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RBG is FTW
The documentary RBG, about the life and career of American Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is a fascinating portrait of a civil rights advocate who has developed into a cult figure late in life.
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Votes for Women
On this day – 100 years ago – the Representation of the People Act 1918 was passed, giving the parliamentary vote to women aged at least 30 who had property or a university education (and to all men over the age of 21). Irish Women over the age of 21 obtained the vote when the Constitution of the Irish Free State Act came into effect in 1922. The Irish Government is celebrating this event with the #Vótáil100 Programme, which is a series of events taking place around the country discussing women’s suffrage. As always, I feel hugely indebted to my ancestors who fought so hard and endured great hardship to…
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Resistance is Fruitful
It should comes as no surprise to any readers of my blog or Twitter that I’m not a fan of the soon-to-be elected President of the USA. I have taken a policy on social media of not posting any of the stream of prophesies of doom of what’s coming over the next four years, but I’m making an exception with this segment from the recent episode of Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. This show has provided exceptional, pointed, satirical reporting since it was first aired, and I think it’s essential viewing (you can find it all on its YouTube channel, including extra online material). At least you can laugh while…
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Women in Comics, Europe – page
Last week Laura Sneddon and I started a group on Facebook for European women working in the comic book industry, called Women in Comics, Europe. It’s open to academics, artists, writers, journalists, comic book sellers, etc. It’s been very successful and is a great space for networking and sharing information. Currently we have 120+ members, with more women arriving daily. It’s inspiring to learn about their work and witness their passion for the industry. Yet, Laura and I figured it would be a shame to keep these useful discussions amongst ourselves, especially when there are so many strong talents who deserve a boost. We also appreciate that there are loads…
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Kapow ignores women again
Tickets for the 2012 Kapow! comic book convention went on sale today, with the first version of the guest-list announced. After the controversy from last year over the lack of representation of women guests at the convention I expected it would lead off with a better showing on its subsequent line-up. How wrong I was. There are twenty-three ‘star guests’ listed so far, all of them men. If you dig into the programming you’ll find there are a few actresses mentioned, but in the ‘hot’ film writers/directors section there are no women listed either. Not surprisingly, I tweeted about this as soon as I noticed and several people retweeted it…
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women in comics at Thought Bubble
At Thought Bubble in Leeds last weekend there was a Women in Comics panel, which has been a regular feature of the event since the festival started five years ago. It was one of the panels I was very much looking forward to seeing, and guessing it would be a popular event I decided to get on line early. By the time the doors opened there was a huge queue making its way back almost to the door of the hall itself. While I didn’t attend every panel at Thought Bubble it was the longest line for a panel I saw that weekend. The line-up, from left to right is,…
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but women don’t want to write superhero comics…
I attended the British Fantasy Society‘s annual conference, FantasyCon, in Brighton at the beginning of the month. The weather was glorious and everyone was in good form. Being able to eat outside every evening, like I was holidaying in Spain or Italy, added to my enjoyment of the event. Brighton is a cool city, and it’s a wonderful location for an convention like this (roll on World Fantasy Con in Brighton in 2013 I say!). The event ended on a bit of sour note, alas, due to a controversy over the administration of the BFS Awards at the end of the conference. The BFS has since posted an official statement…
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Womanthology
I’m sure many of you reading this blog have heard about the Womanthology project: it’s the brainchild of artist Renae De Liz, and is an all-woman anthology comic book that will be published by IDW Publishing this December, with all proceeds going to the charity, Global Giving Foundation. You can read a long interview at Bleeding Cool with Renae about the project and its evolution. With the aim of raising $25,000 Renae set up a Kickstarter campaign for the project, and by the end of the first day that goal had been achieved. Now, with just five days to go until the campaign ends, the amount of money pledged stands…
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jennifer 1 preview
Here’s page 1 of my next comic book, Jennifer Wilde. Art and lettering are by the talented Stephen Downey. If you hop over to the web site you can see page 2 and 3 as well. It’s a little naughty, but this is the art scene in 1921 in Paris! Today The Irish Times published an article called “The brave new world of comic-book heroines“, written by Sinéad Gleeson. It looks at the women who are emerging on the Irish comic book scene at the moment. I’m one of the women featured in the piece. Earlier in the year when I assembled the list of women working in comic books…
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DC's Mad Hatter tea party
News and reaction to DC’s reboot of 52 titles in its catalogue this September has been rumbling on since I blogged about it last week. First I’d like to forefront a couple of repsonses that contain useful insight for the DC executives. Comic Book Resources put up part of a fantastic discussion with Dan Harmon, the creator of the comedy TV show Community, about creating a writing staff with an even gender split. It’s called “We have to stop thinking of it as a quota thing and think of it as a common-sense thing” Here’s an extract: There’s the same percentage of genius happening in both genders, but there’s less…
