Fleen: The Awkward Christmas Dinner Of Our Obligation To Existence

Help a Girl Out

Donâ€™t hit the â€œxâ€? or the back button yet. Give me a chance. Iâ€™m not a feminazi, Iâ€™m not out to break balls.

I just am of the opinion that there are certain rules and institutions that discriminate against women. Consider that of a graduating law class, the gender ratio is 50/50. But of the lawyers who make partner in a firm every year, the ratio is more like 90/10 in the favor of men. This has to do with the expectation of 100 hour work weeks from lawyers, combined with the expectation of female domesticity. (Thank you, Joan Williams.)

Comics donâ€™t require 100 hours per week. Sure, they do require dedication. Both genders can dedicate themselves to things. So, I am confused.

I read about 20 comics over the course of the week. And of those, five of them are created by women. Am I just looking in the wrong place?

Iâ€™d love to see some recommendations from the readers out there. Show me your favorite comics created by women. Tell me why you like them. Iâ€™ll start writing posts about them.

I think this is a win-win situation for all.

Narbonic, by Shaenon Garrity. Funniest comic on the web.

Return of the Madbun by Rachel Hartman. More madness from the Xeric award winning author of Amy Unbounded.

Narbonic has been covered, but my second favorite comic created by a woman is Digger. Then there is Count Your Sheep (I kid, Adis, I kid!). Hrrm, you’re right. I read a lot more than 20 comics, and those are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head…

Of course, as soon as I hit “submit”, I remembered “Home on the strange” (drawn by a girl, written by a guy) and Two Lumps (same deal) and Family Man, done by Dylan Meconis (of Bite Me fame). It’s on pause right now, but Jellaby is done by, well, I actually can’t think of her name right now. Girl Genius is a husband/wife pair. And I honestly don’t know how I forgot Dice Box.

So, there you go. Now get reading :-)

There’s Candi, and the Green Avenger. Plus Penny and Aggie is half by a woman.

Anf I think Jellaby is writen by a man.

my comic’s by a girl. but nobody reads it ;)
then there’s digger (already mentioned), narbonic (already mentioned) college roomies from hell, the devil’s panties, the tao of geek, candi (already mentioned), red string, synchronism might be (isn’t reva a girl’s name?), dicebox, smithson, and inverloch. Those are just the ones I read actively, anyway. (I’m lazy: links to all are here

Jellaby is definitely done by a man. The other comic on the web site isn’t though.

Just listing a bunch I know/read…
Devil’s Panties
Pastel Defender Heliotrope / Unicorn Jelly
College Roomies From Hell
Inverloch
The Jaded / Longest Soujorn
Sparkling Generation Valkryie Yuuki
Venus Envy
The Lions of Valletta
Stuff Sucks
Crap I Drew on my Lunch Break

Also, there are many comics done by a team consisting of at least half women. For example: Nekko and Joruba, Girl Genius, A Softer World, and anything by Isabel Marks (she does some of her own projects, but most of them involve her husband one way or another).

I think it’s a lose-lose. God, I hate this kind of attitude. Why on earth should you be writing about comics just because they’re created by women? Write about good comics, and be damned who they’re made by. Guilt-driven, rather than merit-driven, attention won’t help anyone. At least, no-one worth helping.

When I wrote about this in an article, Wednesday of Websnark went crazy on me.

Christ, I had a nice little response to Nic and it got eaten by beta software. Anyway, i would love to see an article that could guilt trip someone into reading a comic they didn’t like. That’d be Pulitizer quality stuff. I’ve lost the will to properly mock and ridicule Nic (hugs, buddy!) so I’ll just mention that the aforementioned CRFH!!!, Dicebox, and Inverloch are excellent (and A Softer World is probably my favoritest ever). Huzzah for breaking up the boys club! Also, it’s a shame that feminists feel obligated to apologize for their dislike of institutionalized oppression. Encouraging women to follow their dreams isn’t something anyone should be ashamed of.

Sorry, should have said ‘it’s a shame feminists feel obligated to preemptively defend themselves against accusations of foaming-at-the-mouth madness’. Knee-jerk misreading of the article, and I apologize. My kingdom for an edit button!

I’m not entirely sure what you’re arguing here, Jon (Got a last name? I’m attempting to differentiate you in my own mind from the other Jon that posts here, since upon reading your comment I thought for a moment he had suffered a severe blow to the head). I’m not saying the article will guilt someone into reading a comic they didn’t like, I’m saying the article was inspired by guilt. Totally unecessary guilt. And I’m saying that the attitude that women, specifically, need their dreams encouraged, the poor dears, is one that gets right on my tits. And I’m saying that we shouldn’t be asking ‘Who is this webcomic created by?’, we should be saying ‘Is it any good?’. I’m saying, in short, all the things that got Wednesday so kindly labelled as ‘crazy’ by Al up there last time she said them. One of the wonderful things about the web is that it potentially strips away gender. I think it’s a pity so many people are keen to demolish that anonymity.

Sorry, should have said â€˜itâ€™s a shame feminists feel obligated to preemptively defend themselves against accusations of foaming-at-the-mouth madnessâ€™.

Which is precisely the sentence that irritated me initially when reading the post, since it tacitly condoned the prejudice. Sorry, Kate, I know the high update frequency means you don’t get to put a lot of editorial time in, but I think you could have thought out this whole post better.

Oops. That should be “Which is precisely the same thing that irritated me …” My turn to lament the lack of an edit button.

!!!

[…] Which brings me, finally, to my inspiration, if not my point. We have at our disposal a tool which takes away the path of easy categorization, a tool which can obfusicate gender, race, background and economic status, a tool which to a large degree forces people to interact as individuals, represented by their personality and intellect alone. On the internet, we have finally the chance to be judged at least partly on our merits, rather than on the sum total of anothers prejudice. So why the heck are we so keen to ram people straight back into their little boxes at the least opportunity? […]

Red String is an incredible piece of work by Gina Biggs. Shojo manga at it’s best. It’s been picked up for print by Dark Horse Comics. redstring.strawberrycomics.com

Yu+Me
Malakhim
BadBlood
Intershadows
Haru-Sari
No Crap
Puppetry
Gentlemen of Fortune
Those are all excellent comics with creators that happen to be female.

It’s one of those print comics now serialized on the web, but Finder by Carla Speed McNeil is a great, long-running comic.

Sparkneedle
Playing with Dolls
Templar, Arizona
Gods and Undergrads
Arcana Jayne
Moon Dog
Y?
Kismet: Hunter’s Moon
By the Wayside
Bold Riley and the Witch in the Wild
Jupiter

All pretty solid comics and some of my favourites and all created by women.

God I hate the word ‘gender'(outside of grammatical usage of course).

Oh for heaven’s sake. Y’all need to chill.

Has it occurred to any of you who are objecting to or defending the honor of female comic creators that maybe we’d like to hear about each other — not because we “gots boobs” — but just because we want to find comics that share a similarity to ours?

Men write from a different perspective than women. (Duh.) So different things may happen in a comic written by women than it does in a comic written by men. So why wouldn’t we want to share those links for that reason?

I say if someone had written a post asking for all the comic authors influenced by Chuck Jones, nobody’d divide into Pro-Bugs-Bunny-Support and Comics-Are-Comics-Chuck-Jones-Was-Nothin’-Special camps.

So why should it be different when someone asks for comics in the subgenre of “created by chicks”?

While I’m not entirely sure I agree with the logic here, No Stereotypes is another one for the list I didn’t see mentioned.

Okaypants!

I am a fellow who only finds comics by women an enhancement to a otherwise boring life!

Sorry Nic, I mistook your target. Though I have to say I don’t really see how the article was inspired by guilt (although it is true that most of my guilt-driven activities involve women, but I don’t think my mother counts here). The entire line of reasoning eludes me, and I would appreciate an explanation (of course your time is limited, so I understand if you’ve other obligations).

The comics business is traditionally a male thing. Highlighting those who are changing that isn’t a bad thing, nor is it somehow guilt-driven. And of course there are numerous other reasons, as helpfully highlighted above. Of course, it all comes down to viewpoint. There are those who think that the world is full of various institutionalized prejudices, overt and hidden (depends where in the world you are); and there are those who think that’s an argument used by those who can’t make it on their own. Wonder how law students come down on this issue?

Also, the tool doesn’t erradicate difference so much as transform everyone into middle-class white males. And why would you want to erase difference anyway? Hiding from issues seems like the lazier path to me.

Lazy? No, lazy is “Hey, look at my comic because I’m a gurrrrrl.” And I feel no compulsion to erase differences between people, I just wish the superficial ones didn’t matter so much. If a webcomic artist wants to promote themselves rather than their comic, whether that be by gender, race, or wearing silly hats and smoking a pipe, then that’s their prerogative. However I personally resent being forcibly grouped by any characteristic I don’t choose to be grouped by, especially one I see as being completely tangential to merit.

Kira suggested that it was interesting to divide comics by gender because it offered a different perspective. I disagree, not because I am against ‘different perspectives’, but because I believe a) the perspective offered by someone being purely of a particular gender is not sufficient, on its own, to tell me whether I will find the comic funny, interesting or well-drawn, and b) such a division serves to artificially segregate and divide the audience. I spoke briefly of prejudice, and you said yourself that comics are a traditionally male-dominated area, which implies to me a tacit agreement with the idea that we have not levelled the playing field as yet. Kira and you both appear to think that one way to do this is through celebration of the achievements of this apparent minority, but I believe that this singling out is counter-productive, reinforcing the idea that these women are the exception rather than the norm, that women need more attention and help in order to ‘make it’. The world is full of various institutionalised prejudices – why should we make it easier for people to act upon them?

I said that the article was inspired by guilt because of this quote:
I read about 20 comics over the course of the week. And of those, five of them are created by women.

To which my kneejerk response was, and still is, “So what?”

Once again, highlighting good work by women is not the same as ‘look at my comic because I’m a gurrrl’. You seem convinced that any operators outside of merit means that the selection is of work that can’t get recognized on merit. Going purely on merit is a great idea, except that the world doesn’t really operate purely on merit, and good work does get excluded based on other factors. You acknowledge the institutional prejudices, but say that the best way to combat them is to ignore them? In my experience pretending problems don’t exist isn’t the most effective way of solving them. If the deck is stacked against you, you do need more help to make it. That’s not because of any deficiancy, it’s because the institutionalized prejudices are actively working against you. Calling out bigotry is not enabling bigotry. The unacknoledged prejudice is the own which lasts the longest.

And of course, the point was that 3/4 of well-known comics are created by men. The quality of being well-known not necessarily having anything to do with merit, the reasonable question was asked, ‘Can you suggest any others? Cause I may be in a position to affect their exposure.’

Nic wrote:

Kira and you both appear to think that one way to do this is through celebration of the achievements of this apparent minority, but I believe that this singling out is counter-productive, reinforcing the idea that these women are the exception rather than the norm, that women need more attention and help in order to â€˜make itâ€™.

You know, I used to think the same thing. Really. I even raised a fuss on Websnark in the comments one time when they were talking about Girl-a-matic and I said I wouldn’t want to be associated with a girls-only comic group because I wouldn’t want other people to see me as “just a girl”.

But a self-declared feminist asked for more comics written by women. She didn’t ask because she was attempting to convince the readers that women were the better comic authors (or even equals) she asked because she wanted to read more women authors, and, having done so, offer others exposure to them. As Jon said, that’s not the same as saying their better or worse.

I ask, if Kate had instead posted a message stating that only 1/5 of her comics were in the “gaming” subgenre, would you have responded, “Why on earth should you be writing about comics just because theyâ€™re created by gamers? ”

(To which my answer would still be “because other gamers might be interested”.)

And part of this also goes back to trust in the author. I was willing to give Kate a list of girl-driven comics she might not be reading because I trust she’s not going to post every girl-written comic she finds and write about each and every one in the same tone. I expect she’s write something intelligent and critical (as in critical-thinking) about each comic she feels has merit and not just “Look! This one’s written by a girl! And look! She can tie her shoes, too! But she surely can’t post, “Hey, are you reading Dicebox?” if she’s never heard of Dicebox.

(And, off-topic, if you’re not reading Dicebox and you like social/plot comics, you should.)

Nic also said:

I said that the article was inspired by guilt because of this quote:
I read about 20 comics over the course of the week. And of those, five of them are created by women.

To which my kneejerk response was, and still is, â€œSo what?â€?

If you said, “I read twenty comics a week, and of those only five are about toys and I want to give toy comics more exposure so suggest some to me”, I’m not sure I’d feel your request was guilt-motivated. I’d say there are outside influences coloring your perspective of the article – which, of course, is true of all of us.

It’s just, y’know, it’s not a lose-lose to everyone. That’s all.

[…] Uncategorized Okay, so weâ€™ve already established that the twenty webcomics I read on a weekly basis do not constitute a good statistical sample. And Iâ€™ve talked about update schedules â€“ both when to update and what happens when theyâ€™re not met. I guess this is the next in the continuing series of me talking about the methodology of webcomics and the readers who are creators weighing in. Really, I’m just feeling my way around in the dark. […]

[…] Fleen will be continuing the discussion on [semi-]syndication, as Baldwin has graciously agreed to an interview on this very topic; watch for it shortly. In the meantime, since we all know that nothing brings eyeballs like controversy, let us all hope that Messers Baldwin and Kellett violently disagree about everything, giving Fleen the opportunity to sponsor the first San Diego Comic-Con Steel Cage Deathmatch (with the winner taking on Bil Keane, who will in all likelihood hand the youngster his ass). […]

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