Tag: Webcomics

Trisha’s Take: How to depict female characters in webcomics

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Who says feminism and genre works can't be fun and forward-thinking? © Danielle Henderson
Who says feminism and genre works can’t be fun and forward-thinking? © Danielle Henderson

At this most recent CONvergence Con (a sci-fi/fantasy-based convention in Minneapolis, Minn.), I was one of the panelists on two different panels that sought to speak about where and how women can exist in formerly male-dominated genres and spaces.

In The Smurfette Principle in Marketing panel, we tackled the idea that there isn’t often a lot of merchandise available for girls and women because there is often only one woman or girl in a group of men or boys in any given genre show, book, or movie. In the Genre Feminism panel, we spoke about why it was important to increase the visibility of women or girls in a genre show, book, or movie (along with other visible minorities as well) and how people as creators and consumers can promote these ideas.

Specifically to creators, I talked about Geena Davis (whose name I couldn’t remember at the time; apologies, Ms. Davis!) and how back in December 2013, she wrote a guest column for The Hollywood Reporter about how easy it can be for screenwriters to increase the number of roles in film and on TV for women and girls:

Step 1: Go through the projects you’re already working on and change a bunch of the characters’ first names to women’s names. With one stroke you’ve created some colorful unstereotypical female characters that might turn out to be even more interesting now that they’ve had a gender switch. What if the plumber or pilot or construction foreman is a woman? What if the taxi driver or the scheming politician is a woman? What if both police officers that arrive on the scene are women — and it’s not a big deal?

Step 2: When describing a crowd scene, write in the script, “A crowd gathers, which is half female.” That may seem weird, but I promise you, somehow or other on the set that day the crowd will turn out to be 17 percent female otherwise. Maybe first ADs think women don’t gather, I don’t know.

It’s not often that I get to see the fruits of efforts like these so soon after I talk about them, and from a formerly problematic source as well.

Anyone who’s read this blog for any period of time knows I have a love/hate relationship with Penny Arcade creator Mike Krahulik. On one hand, he’s an intensely creative individual who helped pioneer innovations in cartooning, comics, and the marketing thereof. On the other hand, he’s a self-proclaimed asshole who has a lot to learn.

I’m quite pleased to be able to say that after the most recent iteration of the Dickwolves Debacle, the same Mike Krahulik who felt compelled to make a $20,000 donation to the Trevor Project after he made some uneducated remarks about transpeople seems to be also leveling up when it comes to how he depicts characters who aren’t like him in his art.

Recently, Penny Arcade debuted another one of their “one-page worlds.” This one is called Nightlight, and it’s about a first-time father who is told by an Ancient Keeper-type that now that he’s become a parent, he must definitely kill any monsters he finds under his child’s bed.

In his news post for the strip, Krahulik talked about the genesis for the world, but was quick to add: “We’re focusing on Dad’s specifically but honestly the role of a home’s monster hunter can fall to anyone really. I kinda want to meet that big sister.”

Child’s Play community manager Jamie Dillon followed up in the comments to the comic by saying: “We just had a long neat chat about it at lunch, and the world is so cool. Single moms, grandparents, siblings — whomever is the protector of the house is the one who can see the monsters and fight them. I’ll let the guys share other details as they want, but it’s not exclusive to dads.”

But perhaps even better is the news post from Monday, showing that not only are they going to do a longer-form story in this universe, but that Krahulik is taking the time to accurately depict the young girl who will be in this story:

A big sister protects her little brother from the monsters under his bed. © Penny Arcade / Click to embiggen!
Grace protects her little brother from the monsters under his bed. © Penny Arcade / Click to embiggen!

I wanted Grace to feel authentic. I wanted her to be a real little girl and I have zero experience with little girls. I have two boys of my own and more often than not my house is packed with 10 year old boys. Tycho gave me a hard time when I told him about all my Google searching. “They just wear shoes” like everyone else he told me. I know that girls wear shoes…what I don’t know is what kind of shoes Grace wears. Does she wear flip flops? Boots with tights? I don’t know what kinds of outfits she wears. Is she a hoodie and jeans girl or does she like skirts and dresses? I don’t know how she likes to comb her hair or if she wears any jewelry.

The fact that he’s doing this research and thinking this deeply about this character is awesome. In addition to his own spouse as a resource for what young girls are like, he’s also got the experiences of Dillon and Child’s Play project manager Kristin Lindsay, as well as any of the other PA staffers who have female children or nieces or cousins or siblings. He’d be foolish not to tap their resources and experiences.

It’s a little thing, but it’s a start. At the end of this month, I can’t wait to see what kind of Home Protector Grace is for her little brother.

Trisha’s Take: When feminism and male webcomics artists collide

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When it comes to reading webcomics, I have a set list of nine “dailies” I read and a few that I read which update less frequently. And while I’ve definitely settled on these few, that doesn’t mean that I haven’t read other webcomics or aren’t familiar with their work. Also, my love of comics and comics strips isn’t exactly a casual one; hell, my high school Extended Essay was about the role of women in comic books from the 1940s to the 1990s.

So when I saw a friend’s Facebook update decrying how Sinfest has become a den of “ludicrous feminist mediocrity,” I had to check out today’s strip:

Click to embiggen! (c) Tatusya Ishida
Click to embiggen! (c) Tatusya Ishida

I flipped through the previous two or three weeks of strips to see if there was any context for the strip, any lead-up, and I noticed that there were a few new characters I’d not seen before as well as a few large colored wordless strips which seemed to be part of a larger story. No “feminist mediocrity,” but perhaps some exaggerated examples of extreme feminist thought and behavior. And then I learned that Ishida has been drawing strips like those for over a year and a half, with very little explanation as to why, leading my friend to make that comment.

Another recent strip which got me thinking about feminism and webcomics was this April 24, 2013 strip for Penny Arcade:

Click to embiggen, though would you really want to? (c) Penny Arcade
Click to embiggen, though do you really need to do that? (c) 2013 Mike Krahulik & Jerry Holkins

Without context, it seemed to me that the comic was pointing out that emphasizing sexual characteristics is ludicrous for characters in video games and that there’s a double-standard when it comes to what is an acceptable amount of sexualization. Through the dialogue, it’s emphasizing that the female sorceress is more attractive to the Gabriel character to play because her secondary sexual characteristics are emphasized in proportion to her body whereas the male barbarian’s secondary sexual characteristics—and quite possibly his primary as well; I have no idea if that sling is containing nothing but an enormous scrotum or if it’s an enormous scrotum and penis—are not. Finally on the first read-through, the comic pointed out to me that there’s an inequality in what video game character designers find attractive versus who their audience will be, because I know that both women and men read Penny Arcade.

I gave my approval to the strip when I saw it first-thing that morning, and noted that I would have to return to the site later on in the day to get the context and a bit of commentary. As I wrote on Twitter, what I had hoped to read from writer Jerry Holkins was that they were starting to understand why some female gamers have a tough time being a part of the fandom and that they “gained some levels” in Feminist Theory.

Clearly, that was too much to hope for from the crew who mishandled the “dickwolves” saga, as seen by the news post that went out later that day. After first stating that the art being used to illustrate even the title image for Dragon’s Crown is so ornate as to render it incomprehensible, and that it just seems to be part of what developer Vanillaware does on a regular basis, Holkins goes on to write:

The only characters here who aren’t fucking mutants are the Elf and the Wizard, who are there to calibrate the player; everybody else is some fun-house exponent of strength or beauty stretched into some haunted sigil. Iconic isn’t even the word—they don’t evoke icons, they are icons. They’re humans as primal symbols.

It’s very weird to pull up a story about a game with frankly visionary art and hear why it shouldn’t exist, or to hear what I supposedly fantasize about, or what kind of power I supposedly revere, and any attempt to defend oneself from these psychotic projections or to assert that creators may create is evidence of a dark seed sprouting in the heart. It’s an incredible state of affairs. They’re not censors, though—oh, no no. You’ll understand it eventually; what you need to do is censor yourself. [emphasis mine]

I understand that the more extreme reactions (“Oh, you must be a sexist chauvinistic pig in order to like this sort of thing!”) and the initial assertion by Kotaku writer Jason Schreier were more than a little bit knee-jerk; thus, Holkins’ implying that those kinds of people are “psychotic” is perfectly valid.

However, Schreier’s follow-up posted just the day before—and probably before Holkins started writing his post—was dead-on and I was disappointed that a chunk of Mike Krahulik’s responses on Twitter were centered around whether or not it was right to “censor” artist George Kamitani’s work instead. That in itself is a fascinating discussion, but not the main crux of this issue.

Passing off half of the six available player character designs as “fun-house” or “primal” symbols and calling it “frankly visionary” doesn’t address the fact that it’s done in a way which could turn off some of its potential audience. In fact, I’d argue that even while Kamitani is trying to change how the modern person envisions fantasy characters, he falls into the trap of contorting his “non-mutant” Elf character into the same spine-breaking action shot for which so many others have been lambasted.

Instead of being a part of promoting equality to their audiences, Ishida has chosen to confuse his and Krahulik and Holkins have chosen to ignore or to troll the vocal members of theirs. And while I don’t claim to even know what Ishida’s thinking, I know from previous news posts and an interview in their own reality series that Krahulik and Holkins have been grateful for the chance to educate and illuminate their audience about things that are important to them.

Back in 2004, Holkins and I had the following exchange regarding the expectations placed upon them as “pioneers” of the webcomics medium:

Jerry Holkins: Do you think that we should actively be courting the [female audience]?

Me, writing for Sequential Tart: Not at all.

JH: ‘Cause I’m curious about that.

ST: I like you just the way you are.

JH: Awww. That’s sweet.

I think I’m starting to change my mind.

Trisha’s Take: How to get the most out of one day at a convention, part 1

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Approximately 10 years ago, I used to go to a lot of conventions, like the San Diego Comic Con (aka “Nerd Prom”) and Anime Expo. In fact, in 2001, I think I went to six different conventions on two different U.S. coasts.

My most traveled year was 2003 when I was working for the now-defunct Anime Insider as an associate editor and went to the Wizard World conventions in Chicago, Arlington (Texas), and Philadelphia; my busiest year was when I was an assistant editor for Sequential Tart and covered Anime Expo all by myself.

Being such an old hat at attending conventions, I knew what my preparations would be when I made the decision to attend only one day out of three for the New York Comic Con/New York Anime Fest mega-con which was held on October 8 through October 10 at the Javitz Center:

Make sure you have your badge and that your new digital voice recorder and your cell phone has a full battery.

Eat at least once in the middle of the day.

Stay hydrated.

Sit down if and when you need to do so.

One of the nifty things that Reed Expositions did for everyone who doesn’t have an iPhone or an Android phone to download their apps was to not only post their schedule online, but for the “cost” of signing in with your email address, you could create your own schedule of panel events and save them to your Microsoft Outlook calendar. Because my work Outlook calendar is synched up with my Windows Moblie phone, I did just that, and was able to cherry-pick the panels I wanted to attend. It was difficult to make choices, but in the end, I ended up choosing a few things that were different enough in scope to be interesting to me but familiar enough to where I’d be able to hang out with old friends.

Because I’m a wuss, after exiting the subway at 34th Street and Eighth Avenue, I hailed a cab and paid $5 plus tip to get to the Javitz on Eleventh Avenue, which was closed to cabs dropping people off. My cabbie had to make an illegal U-turn and dropped me off outside the concrete barricades. All during the trip, he kept asking me about why so many people were going there, so I helpfully explained.

Unlike our esteemed gaming expert Adrienne Ryan, I had been to the Javitz for a previous NYCC and NYAF and so finding the press room wasn’t that difficult for me. I would find out later that they were charging something like $5.95 an hour for wifi access in the press room, where several people were already camped out with laptops and a few more were conducting interviews.

Had I more time, I probably would have investigated the press options more, but I was running late to the first panel on my schedule. As I walked towards the room, I saw voice actor/director Mike Sinterniklaas (Dean Venture of “The Venture Bros.”, Leonard from “TMNT”) chatting with a cosplayer. I gave him a hug and helped him by holding his smoothie and Danish while he got her contact information, for she wanted some more information about voice acting for his studio. Just as we were chatting, Rachel Lillis, another voice actor appeared and I walked with them to the panel room.

The title of the panel was “East Meets West” but as more American voice actors appeared (including Stephanie Sheh and Tom Wayland), they started to wonder if they were supposed to be on the panel or if it was a panel for Japanese voice actor Minori Chihara and maybe only one or two other people, for there were only three microphones on stage. Sinterniklaas volunteered to be the group’s spokesperson and after a quick conversation with the staff, another table and three more microphones came out. I was only able to stay for the first half of the panel, but one of the things I was glad to learn was that when Chihara-san records her audition tapes at home, she uses an Sony IC Digital Voice Recorder, just like the one I just bought in preparation for this weekend.

As I made my way through NYAF’s Artist Alley/panels area/Maid Cafe-and-stage, I remarked that the average age of the attendees seemed to be college-aged. For the most part, they were very rambunctious and giddy, and I’m sorry I wasn’t able to linger to find out how the artists were faring in the basement. I also ran into Japanator editor Brad Rice, who took great pains to explain to everyone who asked that no, he wasn’t cosplaying as Harry Potter, thankyouverymuch.

Upstairs, I wandered through the Autograph area section, waving hello to some friends staffing the Otakon booth as well as Eisner-award winning editor Adam P. Knave (Popgun) and Attila Adorjany, two friends who joined forces to form Voltron purchase some booth space in the small press area. They were located next to Chris Hastings (The Adventures of Dr. McNinja). I would find out later on that the ended up co-opting booth space from Flaming Carrot creator Bob Burden, who himself traded up to a corner booth in the Alley and then later on Sunday would move into the larger Exhibit Hall on the north side, proving that even in the comic book trade it’s all about “location, location, location!”

Just beyond that was the comics Artist Alley section, and I was on a mission to find Finder creator Carla Speed McNeil, because in addition to being one of my favorite artists ever, she’s also a real good friend whom I hadn’t seen in about five years. My plan was to hang out with her at her booth for a while to tease her about “selling out” to Dark Horse… except, I had no idea how to find her.

This was a problem earlier on the NYCC website, where when you clicked on an Artist Alley name and a large graphic of their came up, but no biographical information or location information. However, I thought by the time the show came around, there’s be some information in the program book, but no dice. I would find out later on that there was one sign in the Artist Alley area that had a list of creators and their booth numbers. Not good, Reed. Not good.

Instead, I decided to wander the AA to see who else had shown up that I knew and remembered from my comics-peddling days and ran into Kevin Bolk from Interrobang Studios, who had no idea that Kara Dennison had written about him for this very website. As I wandered about, trying to find Speed McNeil, I found children’s book author and illustrator Nick Bell who was giving out free mini-buttons which read “i am great” to promote his new book Brian the Great and his existing book Mary the Tooth Fairy.

Listen to the interview with Nick Bell

Ever since I became the aunt to two very adorable nieces, I’ve become fascinated with the idea of finding children’s books which are smart and encourage young girls to grow up to become strong women. Since I had it on me at the time, I decided to do a quickie interview with Bell on my new recorder, and the results will go up in a few days.

A person could spend hours wandering the AA, but I couldn’t linger, for I had to get over to the north end of the convention hall to attend the only panel to whose press release I responded favorably.

To be continued…

8-Bit Theater ends its run with a bang

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One of the first webcomics to use sprites from video games for character art, 8-Bit Theater creator Brian Clevinger gave his nine-year old series a great sendoff by teaming up with artist Matt Speroni and letterer Jeff Powell to create a hand-drawn epilogue to his story which ended officially on March 20.

I have to admit that while it was never on my webcomics readling list, I do recognize that when it comes to being a pioneer of webcomics, Clevinger’s creation most definitely deserves to be on that honor roll. Many sprite comics have come and gone, but his story’s endurance had as much to say about good writing and great characterization as it did the fact that it was one of the first of its kind.

Congrats on a great run.