Pen-Elayne on the Web

A Little Piece of History

So I hear he was here last night, but I was home watching this. Like Neil Gaiman (link up top at the sidebar), who was in the docu and talks a little about it on his blog today, I missed hearing any female interviewees (Jen Contino did ask about that and was told that "A few key publisher/creators were contacted -- it really came down to availability and timing during the production process"), or for that matter anything in the documentary regarding women and comics. When you touch on Wonder Woman's appeal; on servicemen reading them in WWII while male writers and artists went off to war (and one would assume some women took their place as with other professions); on the direct market being a sort of inside club (the only other thing they might have done better was fuller disclosure identifying Kevin Smith as a comic store owner while he was talking about comic stores); on the sexist excesses of the badgirl craze; on the diversification of characters insofar as appealing to gays and other societally marginalized groups - when you talk about all that and don't even mention female readers or creators or journalists, office workers, retailers, etc., the omission does seem glaring. But then, it would to me, wouldn't it? But other than excluding half the population (which used to be half the comics reading population but is now probably no more than a tenth, at least when you're talking about superheroes as opposed to other genres) it was a fairly comprehensive look at the history of superhero comics in this country, and Robin and I enjoyed it a lot. He was happily identifying the pencillers and inkers on most of the artwork flashed on the screen, and suddenly this was shown. The only piece of Davis-pencilled art as far as we were able to determine (although the show ended strongly with visuals by other current artists like John Cassaday, Bryan Hitch and Alex Ross). And probably the loveliest bit of inking Rob's ever done. I squealed like a little girl. Who reads and writes comics, but not so's you'd notice. ;)