I didn’t do as much comics reading as I certainly would have liked this year. Like so many of us, life got in the way, whether it was my day job or other aspects of my personal life.
But when I do look at that reading list, small as it may be, there’s one thing that stands out.
The stories I read in 2o2o — and many of the stories I loved the most — had women at their center, either as characters or as their creators.
There was “Star Wars: Doctor Aphra,” the focus of my Summer Comics Binge for 2020, the morally ambiguous space archaeologist who found camaraderie and found family alongside her many heists. There was “Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor,” Jodie Whittaker’s fierce and fun Doctor in adventures old and new. There was “Adler,” the steampunk flavored story of Sherlock Holmes’s great love, herself an action hero of brains, brawn, and beauty. And there was Kamala Khan, Ms. Marvel, figuring out the trials and tribulations of superhero and teenager in “The Magnificent Ms. Marvel.”
And that’s just the comics. My graphic novel collection leaned into the X chromosome too. There was “Eat, and Love Yourself,” Sweeney Boo’s story of living with an eating disorder that I consider one of the most impactful graphic novels I have ever read. There was Roxane Gay’s “The Sacrifice of Darkness,” an adaptation of her similarly named short story. The return of Allie Brosh in “Solutions and Other Problems.” Dipping into my backlog (as many of us did early on in the pandemic when Diamond shut down distribution) I found even more woman-centered stories that brought me joy. Ebony Flowers’s “Hot Comb.” Sebastian Jones’s Afro-centric fantasy world of Niobe. Thi Bui’s memoir of her immigrant experience in “The Best We Could Do.”
Even my non-comics media in 2020 leaned in to women. True Blood. The Crown. The Expanse. Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn. Prose books such as “American Spy” and “Daisy Jones and the Six.” What’s surprising is that deciding to read women wasn’t a 100 percent conscious choice. It’s always been my resolve to adopt the mantle of our (on-hiatus) Comics Syllabus podcast: read widely and dig deep. But to have it lean as much as it did towards women did surprise me just enough to allow for some reflection on the year and women in comics.
Now all the stories I cite above are very different kinds of stories. But they had one thing in common: characterization. Whether it was the blood pumping action of Ms. Marvel or the tender memoirs of Sweeney Boo and Thi Bui, something all these creators had in common with their women was that characterization. These were multidimensional women, carrying their femininity as their strength, their womanhood as a badge of honor and immovable force. They defined and redefined what it means to be female, not accepting any sort of box or constraint family, friends, and society want to put upon them. They accept who they are and what they need to do to achieve their goals. They accept the mantle that destiny gives them, even if it comes at personal sacrifice.
That sounds like many real-life women I know this year who put their own desires aside to ensure that households remained running in the pandemic — managing their own work (if they were still working), virtual schooling, and household basics to keep comfort and a sense of normalcy in their lives. Women serving on the front lines as essential workers. Women putting their own careers aside to make sure the family is fed, comforted, and educated. And women — too many women, particularly in the United States where pandemic financial assistance has been a pittance at best — given the burden of figuring out how to simply survive.
Without realizing it, perhaps that is what I sought this year: strong women that I can draw upon to find my own strength to deal with the demons this horrible year brought. Their stories served as reminder of my privilege, those moments where I gave in to despair and anxiety thinking my life was just The Worst. They were reminders that I was far from being in that place of The Worst, that I had the resources within me to claw back and push forward. If these women could fight back under much worse circumstances than myself, then so could I.
Continued belowPerhaps we may look back on 2020 as the year of the woman in comics. Take a look at this year’s Eisner Award winners. Mariko Tamaki. Raina Telgemeier. Lynda Barry. Tillie Walden. G. Willow Wilson. Women Write About Comics. (In the interest of full disclosure, I am also a contributor at Women Write About Comics.) Out of 31 Eisner winners, 19 were women. This is recognition that’s been a long time coming.
Now let’s be clear: it hasn’t all been perfect. Hiring at many publishers (Marvel and DC in particular) still lags in gender and racial diversity. (Tim Hanley’s been doing fine work to bring this issue to light.) Many female focused titles got the axe thanks to the pandemic’s economic freefall. Layoffs at WarnerMedia exposed a long history of sexist and racist hiring and promotional practices throughout DC. The industry continues to be rocked by harassment and abuse allegations. And there’s still plenty of media out there that puts women in traditional, outdated gender roles or has them as objects for the male gaze.
But this dumpster fire of a year did give us wonderful moments for women. And let’s hope that we take the lessons we have learned throughout the year into next year and beyond, and continue to strive towards that equity and intersectionality in comics. On the eve of the inauguration of the first female U.S. Vice President in history, 2021 has the potential to be a year where reading like a girl will and should be a proud badge of honor.
