Womanthology gets ongoing series

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Well, here’s a cool idea. The WOMANTHOLOGY anthology which garnered a ton of money on Kickstarter and a ton of attention everywhere will be spun off into an ongoing comics series which will feature three-issue themed minis. The first theme is SPACE and contributors include Blair Butler, Fiona Staples, Jessica Hickman, Bonnie Burton, Ming Doyle, Stacie Ponder, and more. The book was announced at the Womanthology panel at WonderCon. Unlike the anthology, which was a benefit, contributors will be paid for their work. So, that’s all done and dusted then.

Celebrate INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY with COMICS!

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Today is the International Women’s Day in Women’s History Month. I was working on a big old post on all sorts of recent gender related topics but…it will have to wait.

Instead, I’ll shore my little Pinterest board I have called “Women in Comics.”

Did Scott Lobdell know about Static joining the Teen Titans? Also: Objectifying Bunker

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This interview with Scott Lobdell from ComicVine was sent to us with the idea that maybe he wasn’t up on the news that Static was joining the Teen Titans, which was announced at MegaCon:

Nice art: Sexy male covers!

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Gender switched art seems to be very popular these days, as with the gender-swapped JLA and Avengers. Well, over at Escher Girls, webcomic creator Shobana ‘Bob’ Appavu (Demon of the Underground) served up this gender-swapped Avengelyne/Shi cover.

Women in Refrigerators — 13 years later

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It was 13 years ago that an “amateur” comics journalist named Gail Simone ran a survey about the phenomenon of “Women in Refrigerators” in comics. That site—currently housed here—used the moment of Kyle Rayner came home and found his girlfriend stuffed in the refrigerator as a lens for the entire phenomenon of female comics characters getting beaten, crippled, stabbed, mutilated, assaulted, and devalued.

Luckily, since then, everything has been fixed!

The history of sexy women in comics via Black Canary

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All week DC Women Kicking Ass has been running polls to pick the favorite artists on various DCU heroines, such as Wonder Woman and Batgirl. It’s fun to see the great artists who have drawn these characters over the years. It is also fun to observe how community standards have changed with regards to superheroines. Take Black Canary. It’s a pretty safe assumption that even when the character was created by Carmine Infantino and Robert Kanigher in 1947, a woman in fishnet tights was assumed to be hot stuff. However, first general prudishness, and later the Comics Code, kept her sort of modest. In recent years, she’s been unchained.

BACK ISSUE #54 presents "The Liberated Ladies of Comics"

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Even if you feel Big Barda does not speak for you, it’s hard to dislike that sweet Bruce Timm cover.

Marketing to women: three case studies

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How Sony, Ikea and DC Comics approach marketing to women. Hint: only one of these companies actually tried.

Cartoonists sound off on sex problems

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Grace Bello has taken the bold step of going to cartoonists and asking them for sex advice –
and posting the results on Nerve. The results may shock you. Not really, but we had to say that, just because “cartoonists” and “sex” were long considered a bad match –unless you were one of those swinging ’60s Don Draper cartoonists in the NCS, of course. Anyway, back to the present day.

Rick Altergott on the pecking order:

Marvel's women problems past and present: when Ms. Marvel got raped

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Yesterday’s comments by Tom Brevoort on the lack of sales support for female characters at Marvel did not go unnoticed by the usual gender issue commentators.

Actual Asian person Ken Watanabe potentially offered role in AKIRA remake

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The long on-again, off-again life action Akira movie is decidedly on again at Warners, with Jaume Collet-Serra to direct the Steve Kloves script. Given that AKIRA is a worldwide classic of anime and Japanese film in general that hugely influenced both animation and the cyberpunk movement, it seems ripe for reinvention in that Hollywood way.

And of course, also in that Hollywood way, despite the story being set in and infused with Japanese culture, because American moviegoers are all white and cannot be persuaded to pay money to watch Asian people on the screen, the film is being moved from New Tokyo to “New Manhattan ” (essentially New New York) and replacing all the Asian characters with white people if casting rumors are true.

America's basement-dwelling population growing

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Over the three years (!) of the Great Recession, it’s been noted many times that the Fantasy Economy has held up better than many other segments. Yes, comics sales are down overall, but they took a while to take a hit and rebounded strongly when something interesting happened (New 52).

But why? Maybe it’s because America’s stay-at-home male population is also growing, as Politico notes.

NYCC: "Men, if you are here to get laid, leave. Ladies, if you here to get laid, take your pick."

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This article on the “Speed Dating” sessions at the recent New York Comic Con paint an interesting picture of the social dynamics of Nerd World, especially with the growing participation of women
due to the anime and Vampire influences.

Sexy comic book women = "weird."

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I don’t know who Richard Famous is — a gay British man who makes little-watched YouTube videos — but what he has to say about “the brokeback pose” and how hyper-sexualization depowers female comics characters is pretty dead on.

Breaking: Nerd guy rejected by total jerk

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In the interests of equal time to our male readers, we’d like to point out this story where a female Gizmodo writer did not feel comfortable dating Magic the Gathering World Champion Jon Finkel after she met him via OK Cupid:

One year later, Apple welcomes LGBT graphic novels

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Only a year ago, Tom Bouden’s gay-themed adpatation of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest was fighting rejection on Apple’s mobile platforms, leading to cries of a double standard where sex and violence were concerned. But now LGBT publisher Northwest Press is claiming victory by having Teleny and Camille, Glamazonia: The Uncanny Super-Tranny, and Rainy Day Recess: The Complete Steven’s Comics all approved by Apple. All are now available via the iBooks app.