seen much Toth, am mildly fond of Persepolis…it’s just my impression that the usual take on Toth is that most of what he worked on wasn’t equal to his gifts.)

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12. Perhaps she’ll say, but I don’t know whether Shaenon would consider herself a capital F Feminist of the variety that objected to the term “lady” (i.e., Second Wave.) There’s a terrific paucity of second wavers in comics. But I also think the term doesn’t have the connotations it used to have.

    I think the lack of Second Wavers is a bigger problem for comics than people acknowledge: one of the things the Second Wavers did was insist on absolute equal representation, which has been very misinterpreted, as Mike sort of does above, as making the claim that women are automatically equal. But that’s not the point: the point is that meritocracy only works if the starting conditions are equal, and if you have to compete in an environment where the culture is stacked against you, you aren’t as likely to be either as “massively productive” or as “outstanding” — because too much of your energy goes to mitigating the environment.

    For most women, although not all, being surrounded by mostly men and very few women is an example of having the environment stacked against you.

    That’s why things like the % of women on the payroll matters. Although over the last decades, both “men’s culture” and “women’s culture” have become increasingly populated by both men and women, we do not in fact live in a gender-free zone. An all-male office will still be a different place culturally from an all-female office or an evenly mixed office.

    That’s a different question from whether those women on that payroll are great cartoonists. The Second Wave argument is that if women have role models and compatriates, they’ll be more likely to be great. I think that’s probably true — it’s also true that some people, regardless of gender, will do amazing work no matter what the context, and that some women are more comfortable in gendered male environments than others and will struggle less with this.

    I don’t understand the point, Mike, of your comparison with novels. Novels were originally a tremendously feminized genre, up around Dickens’ time. Comics have been a tremendously masculinzed genre, and really still are with the exception of Manga. History indicates that it was obviously easier for men to pick up novels and begin writing them than it has been for women to do so with comics. But there are, as you point out, many extraordinary women novelists. So it can’t be that men are better at writing novels, or even that men are better at turning a cultural context to their advantage (although that may be true to some extent). As Noah points out, women had to write under male psuedonyms: even when novels were feminized, even when the consumption of novels was completely dominated by women, as in Austen’s era, the culture was set up to give more attention and validation to men and make it easier for male voices to find a place. That’s what feminists call “Patriarchy.” So I’m not sure what the comparison proves, except that the patriarchy is even stronger in comics than it was in novels…

13. Noah: “…am mildly fond of Persepolis…”

    Yet more proof that Noah’s taste in comics is more conventional than HU readers once thought.

14. Oh dear…I fear I’m a constant disappointment to Suat….

15. No, no, you get a silver star for being conventional. With this revelation, you can point to more than Little Nemo, Watchmen, and Peanuts as evidence of your well-honed taste buds :P

16. Robert: “I don’t know if this makes Satrapi better than Toth, but she’s certainly more fashionable.”

    Maybe that’s true at this point in time, but maybe Satrapi will be forgotten, who knows? Toth is a lot more skilled than Satrapi in every aspect but one: writing. I prefer Satrapi but a formalist will always prefer Toth, so, maybe he’ll stay while Satrapi doesn’t.

17. I think you’re overestimating my enthusiasm for Persepolis? It’s okay…but I don’t know that it would be on my list of 100 best….

18. I don’t know if people click on Mike’s links but this one is very interesting: http://www.truth-out.org/node/4269#comment-259959247
    and has comments from both Heidi McDonald and Kim Thompson.

19. Heh; Kim says to say Ariel Schrag is better than Crumb means your just being silly. Because it’s ridiculous to suggest that Likewise is more ambitious and fully realized than Genesis or Angelfood McSpade. Well, such arguments make the world go round, I suppose.

20. I like Shannon’s list and in fact Lynda Barry and Julie Doucet were on my top ten. And if I were in another mood there quite a few women cartoonists (Satrapi, Carol Tyler, Phoebe Gloeckner, Gabrielle Bell, Shary Flenniken, etc.) that could have made my list.

    For me, comics are a narrative and visual art form but narrative is key for the human interest. Given the choice between a great story and average art (Satrapi if you will) and substandard stories and great art (Toth) I’ll always go with the great story. And if I were giving someone who is not into comics something to read, it is far more likely to be Persepolis than “Bravo For Adventure” (Toth’s best work, but still not good enough…)

    @Mike Hunter: I find this a really reactionary forumulation: “Trina Robbins from being rightfully considered as great a comics talent as Jack Kirby, Marjane Satrapi as worthy as Alex Toth, Wendy Pini to be as brilliant as Crumb.” For me, Lynda Barry is as important as any cartoonist who ever lived and Julie Doucet has expanded my sense of comics as much as anyone I can think of. Women are still undereprestened in comics but there really is no denying that women artists have done major work.

21. ————————-
    Noah Berlatsky says:

    Mike, who says it and how it’s used obviously matters.
    ————————–

    And when a black comedian says “nigger” this, and “nigger” that, is the term therefore wholly excusable? Its foul qualities utterly eliminated? (The reason feminists of my olden era bridled at the use of “ladies” rather than “women” is ’cause the term pushed an image of women as genteel, delicate creatures, needing to be protected, unsuitable for the rough-and tumble world outside the Home…)

    —————————
    Your suggestion that economic considerations would keep sexism from comicdom is nonsense, to put it kindly. Men in the comics industry might reject qualified women for many reasons — because they sincerely believe women are inferior; because they want to protect male jobs; because they are uncomfortable working with women…
    —————————

    It would be nonsense, if I’d said it. As my Victorian-publisher examples showed, even in far more sexist times, for all the surely unenlightened attitudes they might have held, they had no trouble giving a huge portion of author jobs to women. Because for businessmen, except for some self-defeating nut cases, making money is the prime consideration, overruling all else.

    And, in the much more sexist 40’s and 50’s, most comics colorists were women! Which — speaking of “nonsense” — some brain at http://www.truth-out.org/node/4269#comment-259959247 then uses to argue that Fantagraphics is more sexist than DC, because DC has hired a bigger percentage of women. (Most in relatively menial colorist jobs, but “statistics don’t lie.”)

    ——————————
    As for the Victorian period…you know many women authors used male pseudonyms or wrote anonymously, right? There was a definite stigma against women working. The fact that women overcame that and made some of the greatest works of literature is a triumph for them, but it’s not a blanket justification of the sexism of the Victorian era, and it’s certainly not a justification of the sexism of the comics industry a couple generations later and on another continent.
    —————————–

    Who’s “justifying” it? And if women in Victorian times, under far greater sexism, were able to overcome and write “some of the greatest works of literature,” why is it that American women in the 20th century were far less successful in comics?

    ——————————-
    For example, you scoff at the idea that patriarchy and sexism has something to do with women’s underrepresentation in comics…
    ——————————-

    No; I scoff at the idea that it has EVERYTHING (or virtually so) to do with women’s underrepresentation in comics.

    And I aim a raucous raspberry at the “let’s artificially inflate the worth of some creators, because they’re women” attitude. Or the reverse elsewhere: “let’s dismiss the worth of countless literary greats, because they’re Dead White Males…” Call it sexism, but when I admire the work of a woman talent, I’m not giving her any automatic brownie points because she’s a woman: it’s all about what talent is on display.

    (The last few years I’ve been “into” reading classic-style murder mysteries, and the vast majority of the authors whose work I’ve been relishing are women; not only Christie, but Ngaio Marsh, Ruth Rendell, Elizabeth George, P.D. James, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ellis Peters. Didn’t mean to “support women mystery writers”; have just been reading excellent mysteries…)

    On another HU thread, I mentioned…

    If the Patriarchy and its entrenched sexism is to blame for there being so few women into American comics, and there are so many women reading and creating manga in Japan, that must therefore mean that country’s culture and businesses are deeply enlightened and non-sexist, right?

    Ah, but they’re not, are they? ( http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20001029a1.html , http://joelasso.blogspot.com/2006/06/speaking-up-against-antiquated-sexism.html )

    ——————————-
    …and then you go on to attribute that to “various factors”. What are those factors, Mike? God given genetic predisposition to not draw comics? If so, how come Japanese women seem to be immune?
    ——————————

    I’ve already given them on other threads, for all the difference it makes. Stuff such as:

    – Women ending up with the overwhelming responsibility of raising their kids, giving much less time for the deadline-meeting, labor-intensive work of creating comics.

    – Lack of interest in the subject of most American comics: superheroes, war, superheroes, horror, superheroes…
    (Why is it women are more interested in writing fantasy, less so in “nucleonic planetbuster”-type “hard SF”? Is it a sexist conspiracy making girls go for horses rather than cars?)

    Re those Japanese women, as I’d wondered elsewhere on HU, “…are females getting into reading & creating manga because the producers/sellers are so enlightenedly non-sexist, or ’cause they find the product more appealing? …Because the Japanese publishers did not paint themselves into a corner by so focusing on superheroes — it helped there was a far greater comics-reading audience there — and had ‘niche market’ products ready that could appeal to women and girls.”

    – Women being more realistic (who ever heard of a female “crackpot inventor,” or one keeping her family in poverty while chasing one get-rich-quick scheme after another?), pursuing careers and achieving numeric equity in fields like medicine and the law.

    ——————————–
    Robert Stanley Martin says:

    Uh, Mike, Marjane Satrapi and Persepolis did make the list. She was at #49. Toth didn’t make the list…
    ———————————-

    I know; my pairing of the two was in contrasting a graphically minimally-competent creator with one of the greatest talents in that area.

    And indeed, the reason why Satrapi won over Toth is that the latter had no magnum opus — graphic novel or popular comic strip — to focus acclaim. (What are you going to count, his charming but lightweight “Zorro” comics?) Most certainly, as Noah put it, “Satrapi’s book is more fully realized than the vast majority of work by Toth.”

    ——————————–
    Caro says:

    I don’t understand the point, Mike, of your comparison with novels…
    ———————————-

    That — if the added verbiage above hasn’t helped to clarify — the modesty of the success of women in comics cannot be wholly blamed on publishers’ personal sexism. If women could make up a huge portion of Victorian novelists, with a society and publishers which were far less enlightened, then other factors must bear blame for their weak representation in comics.

22. ————————
    Jeet Heer says:

    …For me, Lynda Barry is as important as any cartoonist who ever lived and Julie Doucet has expanded my sense of comics as much as anyone I can think of…
    ————————-

    Certainly, both are great…

    ————————-
    @Mike Hunter: I find this a really reactionary forumulation: “Trina Robbins from being rightfully considered as great a comics talent as Jack Kirby, Marjane Satrapi as worthy as Alex Toth, Wendy Pini to be as brilliant as Crumb.”
    ————————-

    Accurate critical estimation is reactionary? (If you’re assuming I’m arguing “any male creator is automatically better than any female,” I guess…)

    ————————-
    Women are still undereprestened in comics but there really is no denying that women artists have done major work.
    ————————–

    There’s no denying it! Just not enough to come anywhere near 50% representation on “Best Of” lists, despite some folks putting a finger on the scale…

23. Jeet: what criteria make a story “great” for you? I entirely agree with your formulation, and I’ve got nothing against Persepolis — it’s an important story that needed to be told for political reasons — but as a piece of narrative writing I think it’s pretty pedestrian.

    It would be interesting if everybody who contributed to the list also put out their 10 favorite fiction books and their 10 favorite works of fine visual art. I have a hard time believing anybody’s criteria are entirely medium-specific, especially at the aesthetic root which is so person-specific, but perhaps I’m wrong.

24. “And if women in Victorian times, under far greater sexism, were able to overcome and write “some of the greatest works of literature,” why is it that American women in the 20th century were far less successful in comics?”

    You assume that because Victorian times was a while ago, they must have been less enlightened. ‘snot true.

    Same with Japan. Japan is more sexist in some ways than the US, absolutely. But it’s significantly less sexist in terms of women creators in comics. These things are complicated, and the fact that women have been more successful elsewhere *does not* mean that, therefore, comics can get a pass on sexism. Again, the achievements of women in other venues are a *challenge* to comics, not an excuse for comics.

25. I think there’s maybe a confusion about what Shaenon’s doing? Shaenon is discussing the women cartoonists who made the HU list of 115; so it’s not necessarily the list of her favorite women cartoonists.

26. Ack; missed Caro’s discussion of second wave above….

    Just to add to that…one of the things about really fierce second wave writers was that they were often willing to argue not just that women should be equal, but that women were *better* than men — more moral, aesthetically superior (through discussions of gaze, porn, etc.) It was also often a way of using different aesthetic criteria. If you took seriously the claim that you can’t have great art which is sexist, for example, you’d get a very different list; one in which women would be much more heavily represented.

    One of the few real second wave comics is the Marston/Peter WW, which really does argue explicitly that women are better than men.

27. Would the comics world be improved with more stuff like Satrapi’s Persepolis instead of Johns’ Green Lantern? I’d say the latter is actually better, but it ain’t great, either. Is there anything inherently masculine or feminine about these works or is just that they conform to people’s (men and women’s) stereotypes? Granted, one features a female protagonist and the other a male, but I didn’t much care growing up that my favorite author was Judy Blume and my favorite comics were the male-dominated superheroes. Maybe the solution here in the States is to encourage more girls to read superhero comics. Would a more equal gender split really have much of practical effect on content or quality? I don’t see that Manga has any better hit-to-miss ratio than American comics.

28. Caro: “as a piece of narrative writing I think it’s pretty pedestrian”

    I must add that I agree with Caro above. It’s just that most of Toth’s stories (the stories that he illustrated, that is) are really appalling. I think that “White Devil… Yellow Devil” isn’t bad though…

29. Excellent and accurate points, Noah, about the Second Wave. I think comics is really harmed by the lack of a fiercely Second Wave tradition.

    And it’s really disheartening to me too — some of the most vocal opponents of Second Wave-style feminism that I’ve met in comics are women cartoonists. “I’m just a cartoonist” doesn’t assert this aspect that’s special about their work, doesn’t challenge the aesthetic categories that have been historically used to exclude them, doesn’t offer the opportunity for them to be role models, doesn’t even try to actively shape the culture they live in and work in.

    Which, although I don’t think novels is a particularly illustrative counter context, does speak to Mike’s point that there’s much more going on that what books publishers pick. Like in that thread — I don’t think Fanta’s particular bad on this issue, and I think Kim’s point about colorists is a really valid critique, but I also think Kim’s so invested in his notion of quality that he can’t imagine a gendered challenge to it.

    Unfortunately, most female cartoonists can’t imagine that gendered challenge to it either, so it’s not really his fault. I wonder what he thinks of Anke Feuchtenberger?

    Charles: I think I addressed your point in my comment above. A more even gender split influences quality and content by allowing women who are negatively influenced by a male-dominated environment a better context in which to produce their best work. If women see no women on lists like this, they think “comics is not a world where women are welcome.” If they see no women in positions of power or influence in their offices they think “Might as well not waste my time doing my best work here.”

    The idea that the solution is to encourage more girls to read superhero comics kind of nauseates me. Other than the ordinary % representation stuff, the biggest philosophical problem women in comics face already is the pressure to elide their womanness in favor of some illusory gender neutrality. It’s that fucking Second Wave problem again — there are so few ROARING women in comics. There are mostly capable women, trudging along, being the 1% and the colorists, telling their own stories and trying to avoid calling attention to the fact that they’re female.

    If we actually lived in the world of Venus Plus X maybe I could buy the notion that we can ignore gender altogether and aim for a perfect gender neutral world. But we don’t. The line between gender stereotypes and gender DIFFERENCE is hard to pin down. A lot of girls like the stereotypes, or like some of the stereotypes. We’ve got this situation where if we embrace womanhood people say it’s sexist — and if we don’t embrace it, women end up being subsumed into the same old cultural same olds, with the loss of all that moral and aesthetic “superiority” that the Second Wave was so fierce about. Or more importantly, with the loss of that ferocity’s most important effect: the diversification not just of the bodies in a given sub-culture (or cultural environment), but of the sub-culture itself.

    That’s how the Patriarchy wins again, ain’t it? I’m going to go beat my head against a concrete wall. It’ll give me less of a headache.

30. Caro:

    “I wonder what he [Kim Thompson] thinks of Anke Feuchtenberger?”

    Read his list of greats and you’ll know the answer. Kim is the status-quo.

31. Yeah…more women reading superhero comics seems silly, especially since women read lots and lots of superhero comics if you count Sailor Moon, which you really should unless you decide that superhero comics only count as superhero comics if they’re only read and written by men, in which case the whole argument becomes self-refuting and pointless.

    I sort of said this before, and Caro said it better, but it’s worth repeating that one of the points about the second-wave is that taking women’s contribution seriously means rethinking aesthetic and moral categories. The second wave is a challenge not just to include women in the old standards, but to question those standards. That’s why the second wave makes people really, really uncomfortable.

    Alison Bechdel gets at this a little with the Bechdel test, for example. The idea that it’s a basic test of realism/aesthetic seriousness to have conversations between women about something other than men — which comics on the list pass that test? Why is that a less meaningful criteria than, say, nice linework?

32. “For example, you scoff at the idea that patriarchy and sexism has something to do with women’s underrepresentation in comics…and then you go on to attribute that to ‘various factors.’ What are those factors, Mike? God given genetic predisposition to not draw comics? If so, how come Japanese women seem to be immune?”

    I once had a frustrating argument with John Byrne on his forum where he theorized that comics readers are mostly men because women’s brains aren’t structured to process images alongside text. When I brought up the popularity of comics with girls in Japan, he said that Japanese girls must receive special training to develop the necessary cognitive skills. That was when I gave up on the discussion.

    Caro, I consider myself somewhat more of an old-school Second Wave feminist than a Third Waver, but I’m also very sarcastic. (And the Second Wave did have its own problems, especially in dealing with queer and minority women’s issues.) I feel like comics does have a strong Second Wave tradition in the form of the feminist underground/alternative comics of the ’60s and ’70s, which is why I was somewhat disheartened that none of those comics and creators made the list.

    My own list of great cartoonists would probably include different women than the HU list, but I am shocked, SHOCKED that Noah didn’t find a way to sabotage the votes and get Ariel Schrag on there.

33. I threatened Robert that if Schrag and Marston/Peter weren’t in the top ten I’d tell the world of his secret love for Secret Wars II…but I guess he figured no one would believe it.

34. Jeet made a really valid point earlier — which I obviously haven’t internalized yet — that there’s a sort of “liberal feminist” bent to what I think of as the second wave. The underground cartoonists are different from that — they don’t feel feminist in the same way to me.

    However, that is an academic quibble and they still should have made the list, damn it. Aline Crumb is much awesomer than Robert.

35. And OMG, the John Byrne thing — seriously? I don’t even know what to say about that.

36. You need to read Shaenon on the John Byrne forum.

    I was just reskimming that article, and realized that I in fact have very strong opinions about whether or not Captain Carrot is part of the official DC universe. Which probably means I should just shoot myself.

37. I have this feeling that I might break my computer if I read that, but I will.

    Here’s what I wrote in response to Kim on that other thread:

    I’m guessing nobody’s still reading this thread but I’m going to do something contrarian and agree with Kim — although for reasons he might not like. I think he’s absolutely correct that any discussion like this is problematic without some discussion of the values that make work “great.” But to me, the reason that is so important is because, if the history of women’s writing is any comparison, the work of women cartoonists, considered altogether and on its own terms, without reference to the historical criteria used to evaluate (mostly male) cartoonists, may in fact challenge the assumptions and criteria that we use to evaluate the work that’s been done so far.

    I’m a known partisan for Anke Feuchtenberger’s marvelous work. Having recently been introduced to Charlotte Salomon’s work I anticipate a similar feeling to emerge.

    But a lot of people say artists like Feuchtenberger and Salomon are not “cartoonists” because they don’t work in quite the same aesthetic tradition as the ones in your list, Kim — even though Feuchtenberger at least describes herself as a cartoonist. When I start from their work as my aesthetic benchmark, more women emerge: Ana Hatherly, Elisa Galvez, Dominique Goblet.

    The aesthetic tradition of “classical cartooning” (?) unfortunately hasn’t coincided historically with a very welcoming environment for women, one where we have lots of role models and fellow travelers to smooth the path, to provide encouragement and motivation and inspiration, and to create a sense of shared voice. That’s why I’m resistant to the 60-year metric. It doesn’t let the best work by women who have come of age after the advances of recent decades — advances Fantagraphics was part of — come to the surface for critical examination. I think if we limit ourselves to that historical precedent, we can’t, say, evaluate the work of innovative cartoonists like Cathy Malkusian or Lauren Weinstein in the context established by cartoonists like Feuchtenberger and Salomon. And I think reading them that way, instead of against, say, Herge or Herriman, leads to fascinating insights about the cartooning aesthetic and its possibilities — the comparison made me like Malkusian and Weinstein’s work much more than I did before I approached in from that perspective. It remains an open question what such comparisons would yield for reading Alison Bechdel or Lynda Barry or other women who work in the more traditional cartooning aesthetic.

    Maybe it will in fact be 60 years before we can accurately say who the greatest women cartoonists will be, but I don’t think we should be afraid of recognizing and celebrating the work of women cartoonists as “great” until that time has passed. That’s largely abdicating any role that critics and criticism can play in making the environment of cartooning in the broad sense more nourishing for women cartoonists. If we need to codify and celebrate and advocate a separate tradition of “women’s cartooning” with its own aesthetic and cultural criteria in order to be able to roar these women’s names as greats in comics, then so be it. I think Herriman can stand the competition. Maybe we need another word for “comics artist” than just “cartoonist.” But what I think is sexist is the demand that women work in that tradition and only that tradition in order to be considered great.

38. OK, that was a link to Shaenon ABOUT John Byrne, in the Funniest Post on the Internet.

    Not a link to the conversation Shaenon alluded to WITH John Byrne.

    Which I kind of want to read, but am sort of scared to…

39. Caro, I’ll admit that just a short time ago, I actually *registered* on the John Byrne forums to see if I could find it. Unfortunately, my search bore no fruit.

    And yeah, that is totally the Funniest Post on the Internet.

40. To be perfectly honest, I’ve never even read Secret Wars II. I gave up on Marvel’s core line after the first one.

41. Secret Wars II is a profoundly spiritual work, asking deep questions about life and existence. What would it be like, it asks, if a god-like being truly walked the Earth, learning what it is to be a man? Also, what if he didn’t know how to go to the bathroom, and Spider-Man needed to potty train him?

    I don’t see Krazy Kat or Pogo or even Maus grappling with this kind of very relevant issues.

42. Unfortunately, SW2 was written by Jim Shooter, whose comics writing…well…um…I haven’t read since I was 14. I think he deserves far more credit than he’s gotten as both an editor and a publisher–it’s amazing the animosity one can create by telling someone who isn’t an employee or a freelancer that he isn’t welcome to use Marvel’s offices as a hang-out. But Shooter as a scriptwriter? Meh.

43. The meta-joke here is that Shaenon sent the very first reply to our best of poll…and it was a list entirely composed of issues of secret wars ii (she later recanted and filled her list with other, lesser works.)

44. You people are geeks.

45. You only just figured that out?

46. I just thought it needed sayin’!

47. Did Secret Wars 2 involve black costume spider-man before it was called Venom? That is the extent of my knowledge.

48. Caro–

    Sometimes being geeky means you know better than to try to argue with John Byrne. I’ll say another thing about Shooter. His memory sucks, but at least he’s rational. You can actually have a discussion with him without wanting to put your head through a wall.

49. Incidentally, I also acknowledge that Aline Kominsky-Crumb is vastly more awesome than I am.

50. I remember Secret Wars II as being pretty witty. There was one scene where the Beyonder’s new friend Dave convinces him to destroy Death, so Eternity and a bunch of other Marvel Cosmic Beings pop up and try to talk them out of it. Dave says something like, “Sorry Mr. E., but my mind’s made up! See, the thing is, you guys are just conceptual entities! You can’t even conceive of what death is to us actual beings! It’s over your heads!” You can tell that the Cosmic Beings are all pissed off about being condescended to by this guy, but they don’t say anything. There was another scene where a liberal super-villain tries to kill Captain America and says, “You’re a Republican, aren’t you? Well, now there will be one less!” I imagine that Jim Shooter is a much better writer than most of the people doing superhero comics nowadays.

51. Secret Wars 1 was where the Beyonder summoned the Marvel villains and heroes to another dimension to fight each other because he hated the direct market and so couldn’t read about them fighting each other in the regular comic book series. Spidey gets his black costume in that alternate dimension. In Secret Wars 2 the beyonder comes to new york and, apparently, Spider man teaches him how to pee, though I don’t think I ever read that far.

52. In a probably vain attempt to save this thread for, ahem, ladies, I would like to point out that Francoise Mouly is the most underrated person in comics and one of the most amazing women in the arts period. If I had known that she made the TCJ list as co-editor of RAW I’d have voted for her but my imagination was obviously strained.

53. Okay, I’ll bite…why is Mouly awesome? I’m fairly ambivalent about RAW, ambivalent about her work on the New Yorker, and Little LIt is dreadful. What has she done that I should like more?

54. You should read the Comics Journal interview with her and Spiegelman and Gary and Kim and some other guy whose name I can never remember. It becomes completely obvious as soon as she really starts talking that she is better read, more critically and culturally informed, quicker and ballsier than the rest of them put together.

    On the New Yorker I appreciate her handling of the magazine’s relationship with Saul Steinberg. I think taken as a whole her work on Raw is a significant contribution to comics discourse and culture — even though I don’t necessarily love everything she put in there. It irritates me that Spiegelman so often gets the credit for it by himself.

    I think what I admire so much about her is that she has a sophisticated vision about what comic art can and should be, one that is deeply connected to the other arts, and one that she articulates with great precision and depth. She’s the sort of editor that all editors should be — informed and articulate and opinionated and driven and savvy and a little bit ruthless. I don’t agree with every aesthetic decision she’s made, and I would love to ask her how her opinions from that interview have changed over the decades since it was conducted, but overall I think she’s pretty much the exemplar of the role — for editorial work period, not just in comics.

55. Hey.

    Not being up to date on feminist theory, but I am not sure that I understand the argument that women and men are innately, inherently psychologically different as being anything other than mistaking socialization for inherent nature.

56. —————————-
    Shaenon says:

    …I once had a frustrating argument with John Byrne on his forum where he theorized that comics readers are mostly men because women’s brains aren’t structured to process images alongside text. When I brought up the popularity of comics with girls in Japan, he said that Japanese girls must receive special training to develop the necessary cognitive skills. That was when I gave up on the discussion.
    ————————–

    Ha! The simple explanation is that, once upon a time, when they were not so overwhelmingly superhero-centric, comics in the U.S. were plenty popular with girls. And it’s the fact that Japan has a multiplicity of genres in comics, that makes it possible for girls to find titles which appeal to them.

    ————————–
    Noah Berlatsky says:

    …Japan is more sexist in some ways than the US, absolutely. But it’s significantly less sexist in terms of women creators in comics…
    —————————

    Because women creators have been commercially/artistically successful in Japan, doesn’t mean their publishers — overwhelmingly male, surely — aren’t sexist.

    Do you think, because black sports-team athletes in the U.S. can be mega-rich, that it therefore means sports-team owners, or pro sports in general, are therefore a Mecca of enlightenment?

    And American right-wingers can be massively sexist, yet still cheer on a Margaret Thatcher, Anne Coulter, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman…

    ————————–
    Noah Berlatsky says:

    …Just to add to that…one of the things about really fierce second wave writers was that they were often willing to argue not just that women should be equal, but that women were *better* than men — more moral, aesthetically superior (through discussions of gaze, porn, etc.)…
    —————————

    That attitude itself being a throwback to Victorian ones about the pure, genteel, more spiritual and moral nature of women…

    …Said “putting up on a pedestal” then used as an excuse to bar them from the worlds of business, higher education, etc.; ostensibly to protect their purity from being sullied by contact with the nasty, rough-and-tumble world of men’s affairs.

    —————————-
    Caro says:

    …A more even gender split influences quality and content by allowing women who are negatively influenced by a male-dominated environment a better context in which to produce their best work…
    —————————–

    Women should be given a warm, nurturing environment where they can be allowed to produce their best work? How do I get in on that deal?

    You mean well, but do you realize how unintentionally condescending this is; how it treats women creators like fragile little flowers who must be given special treatment? Lest that mean ol’ profit-driven marketplace bruise their little egos?

    —————————–
    If women see no women on lists like this, they think “comics is not a world where women are welcome.” If they see no women in positions of power or influence in their offices they think “Might as well not waste my time doing my best work here.”
    ——————————

    Why couldn’t they instead think, “They need some women in there! Time to kick some doors down and show them what a woman can do!”

    (Yes, Diana Rigg’s Emma “I am thoroughly emancipated” Peel was quite a youthful crush…)

    How many realms — business, medicine, politics — would have remained lily-white and women-free if countless pioneering blacks and women would have had a similarly wimpy “…this is not a world where ‘my kind’ is welcome, therefore I’ll stay away” attitude?

    ——————————
    Caro says:

    You should read the Comics Journal interview with [Mouly] and Spiegelman and Gary and Kim and some other guy whose name I can never remember. It becomes completely obvious as soon as she really starts talking that she is better read, more critically and culturally informed, quicker and ballsier than the rest of them put together.

    …She’s the sort of editor that all editors should be — informed and articulate and opinionated and driven and savvy and a little bit ruthless. I don’t agree with every aesthetic decision she’s made, and I would love to ask her how her opinions from that interview have changed over the decades since it was conducted, but overall I think she’s pretty much the exemplar of the role — for editorial work period, not just in comics.
    ——————————-

    As long as we’re handing out the admiration for female editors, Diana Schutz is most deserving: http://www.tcj.com/the-co-conspirator-a-visit-with-diana-schutz/

    …And how ’bout that Karen Berger? ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Berger )

57. Hey Darryl. That’s usually my take (socialization, not inherent nature.) There have been feminists who argue that women are innately superior because of psychological or physical factors (like William Marston.) Other times it’s fuzzier…Andrea Dworkin for example at times seems to be arguing that men are oppressors/more violent because of sociological factors, and sometimes edges into something that seems like a biological explanation.

    But anyway…the point is you don’t necessarily need a biological explanation to argue that women’s experience is more valid in a second wave sense. You could just say that women’s experience of injustice and/or their social position gives them a better understanding of how our society’s power dynamics work.

58. ————————-
    Noah Berlatsky says:

    …That’s usually my take (socialization, not inherent nature.)…
    ————————–

    It’s not an either/or thing:

    – there are behaviors which most members of a gender innately tend towards

    – there are socially-learned behaviors, which vary across time and cultures (which explains how it was OK for Aztec warriors to be really into flowers, or ancient Greek warriors to be really into young boys)

    – and then there are the ways in which culture influences biological tendencies; at times of war encouraging aggressiveness among males, other times punishing it; suppressing women’s intellectuality and drives for independence, pushing them into the home; when the men-folk are off at war, encouraging them to be strong “Rosie the Riveters,” and when peace arrives, shoving them back into the house, to be “feminine” again…

59. Well, the thing is that there’s little way to tell whether it’s biology, nature, or both. You can’t do controlled experiments with any degree of accuracy (for both logistical and ethical reasons.) So you just have to shrug and settle for trying to treat everyone like human beings. We’re a long way from managing that as it is….

60. There are plenty of women who can go into an all-male environment and do just fine, Mike, as I said. There are even women who actively like those environments. But there are also a lot of women who simply don’t think it’s worth their time to deal with it, especially not now, when there are other options. And there are some women for whom it is debilitating.

    It’s not because of nature, that there are differences, but because we do not live in a gender neutral world. Men and women are socialized differently, still, to varying degrees depending on where they grow up and the education and ethnicity of their parents, among other factors. Until those social differences are eradicated, there will still be problems for one gender in a homosocial group of the other gender.

    But I’m sure you’ve often been the only man in a place where there were all women in positions of power, and had to deal with them unintentionally treat you differently, exclude you from their social group, require your participation in activities you don’t enjoy, make you feel like you were completely outside the system and therefore less likely to succeed no matter what you do, haven’t you? I’m sure you know exactly how it feels and how exhausting and tedious and boring it can be to navigate it all the time, right? Surely this has been your situation at work, at church, in service clubs, and here online, right? (My sarcasm of course discounts the fact that the women in that all-women environment would probably go out of their way to make you feel comfortable.)

    So, sorry, it’s not condescending to recognize that, because there are still social and cultural differences among the sexes, and because some of those differences have to do with sensitivity to social dynamics, there are also a lot of women who DON’T really fit into those environments and who simply aren’t willing to waste their time and energy dealing with men who are too arrogant and self-centered to change their ways so that they’re not actively doing things that marginalize and frustrate the women around them. It’s not condescending to recognize and care that the experience of being stuck in an all male environment for a woman who is not particularly comfortable with gendered male social dynamics is miserable and stressful. But you obviously think men shouldn’t give a damn — that it’s ok to just expect women to fiercely adapt.

    Expecting women to adapt to whatever conditions happen to emerge without any attention to why those dynamics emerge is sexist. You often scoff at the privileges of patriarchy, but your formulation there is a pretty textbook illustration of it. Especially since your attitude makes it plain that you wouldn’t particularly think about making sure the social dynamic did NOT work against a woman — or anyone else who wasn’t comfortable with typical all-male jocularity (or whatever.)

    It’s also a typically gendered male attitude — women should just toughen up like men and deal with whatever jocular bullshit we dish out! It’s all in good fun! They’re as good as we are – they can take it!

    Disgusting.

    Is it any wonder, with this type of attitude on display, that a lot of women simply GO ELSEWHERE?

    As for Diana Rigg, she said when she left the series that “Emma Peel is not fully emancipated.” As far as I’m concerned, however, her disdain for feminism at the time was cowardly and opportunistic, designed to make sure she stayed popular with defensive, frightened men who weren’t tough enough then — or now — to proudly associate with passionately feminist women.

    One of the reasons the Second Wave feminists thought women were better than men is because women aren’t as likely to be this completely inconsiderate of other people’s feelings and this completely oblivious to the dreadful consequences of their self-centered, self-aggrandizing attitudes on other people. Bully for you that you like strong women, but not all people are strong. Not even all great artists are strong. And weak men get ahead a lot easier than weak women, and I’m vastly more interested in the women. Wave your meritocratic bullshit around all you want — I’m prefer being one of those SUPERIOR women who gives a damn about other people besides myself.

    Here’s Gloria Steinem: “Human beings are communal creatures. If we’re by ourselves we come to feel crazy and alone. We need to make alternate families of small groups of women who support each other, talk to each other regularly, can speak their truths and their experiences and find they’re not alone in them, that other women have them too – so it’s a systemic problem. It makes such a huge difference.If I could have one structural wish for the women’s movement, it would be that we have a kind of Alcoholics Anonymous group structure all over the world, so that wherever you go in a different village or town you can find the feminist equivalent of an AA group to go to once a week and to get some support, and some help with seeing the politics of what’s happening to us.”

    The reason women need groups like this, Mike, is because of men like you.

61. Regarding Mouly as editor: I think her most impressive achievement has been the Toon Books line. RAW was an editorial collaboration with Spiegelman, but her influence was somewhat more subtle. Whereas with Toon Books, she created a brand new market with young readers’ comics as books. Literally, no publisher would touch this idea. So she created her own market and brand and has had great success.

    Aesthetically, the books by Eleanor Davis (Stinky) and Geoffrey Hayes (Benny & Penny) are excellent and beautiful comics for any age. The design (by Jonathan Bennett) is crisp and beautiful. Mouly really stuck to her vision and made it work.

62. I missed your response about Mouly before Caro. Thanks.

    Just to expand slightly on your response to Mike, and this is something I’ve said before, but…using individual women’s successes against difficult odds and in difficult situations in order to claim that feminist structural changes aren’t necessary is a really infuriating argumentative tactic. *Some* women have always been able to succeed, because some women (like some men) are just exceptionally tough and skilled. The point about patriarchy is that women (even exceptional women) have to work harder and fight harder and be better *to get to the same place as men who are a lot less tough and skilled.* Diana Rigg left the Avengers, I believe, because she was paid for shit. (“After a dozen episodes she discovered that she was being paid less than a cameraman.” according to Wikipedia). She left the show because of what boils down to pervasive sexism and hostility.

    And this happens *all the time*. It happens in comics. It happens on HU. Which is why, as Caro says, and Steinem says, and Bechdel says, feminism has to be about sisterhood, not just equality. Because gaining equality at the expense of your sisters isn’t really gaining equality at all.

63. Exactly right, Noah — and I think the issue of sisterhood is the one that’s so incredibly hard to get any traction on in comics, because there’s so much entrenched opposition to women identifying as women and so much pressure for women to socialize themselves like comics-loving men.

64. “I think the issue of sisterhood is the one that’s so incredibly hard to get any traction on in comics”

    It’s not hard in the mangaverse…but the extent to which that’s separated off from other American comics is still pretty impressive. And the fact that America had to import an entire other comics culture wholesale in order to create a popular female community of comics readers is telling.

65. And it’s worth pointing out that Mike wasn’t really touting individual women succeeding in difficult situations — he’s claiming it’s condescending to notice and care that it’s a difficult situation at all.

    Noah: Maybe that’s one of the things that makes me a little uncomfortable embracing manga — politically, I’m uncomfortable with the idea that Separate but Equal is good enough.

    Not that the people who love manga are thinking about it that way or that they SHOULD — the existence of the mangaverse is a completely good for the culture as a whole — but if I tried to get involved with it, it would JUST be me looking for a women’s space, and it just doesn’t satisfy that impulse. I want that to be indigenous.

66. Caro and Noah, you are my heroes for today. Seriously. Thank you both.

67. Oh, and just to comment on the manga community (since those comments appeared after I refreshed)… Caro, I completely understand your resistance to getting involved with manga just for the community aspect of it. I think for most of us who are into manga (or at least this applies to me), things happened the other way around. I know I got into manga because it offered me comics that really resonated with me personally and gave me something particular I was looking for in fiction that I hadn’t found elsewhere, at least not to the same extent. Discovering that what came with that was an incredible community of comics-loving women and a slew of amazing female creators was just a fantastic bonus.

68. Thanks, Melinda! :)

    That’s exactly my sense — that the manga community is motivated by a genuine love for the art form, not a desire to have “women’s comics.” The community of it is, as you say, a fantastic bonus. And there would be absolutely nothing wrong with getting into manga for the community — it’s just not going to satisfy wanting Western comics to be less overwhelmingly male.

69. ——————
    Noah Berlatsky says:

    Well, the thing is that there’s little way to tell whether it’s biology, nature, or both. You can’t do controlled experiments with any degree of accuracy (for both logistical and ethical reasons.)…
    ——————

    While there exists individual variation, and the line between nature and nurture is hard to demarcate, there have been plenty of behavioral experiments and analyses of brain structure, effects of hormones. (Which I’ve posted tons of links to; but what chance does reality have against ideology?)

    ——————–
    The Dark Side of Testosterone
    Aug. 2nd, 2011

    … is occasional utter rage and fury for no reason at all, or for a reason that would only cause most people to go “Dang it.” Me, I get HULK SMASH KILL RAGE. I spent most of yesterday asleep in bed, having knocked myself out with benzodiazapenes in an effect to calm down and act like a decent human being. Today has been better, but there is still a definite undertone of “grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr beware of person do not approach.” And I’m not even angry about anything — I’m able to recognize it as pure hormones.

    …The only thing that really gets me off the BLIND FURY track is sex. I feel like a living stereotype. Stone Age Man!
    ———————
    From Billy (formerly Poppy Z.) Brite’s blog: http://docbrite.livejournal.com/

    Heavens! I feel positively girly in comparison… (OK, that doesn’t take much…)

    ———————
    Noah Berlatsky says:

    …using individual women’s successes against difficult odds and in difficult situations in order to claim that feminist structural changes aren’t necessary is a really infuriating argumentative tactic…
    ———————-

    So, there is only one kind of feminism, therefore only one kind of “feminist structural changes” that are deemed necessary?

    Stuff I heartily support are things like anti-sexual-harassment laws; equal pay for equal work, equal employment opportunity regulations…

    ———————-
    Caro says:

    …there are also a lot of women who DON’T really fit into those environments and who simply aren’t willing to waste their time and energy dealing with men who are too arrogant and self-centered to change their ways so that they’re not actively doing things that marginalize and frustrate the women around them. It’s not condescending to recognize and care that the experience of being stuck in an all male environment for a woman who is not particularly comfortable with gendered male social dynamics is miserable and stressful. But you obviously think men shouldn’t give a damn — that it’s ok to just expect women to fiercely adapt…

    It’s also a typically gendered male attitude — women should just toughen up like men and deal with whatever jocular bullshit we dish out! It’s all in good fun! They’re as good as we are – they can take it!
    ————————

    So, by your earlier mention of a “male-dominated environment,” you meant one filled with arrogant, self-centered, sexist “jocular bullshit”-spewing (and no doubt sexually harassing, too) jock types?

    In some super-macho environment like the police or construction work, maybe; that description fits the typical “male-dominated environment” about as much as an anti-Semitic caricature fits the average Jew.

    ————————
    Noah Berlatsky says:

    …Diana Rigg left the Avengers, I believe, because she was paid for shit. (“After a dozen episodes she discovered that she was being paid less than a cameraman.” according to Wikipedia). She left the show because of what boils down to pervasive sexism and hostility.
    ————————-

    Being paid less than she deserved is more a sign of needing a tough agent who’d get a hugely popular star the pay she deserved. (But then, even in modern times, only 7% of women negotiate their pay before getting a job, as opposed to 40% of men.)

    And, it’s more a symptom of capitalist exploitation than “pervasive sexism and hostility.” If someone can be taken advantage of, they’ll get shafted!

    Surely that DC paid those talented Philippine comics creators less than they did American ones wasn’t a sign of prejudice against foreigners…

70. I’ve worked in male-dominated environments all my adult life: sales, computer technology, and science.

    It applies to all of them.

    But it includes attitudes like the one you exhibited on this thread, mistaking concern and support for condescension and dismissing other people’s perspectives and fixable problems.

71. You need to read John Horgan, as I’ve said before, Mike. Those studies and stuff you cite are all really dubious, as is the entire field of cognitive psych when it tries to make any kind of even vaguely definitive pronouncements.

    Diana Rigg’s problems were because the men who ran the show didn’t see women as stars or as people who should be paid. They saw her as interchangeable T&A. Women are more likely to be taken advantage of because sexism exists, and men treat them less well.

    By your reasoning, it’s Jews’ fault for being rounded up and thrown into camps during the Holocaust; they should have just stood up for themselves. It’s black peoples’ fault for being enslaved; they should have developed better weaponry if they didn’t want to be carted across the middle passage and brutally exploited for generations. Workers in early factories should have just demanded to be treated the same way as the factory owners; if they didn’t it’s their own fault.

    And, incidentally, capitalism interacts with and builds on prevailing prejudices. Just because Rigg’s faced capitalist exploitation doesn’t mean that she didn’t also face sexism. Still, men on the left are often very resistant to the idea that sexism might be as important a problem as capitalism. I wonder why?

    Women face longstanding and institutionalized exploitation, both explicit and subtle. Addressing that requires institutional change, not blaming the victim.

72. Hey Caro

    I am concerned with spaces. Comics community spaces. I often find myself outside of the (alternative/indie/literary/art)-comics vogue in my pursuit of some sort of community. I firmly believe that in non-commercial western comics, there is no community.

    I like the idea of a manga-based community…there *are* passionate superhero communities (including the women-fronted Scans_Daily)

    But there isn’t any such thing as a comics community that embraces comics as a whole art form, medium and cultural experience.

    I desperately wish that there were such a thing.

    And consequently, there isn’t a women-specific community either that I’ve heard of. Again, I wish there were. Comics are pretty sad.

73. “Jocular bullshit” exists in lots and lots of male-dominated environments; it certainly applies to lots of male-dominated comics environments. If you don’t see it…well, fish don’t take especial notice of water, y’know?

    Melinda…I see what you’re saying…but I’ve been rereading Sailor Moon, which of course was the gateway drug for a lot of female manga readers…and it is just obsessed with female friendship. So’s Nana, for that matter; I think it’s a fairly common trope for shoujo series — which makes sense for a genre by women largely for women. Obviously BL is an exception for various reasons…but I don’t think it’s an accident that you get this large female fan community around a genre that is committed to the idea that sisterhood is important.

74. Noah, to be clear, I don’t think it’s an accident either! But it wasn’t something I specifically sought out going in, and it was a bit of a surprise.

75. Mike, I can’t even follow your argument anymore. Are you saying that men are better cartoonists than women because testosterone makes them angry all the time?

    Come think, that might explain why I’m an awesome cartoonist: the rage.

76. The Incredible Hulk is the best cartoonist ever except that his fingers are too fat to hold a drawing implement.

    Which means that instead the best cartoonist ever is all the rage zombies from 28 days later.

    Followed by Shaenon.

77. I always wanted to pitch a mystery miniseries called “Hulk Am Detective,” but “Hulk Am Marvel Cartoonist” might be even better. You could sell it as a crossover: one series follows the Hulk’s career as a Marvel freelancer, and the other series is the Hulk’s comic.

    I bet this concept could have actually gotten published in the ’80s. Jim Shooter would’ve gone for it as long as he could be in it.

78. A satire on cartoonist auteurs and their autobiographies.

    Darryl, I got involved in comics mostly via SPX, which really is community-like, for those 2-3 days. Diverse and welcoming and really a fantastic showcase of the best of comics for non-comics folks. But it’s no easy job to carry that out from the show back to the everyday…

79. Darryl, comics is kind of small…but even so, a comics-wide community is still maybe big enough to be hard to pull off?

    I think there are comics communities, if not one community…. As Melinda was saying, there is a strong community around manga, which I think many people find rewarding and stimulating. HU is kind of a community in some ways, too, I hope.

80. For more on Francoise Mouly:

    http://sanseverything.wordpress.com/2008/04/06/francoise-mouly-underappreciated-and-essential/

81. The interview with Spiegelman and Mouly can be found in the Art Spiegelman: Conversations volume from U of Mississippi Press, btw (also in TCJ’s archives, no doubt, if you’re a TCJ subscriber).

82. It’s TCJ #74, from ’82. Future Marvel & DC editor Joey Cavalieri is the Third Man.

    I am a subscriber, but the archive didn’t ask me for a password or anything, so maybe it’ll work for all and sundry…

83. yeah, some stuff is available to all…and maybe some stuff isn’t? (At least they’re advertising complete access for subscribers, which implies not so much for the unwashed masses)

84. Here’s where the interview starts:

    http://www.tcj.com/archive-viewer-issue-74/?pid=4922

85. Mike…sorry, I deleted that comment. You’re kind of going round and round again with points you’ve made before, and at really, really great length. I think we’re just going to end up with more heat and no more light at this stage. Hope you understand.

86. OK; it just vexes how so many confuse my own “tough love” approach to feminism with sexism.

    Indeed, “more heat and no more light” are likely to result: no matter how much explanation and nuance I ladle out, in these quarters at least, I’ll end up considered a bash-’em-on-the-head-and-drag-them-to-the-man-cave Neanderthal.

    Speaking of strong women — whom I love — check out this story (with a nod to Tove Jansson): http://bandofthebes.typepad.com/bandofthebes/2011/07/married-lesbian-couple-rescued-40-teens-from-norway-massacre.html …

87. “Well, Homer, I won your respect, and all I had to do was save your life. Now, if every gay man could just do the same, you’d be set.”

88. Because, Mike, on what grounds do you claim the privilege to be “tough” on anybody other than those individuals who have actively and consciously granted you that right?

89. “Jeet: what criteria make a story “great” for you?” Well, there is not one single criteria for a great story but a set of overlapping qualities but in the case of Persepolis the story is engaging because 1) of its historical and political interest (Iran during the revolution 2) it’s point of view (a young girl in an increasingly misogynist state 3) its sensibility (Satrapi’s reflexiveness in telling the story). All of these are qualities that I don’t find in anything by Toth (and I’ve read a fair bit of Toth).

90. Caro –

    “Because, Mike, on what grounds do you claim the privilege to be “tough” on anybody other than those individuals who have actively and consciously granted you that right?”

    Surely he doesn’t need permission to be tough on an ideology (whether rightly or wrongly – and I would tend to agree that it’s the latter here) from all of the adherents of that ideology? Should challenging a set of ideas ever be considered a “privilege” rather than a right? That kind of thinking (well, anti-thinking I suppose) makes me quite uncomfortable.

91. Ian — the problem is he isn’t being tough on an “ideology”. Women saying they’re uncomfortable in workplaces where there are no other women and observing that this makes it more difficult for them to succeed isn’t an abstract philosophical principle — it’s an observation derived from their experience. An observation made by a LOT of women, consistently over time, in stories and studies, in theory and in HR practice, not just a one-off anecdote. About an experience Mike does not and cannot have. So when he says they shouldn’t feel that way, he’s being tough on THEM, on the actual real women who have had that experience and who experience those feelings.

    It’s patronizing for him to tell those women how they should feel — especially if his intention is to “improve” them through “tough love.” “Tough love” is paternalistic even in its more native psychological context. You don’t “tough love” an ideology — you “tough love” a person. Tough love assumes there’s something wrong with the person and the way they’re thinking and behaving that requires the intervention of a caring person who knows better than they do what’s good for them.

    A man saying he knows better than a woman (or a lot of women) what’s good for her — if that isn’t Patriarchy, I don’t know what is. That’s 1950s patriarchy.

    So what he’s doing isn’t a valid critique of an ideology — it’s just plain old patronizing. Plain old claiming he knows better than all the women who disagree with him, about an experience they have that he doesn’t have. And the position of a patron is one of privilege.

    But you’re right — it’s possible that he thinks it’s fine for them to feel that way, but just believes that we should ignore their input and feelings and experiences and not pay attention to their perceptions and observations because it’s just plain better for those women if we make them struggle against a difficult environment. In that case, yes, devaluing their input and pushing an abstract meritocratic principle on them is ideological. But ultimately the ideology still boils down to him claiming he knows better what’s good for women than women do. Ultimately it still makes his ideology more important than their lives, and that’s still sexist. So I reserve the right to call it “privilege” and be “tough” on it myself.

92. Also…just to be clear, I don’t think anyone believes Mike is a Neanderthal women-should-not-be-equal sort. The issue is that there are different ways to be sexist. Insisting that women be weak is certainly one way. But insisting that women be strong via “tough love” qualifies as well. Like Shaenon said, demanding women jump through a series of hoops in order to earn your respect as human beings suggests that you don’t think they’re human beings to begin with.

    One of the ways patriarchy works is that men have more of a cushion. They have more opportunities to be weak, stupid fuck ups and still succeed than women do…because of gender privilege, homosocial bonds, social expectations, etc. etc. Women have to be better and stronger to succeed, which is a systemic inequality which can’t be fixed by individual women being strong, no matter how strong they are.

    You can’ t deal with systemic problems through individual feats — or, at least, that’s a really limited solution. You need to critique and organize. That’s the purpose of feminism and sisterhood. And saying, women should be strong and equal is arguably okay as a utopian goal in some sense — but you really need to realize it’s utopian, and that to get to that utopia you need feminism and sisterhood and fewer guys telling women that what they need is tough love for their own good.

93. And…I think that maybe is a good place to close the thread, at least for the moment. Thanks to everyone who commented; I’m sure we’ll end up debating these issues again.

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