Gender and art

It took a war to let the country's female comic book artists break character.

A new exhibit at Pittsburgh's Toonseum is celebrating the history of female comic artists, including those who began laying the groundwork 100 years ago and the female artists of the 1940s, when World War II sent many male artists overseas.

"Wonder Women, On Page and Off" includes originals by Nell Brinkley, who created masterful, wispy drawings of curly-haired working girls starting in about 1907.

The exhibit was created from the collection of Trina Robbins, a writer, artist, and author of "Pretty in Ink," a history of female comic artists.

Wonder Women: On Page and Off

Toonseum, Pittsburgh, until March 3O, 2014.

http://www.toonseum.org/exhibits.html

In the overwhelmingly male comic book industry, it has been a challenge for some editors and readers to see the ever growing number of talented women currently trying to make a name for themselves. With that in mind, ComicsAlliance offers Hire This Woman, a recurring feature designed for comics readers as well as editors and other professionals, where we shine the spotlight on a female comics pro on the ascendance. Some of these women will be at the very beginning of their careers, while others will be more experienced but not yet “household names.”

Today we’re talking to comic artist Yasmin Liang.  You may know Liang’s work from BOOM! Studios’ Steed and Mrs. Peel or anthologies like Shattered: The Asian American Anthology, and of course from ComicsAlliance’s Best Art Ever (This Week).

"For comic book illustrator Tess Fowler, being an artist isn't just about creating culture, but actively seeking its improvement. She currently works mostly on creator-owned projects outside of the major comic book publishing houses, and she’s set to release a new web-based comic soon called The Rascals. She's cultivated a loyal band of followers, known as the "Porkchop Army" (her Facebook followers) or the "Apocalypse Princess Army" (named for her version of the Disney Princesses, which have become popular as costumes), with whom she interacts constantly on social media.

A female working in a traditionally male industry, Fowler has been open about the misogyny and sexism she's found—and she's speaking out to her peers, even encouraging her colleagues to call out the misogynists in her business by name. That's a brave act in a world where female artists remain rare."

"Try to meditate on a Yumi Sakugawa comic and not smile while doing so. It's not easy. The comic artist crafts Facebook savvy, one-eyed monsters, clumsy cats (in human clothes) and possibly, but not certainly, morbid scenarios with the perfect dose of bittersweetness. With creatures that look as though they were picked fresh out of the imagination, Sakugawa transplants the banal problems of the social media age onto fantastical creatures who too are just trying to get by."

Trina Robbins -- feminist Underground Comix creator, writer, artist, publisher, editor and more -- has had a wide and storied career spanning nearly every part of the comic book industry. But outside her creative contributions, students of comics and pop culture know her as the preeminent scholar on women in graphic media, from comic strips to comic books, from the dawn of the Golden Age to the end of the Modern.

Now the woman who literally wrote the book (and then some) on female comics creators is back with what she calls her "definitive" history of women creators: "Pretty In Ink: North American Women Cartoonists 1896-2013," out this winter from Fantagraphics Books.

In anticipation of Robbins "final" book on the subject, CBR spoke with industry veteran about her research-ready text, including the myths surrounding women creators, the contemporary comics landscape and the engrossing yet complicated history of women in comics.

A scene from 'Qahera', a graphic comic created by Egyptian graphic design student Deena Mohamed.

It wasn’t Egypt’s police force that saved Layla from sexual assault, it was Qahera, a sword-wielding, female superhero in a long black hijab.

Groped by the comic strip’s villains, Layla’s hopes of police assistance are dashed when an officer castigates her for wearing inappropriate clothing -- trousers and a sweater. Back on the street, she’s confronted by another gang of tormentors and is saved only when Qahera appears, beating them with a stick and then stringing them by the scruff of their necks from the police station railings.

Qahera is emblematic of a new breed of Arab comic superheroine emerging as liberals and conservatives dispute the legacy of the 2011 uprisings. Young artists are focusing on as yet unresolved issues in the Middle East and North Africa, which have left male-dominated cultures largely intact.