Week 12: Women in Comics

For this week about Women in comics, I chose to read Lumberjanes.

Oh wow I didn’t realize I knew who the author was until the cover loaded. I have been following Gingerhaze (Noelle Stevenson) for a few years on social media but I never realized she was actually a published comic author. I first followed her for some silly lord of the rings fan art so I assumed her blog was filled with fan art.Occasionally I’d see something tagged as Lumberjanes, but I didn’t think she was the author.

This is making me realized I’ve created some weird bias to downplay artists I enjoy on the internet, mostly because they are usually young artists who do fan works as opposed to original content. This is proving to me the importance of women comic artists and authors because there is so much talent out on the internet. Young artists all across the country, most of who I believe are female, are so extremely talented and yet you rarely hear about them outside of small fandom circles. They all work so hard on their art for no profit. Its just seen as a hobby to express an interest in something they love. Its a hobby I actually share. I spend much of my free time drawing characters that aren’t my own, filling sketchbooks with them because when I’m juggling schoolwork, original ideas are stressful and I just want an escape. Seeing Noelle Stevenson be so successful while she’s still seen as a fan artist gives me home for the future.

I researched her further and saw not only did she work on more independent published comics like Lumberjanes, but she’s also writing for Marvel on their Runaways series as well as a recent issue of Thor. Considering she graduated from MICA only two years ago, she has a long list of accomplishments, especially since Fox started working on a live action adaptation of Lumberjanes. Seeing a young female artist be so successful so early on is a huge inspiration and I only hope more and more role models will start to rise up in the coming years.

The comic itself was great. It was nice to see something with an entirely female cast and no one seemed stereotyped. All the characters had distinct personalities and were all interesting. They also had different body types and interesting character designs, something that is often lacking within the comic medium.