I am thrilled to be well remembered, and respected in the comic book community, and to have fans willing to pay me to draw commissions, but I got into comics in order to tell stories, not to draw custom art. I still feel vital, and still want to be at that table. Do I think DC comics owes me anything? Yes and no. I understand that no company owes anything that isn’t contractually stipulated, but in my heart, I think I deserve better than being marginalized over the last 10 years. I’m not retired, I’m not financially independent. I’m a working guy with a family, working for a flat page rate that hasn’t changed substantially since 1995. I may have opportunities at smaller companies, companies that pay less per page than I made in 1988, with no royalties or ownership of any kind. I’m not at all looking down at that, but it is hard to reconcile, as I can’t work faster, and refuse to hack my work out to match the rate. I have pride in what I do, and always have. As to my part in the history of dc for the past 33 years, I was a highly visible and successful part of it, not a minor footnote.

Getting back to the beginning of this essay, and to the artists I loved as a kid, all I ask is for some of the same consideration my generation of creators and editors gave to the older guard in the 1980’s. My work is still sharp, my mind is still full of stories to tell, and I’m still willing to work all hours of my day to meet my deadlines. Why am I out of work from the publishers? Why are my friends, people who turned in great work, worthy of hardcover and trade paperback reprints, not able to get work? 

As a comic reader and customer, the publishers use our older work in collected editions, for what they call first copy royalties, no reprint fees. They publish the All Star Squadron trade, for example and you buy it for whatever the cost. My royalty is maybe a couple hundred dollars, if I’m lucky, for 11 issues worth of work. On a recent Absolute Infinite Crisis hardcover, I had 30-odd pages reprinted in there, a book that retailed for over a hundred dollars— a book that DC never even gave me a copy of, and the royalty amounted to a few dollars, I couldn’t buy a pizza on that windfall. I want to work, I don’t want to be a nostalgia act, remembered only for what I did 20, 30 years ago.

selchieproductions:

Monday 23rd September – Wednesday 25th September 2013 Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

“Behind this mask there is more than just flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea… and ideas are bulletproof.” (Alan Moore, V for Vendetta)

This inter- and multi-disciplinary conference aims to examine, explore and critically engage with issues in and around the production, creation and reading of all forms of comics and graphic novels.

Taken as a form of pictographic narrative it has been with us since the first cave paintings and even in the 21st century remains a hugely popular, vibrant and culturally relevant means of communication whether expressed as sequential art, graphic literature, bandes dessinees, tebeos, fumetti, manga, manhwa, komiks, strips, historietas, quadrinhos, beeldverhalen, or just plain old comics. (as noted by Paul Gravett)

Whilst the form itself became established in the 19th Century it is perhaps not until the 20th century that comic book heroes like Superman (who has been around since 1938) became, not just beloved characters, but national icons. With the globalisation of publishing brands such as Marvel and DC it is no accident that there has been an increase in graphic novel adaptations and their associated merchandising. Movies such as X-men, Iron man, Watchmen and the recent Thor have grossed millions of dollars across the world and many television series have been continued off-screen in the graphic form, Buffy, Firefly and Farscape to name a few.

Of course America and Europe is not the only base of this art form and the Far East and Japan have their own traditions as well as a huge influence on graphic representations across the globe. In particular Japanese manga has influenced comics in Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, China, France and the United States, and have created an amazing array of reflexive appropriations and re-appropriations, in not just in comics but in anime as well. Of equal importance in this growth and relevance of the graphic novel are the smaller and independent publishers that have produced influential works such as Maus by Art Spiegleman, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, Palestine by Joe Sacco, Epileptic by David B and even Jimmy Corrigan by Chris Ware that explore, often on a personal level, contemporary concerns such as gender, diaspora, post-colonialism, sexuality, globalisation and approaches to health, terror and identity.

Further to this the techniques and styles of the graphic novel have taken further form online creating entirely web-comics and hypertexts, as in John Cei Douglas’ Lost and Found and Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl, as well as forming part of larger trans-media narratives and submersive worlds, as in the True Blood franchise that invites fans to enter and participate in constructing a narrative in many varied formats and locations. This projects invites papers that consider the place of the comic or graphic novel in both history and location and the ways that it appropriates and is appropriated by other media in the enactment of individual, social and cultural identity.

Papers, reports, work-in-progress, workshops and pre-formed panels are invited on issues related to (but not limited to) the following themes:

•  Just what makes a Graphic Novel so Graphic and so Novel?:
• Sources, early representations and historical contexts of the form.
• Landmarks in development, format and narratology.
• Cartoons, comics, graphic novels and artists books.
• Words, images, texture and colour and what makes a GN
• Format, layout, speech bubbles and “where the *@#% do we go from here?” The Inner and Outer Worlds of the Graphic Novel:
• Outer and Inner spaces; Thoughts, cities, and galaxies and other representations of graphic place and space.
• Differing temporalities, Chronotopes and “time flies”: Intertextuality, editing and the nature of Graphic and/or Deleuzian time.
• Graphic Superstars and Words versus Pictures: Alan Moore v Dave Gibbons (Watchmen) Neil Gaiman v Jack Kirby (Sandman).
• Performance and performativity of, in and around graphic representations.
• Transcriptions and translations: literature into pictures, films into novels and high/low graphic arts. Identity, Meanings and Otherness:
• GN as autobiography, witnessing, diary and narrative ~Representations of disability, illness, coping and normality
• Cultural appropriations, east to west and globalisation
• National identity, cultural icons and stereo-typical villains  
• Immigration, postcolonial and stories of exile
• Representing gender, sexualities and non-normative identities.
• Politics, prejudices and polemics: banned, censored and comix that are “just plain wrong”
• Other cultures, other voices, other words To Infinity and Beyond: The Graphic Novel in the 21st Century:
• Fanzines and Slash-mags: individual identity through appropriation.  
• Creator and Created: Interactions and interpolations between authors and audience.  
• Hypertext, Multiple formats and inter-active narratives.
• Cross media appropriation, GN into film, gaming and merchandisng and vice versa  
• Graphic Myths and visions of the future: Sandman, Hellboy, Ghost in the Shell.
• Restarting the Canon: what are the implication of the restart in universes such as Marcel and DC and do they represent the opportunity to reopen ongoing conversations?

Presentations will be accepted which deal with related areas and themes.

What to Send: 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 22nd March 2013.

If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 21st June 2013.

300 word abstracts should be submitted to the Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following this order:

a) author(s), 
b) affiliation, 
c) email address, 
d) title of abstract, 
e) body of abstract, 
f) up to 10 keywords

E-mails should be entitled: GN2 Abstract Submission

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline).

We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Organising Chairs Nadine Farghaly: ten.xmg@ylahgraF.enidaN Rob Fisher: ten.yranilpicsid-retni@2ng  

The conference is part of the Education Hub series of research projects, which in turn belong to the At the Interface programmes of Inter-Disciplinary.Net. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore discussions which are innovative and challenging.

All papers accepted for and presented at this conference are eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook.

Selected papers may be invited to go forward for development into a themed ISBN hard copy volume or volumes.  

Please note: Inter-Disciplinary.Net is a not-for-profit network and we are not in a position to be able to assist with conference travel or subsistence.

dcwomenkickingass:

Earlier this week Gail Simone announced she was dismissed from the best-selling Batgirl title. That currently leaves two female writers at DC Comics - Ann Nocenti, who writes Catwoman and is assigned to the upcoming Katana, and Christy Marx, who is writing Sword of Sorcery.

Let me put that in to numbers - out of 52 monthly titles, 49 of them will not be written by women. 

And if you take a look at the whole of last year for DC including “minis” that total female writers was not much better with a total of four women penning ongoing comics - Nocenti, Simone, Marx and if you add in minis, Amanda Conner. You can up the total a bit by adding in gaming them titles such as Gears of War.

But what about 20 years ago? Surely there must be more women writing comics at DC now? 

Great question. And now there’s a way to understand that. A person named Gorblax has compiled an exhaustive list of female writer and their projects at DC through the years at CBR and on their own Tumblr.

It is a fascinating read. Here’s a look at 1993. I’ve bolded the women who wrote runs on traditional superhero properties.

1993
Bierbaum, Mary (The Heckler #5-6; Legion of Super-Heroes #39-50; Legion of Super-Heroes Annual #4; Legionnaires #1-9; Who’s Who in the DC Universe: Update 1993 #1-2)
Byam, Sarah (Black Canary #1-7, 9-12; Who’s Who in the DC Universe: Update 1993 #2)
Collins, Nancy A. (Swamp Thing #127-138; Swamp Thing Annual #7; “The Ghost In The Green”, Vertigo Jam)
Duane, Diane (Star Trek #52; “Spot’s Day”, Star Trek: The Next Generation Special #1)
Duffy, Jo (Catwoman #1-5)
Fryer, Kim (“On the Road”, Justice League Quarterly #12) 
Hand, Elizabeth (New Teen Titans Annual #9)
Kwitney, Alisa (Vertigo Vision: Phantom Stranger)
Lee, Elaine (Ragman: Cry of the Dead #1-5)
Marrs, Lee (Zatanna #1-4)
Nocenti, Ann (Kid Eternity #1-8; “The Who Falls”, Vertigo Jam)
O’Neil, Marifran (“Martial Arts”, “Poster”, Superman & Batman Magazine #1-2
Pollack, Rachel (Doom Patrol #64-73; “Spooks Return Satisfied”, Vertigo Jam; Vertigo Visions: The Geek)
Simonson, Louise (“First Sighting – The Man of Steel”, The Adventures of Superman #500; The New Titans #94-96; Superman: The Man of Steel #19-28; Superman: The Man of Steel Annual #2)

In other words 19 years ago there were more female writers writing comics at DC Comics.

Now you could argue that the bulk of their work was minis vs. ongoings such as what Nocenti and Marx are working on. And that’s true. But it doesn’t change a basic fact - the sheer number of women who were getting paid to write superhero comics by DC was significantly higher almost two decades ago.

Two questions come to mind. The first is “who cares?” I think there’s been enough written about why diversity of POV and talent matters in popular culture to answer that question. So the other question is, “Why?”

Could it be because Jeanette Kahn was in charge? Was it because more women were suddenly interested in writing comics? All things to be considered.

But that’s speculation about the past. Let’s talk about today.

Around the DC launch there was a lot written about the dearth of female creators in the DC relaunch. That number, if you don’t recall, was exactly one. The same woman that was released of her duties by email this past week.

We do know that DC reached out to other female writers. Marjorie Liu admited she was approached by DC but based on this report in Wired and her Tweet this week she wasn’t interested but perhaps for reasons other than being “busy”.

“I’ve been silently, professionally irritated at DC for some time now but this with @GailSimone sealed the deal. Now I’m disgusted.”

Liu is currently writing Astonishing X-Men for Marvel. The other woman that DC approached, Kelly Sue DeConnick pitched for a title that was passed on. She is now on two ongoing titles at Marvel and the co-writer of a New York Times Best Selling Graphic Novel (as was Simone before she was e-canned.)

Both the remaining female writers at DC have long, impressive histories in comics. Nocenti was at Marvel as both a creator and editor. Marx also wrote at a Marvel imprint i addition to working in kid’s animation. But it’s important to note that both women worked with the current management at DC previously - Marx with Dan Didio at ABC and Nocenti with Bob Harras at Marvel. I’m thrilled to see that both were brought in and the game of “who you know” working for them as it did for male writers who brought into DC because of their connections to other writers. Because that network is clearly important.

Recently at NYCC Image held a panel featuring their female creators. It was interesting to hear that most of the women got their first gigs through knowing somebody already in the business. That’s first gigs by the way. All the women proved themselves once they got the chance. Having a good buddy in the business can only take you so far.

My question Is then is it fair to say that more women at the big two will lead to more women in the big two? I think so. I know that Gail Simone actively looked for female artists to bring into the DC fold. One artist recently posted her story of how Simone tried to get her at DC. I know of other stories as well.

So if we are seeing fewer women writing at DC, should we be concerned that it may lead to fewer and fewer women writing at DC? 

I think its a fair possibility to consider. And not just from a networking perspective but from the fact that fact that it was a woman, Gail Simone, who helped reinforce the point to DC the concerning appearance of the 1/52 female writers ratio of the relaunch that, along with the PR nightmare of SDCC 2011, led to DC making a commitment to hire more women. Sometimes you need someone telling you something is amiss.

And again no one is talking about quotas. No one wants anyone hired “just because.” This is about creating better comics by bringing in fresh blood like a Scott Snyder, who hard to believe has been writing comics for under a half decade. Or like Gail Simone. Or Jeff Lemire. Or Marjorie Liu. People who haven’t been on the Marvel to DC treadmill since the 90s but instead bring a fresh voice and point of view.

Comics needs that. DC Comics needs that.

I’m not sure what the solution is. But you won’t see anyone trying to create a solution unless they perceive a problem.

I do. Others may not.

What do you think?