ConMunity Engagement: Feminist Fandoms p3, Bringing Feminism to Mainstream conventions

Women, people of color, trans, queer, and the rest of us folx (aka anyone who is not a straight-white-cis-het-white-male) are changing the landscape of nerd spaces. Besides bringing new markets, or increasing holds in those markets, we are critiquing the ways that nerd-culture is unhealthy. Specifically, these audiences are not interested in the white nerd boy club that was the standard in comics, and other nerd communities. Instead, we seek to change the behaviors that have made these cis-het-white-male-centric spaces unhealthy. This means not being “one of the guys” but changing fandoms and fan spaces to be explicitly feminist, and I mean intersectional feminist, and respectful of all people. While using the term “feminist” to refer to fan communities is in some ways oxymoronic, as they act a microcosm for the rampant misogyny in society, it is that sort of reform that is needed to re-forge them into healthy places.

As comics became blockbuster films, and as more people have grown up with access to manga, establishing feminism in fandoms is one part of the swing back to a more inclusive market in comics. One of these expanding comics-related markets is clothing and cosplay, full costumes or the “undercover” variety. Because costuming, and the skills required for costuming, is/are still coded as feminine and this work has brought many more women into these spaces.

However, cosplay is not inherently feminist. There is still an association between the term ‘cosplay’ and sexy because it revealed how impractical and bizarre costuming choices for women characters in comics are. This mean that cosplay can embody the same misogyny that exists in the comics that they draw from and that was inherent to the nerd community.

So cosplay brings in more women, as do many other factors, but how do we bring feminism to mainstream conventions when women just as capable of supporting the patriarchy as men? I’ve touched on this in my previous blogs but it involves supporting feminist programming, artists, sellers, and bringing feminism into whatever fandoms you participate in. For me this starts at home. Am I being a feminist consumer? I try to be and you can read my rule about buying floppy comics to see what I mean. Some people argue that the idea of a “feminist consumer” is problematic because of the rise of “capitalist feminism,” which some people see as antithetical to the goals of feminism . However, conventions are essentially small open markets where the consumer has a lot of power. It’s also the age old claim of the anti-diversity folks that we “diverse consumers” just aren’t driving the market. So it’s paper paper paper to support the diverse work I love.

Sometimes you love what you love, and sometimes that thing is not easy to reconcile with feminism. My example is Star Trek: The Original Series, I love so much of what it brought to the small screen, but its approach to women and culture is still deeply rooted in the 1960s (for an example revisit The Paradise Syndrome). If the fandom you love has problems that deal with culture, gender, sexuality, or race, consider bringing programming to conventions that addresses those issues. We are at conventions because of our love for the medium, genre, or specific work so if you feel like it needs to be critiqued, you are probably not alone. There will be other fans interested in having a meaningful discussion about intersectional issues, if you didn’t enjoy it so much, you probably wouldn’t be annoyed enough to want to critique it.

My last suggestion is to wear your feminist properties on your sleeve. Be open about it, take up space and be seen supporting properties like Feminist Frequency, Black Girl Nerds, and InSEXts. Encourage your friends to support new feminist properties or bring them to panels that support those creators. Wear your Bitch Planet pins to the con, out in the world, and talk-that-shit-up. One of the biggest comments I’ve gotten after talking to people about Bitch Planet, is “I didn’t know that existed in comics” WELL NOW YOU KNOW. Go do the thing. Also, where possible, don’t take shit from people trying to gatekeep you. Assert yourself, ask questions like “why does that matter?” and interrogate them about their knowledge. I have had to explain my “Feminism is my Fandom” pin more than once but that meant that the other person actually had to engage with what that meant. Part of the patriarchy is controlling knowledge, power, and knowledge as power. We can do it too, it's just a matter of using those tools to our advance our agendas.

These are just a few suggestions but it’s clear from the existence of sites such as themarysue, youtube series like Feminist Frequency, comics like Bitch Planet, and films like She Makes Comics (PS don't believe the IMDB ratings, they're heavily gendered) that feminism exists in nerd spaces. Each of these celebrate women’s long history of participation in the nerd community and demonstrates how feminism benefits both women and men and conventions. It means that people, regardless of gender will have respect and be able to participate in the things that they love without fear of bullying or discomfort. We all attend conventions because they should be safe spaces and to make that true requires feminism and feminist fandoms.

Where to begin: Getting into comics

Right off the bat: Comics are a Medium and Not a Genre

Don’t argue

If you argue about this point then this blog is not for you, because I’m going to ask you what genres you like and if superheroes are all that you want there are other “where to start” blogs that will probably be more your style. Also, I will not be giving specific book suggestions, this is supposed to be about you (the reader) choosing your own comics adventure.

Anyways, where to begin and how to get into comics. It can be intimidating to start reading comics especially if your goal is to feel comfortable and like you belong in a comic book shop. I will say this, no matter how many comics you read, stepping into a new shop can be intimidating. It’s like going into a new bar, you know a sort of what to expect but it’s still a different place with a new group of people. Anyways, I’m going to pose questions and give suggestions as this is not an absolute guide to getting into comics. Instead, it’s a way to think about what you want to get out of reading them and consider how and if you want to be part of a comics community.

First, what do you want to get out of reading comics? Expand the types of things you read? Get involved with a particular community? Know more about the heroes you see on the silver and LED screen? Know what people are talking about when they reference stuff?

It’s important to know the answers to these questions to understand what sort of commitment you are making. Comics do not have to be a commitment but it helps to understand what sort of “first books” you might be interested in, what sort of recommendation lists you should look for, and where you should be looking to get them. Knowing the answers to these questions helps to narrow down the infinite possible books to start with and the infinite places you might start to look for things. Also it's OK to pick up something and then not like it. That doesn’t mean that all comics aren’t for you, it just means that that particular book wasn’t for you. Comics are an infinite medium so unless you don’t like pictures and words together there is most likely a comic you’ll like.

My next question is what do you want to read? What genres do you currently read? Have you read manga (PS manga are comics so you already read comics!) or watched anime? Do you already read things like xkcd or PhD comics or Hark! A Vagrant? Are you looking for episodic works, stories that finish quickly? Are you looking for specific stories? Or do you enjoy never knowing with something could end?

These questions help you to decide what types of comics you are looking to get into as far as genre and length format. While we often think of comic books in their “floppy” single-issue form, many comics are published as complete graphic novels, single page web-comics, and digital or print strips. These are all valid ways to “get into” comics but each type has its own community and place to get those types of stories. And remember, manga and manhwa are comics too, they just have generally Asian-creators and the works are translated but that doesn’t make them any less valid than American style comics.

If short form, or very episodic, is your thing (aka you like comic strips or getting a new page of a story every week or few days) webcomics will be a good place for you to start. There are tons of great ones on websites like Tapas and on websites hosted by their creators. These are often more personal works and catered to the tastes of the creator rather than a particular market, as they are labors of love. This means you can find almost any possible story imaginable in this form. Also some of the more popularized ones (like Hark! A Vagrant) do have published compilations through Kickstarter or are being picked up by publishers like Oni press so you can get them in hard copy form as well.

You know what you want, now how do you get it? How much do you want to commit financially to reading comics? How quickly do you read?

My first recommendation in relation to this is once you know what you want out of comics and the stories you are interested in finding, search “comics” and those topics that you want to read about. You’ll probably get some Wikipedia entries, amazon ads, and maybe some blogs posts. These will all help you pick what you are interested in. If you have not selected web comics, or even if you have my next suggestion will always be your library, local or university.

Why? Because the library is awesome, librarians can help you find more cool stuff, there is a huge variety, and you can try everything with minimal financial commitment. Libraries are great places to be (they often have air conditioning) and allow you to browse what is available with no commitment to spend money. Once you know more of what you want you can ask librarians to help you find more stuff (comics or not) that you will be interested in. If you read quickly, like I did when I was reading manga, the library is a great place to churn through graphic novels. 50 volumes of Bleach? No need to drop $500 on all those graphic novels, especially if you don’t care to re-read or display them, get them from the library.

Lastly, while you might not be helping creators directly, book circulation impacts what libraries buy, so if a certain graphic novel is continuously checked out they will probably buy more of volume 2 of that graphic novel. Also as a patron you can suggest things for the library to buy, in case you aren’t sure about something but think others might enjoy it. I’ve done this for local comics as well, which boosts sales and can put diverse books on publicly available shelves. As a little extra too, many libraries have digital comics access as well as physical comics (generally graphic novels as those do not deteriorate as quickly but some individual branches may have a small collection of floppies). So, if you don’t want to carry fifty graphic novels home with you, you can check them out through apps like Hoopla. Also at no charge. Doing this helps to makes sure you are getting actually what you want and helps you explore in what format to help decide how much you might want to contribute financially to comics down the road.

Do you like having physical copies of books of things you own (cds/dvds/video games)? Do you re-read books?

If you think any of the above is a yes then get to know your local secondhand bookstore (like Half Price Books), Amazon.com, TFAW, and/or a local comics shop. TFAW and your local comics shop will have floppies and graphic novels, while Amazon and secondhand bookstores are better for graphic novels. If you are just starting out local comics shops can be intimidating but if you go in know what you want, and money's no object, you can get great recommendations from the employees. If you aren’t a people person, Amazon is great for graphic novels and has the added benefit of reviews, though I wouldn’t always trust them as they can be filled with old guard gate-keepers. TFAW is a great resource for floppies and graphic novels and during their sales is a great place to snag a wide variety of newer material.

What do you do if the library doesn’t have what you want but you don’t have much to commit financially?

If webcomics, which are generally free, aren’t your thing, but you don’t have tons to drop on graphic novels or floppies consider a subscription service such as Marvel Unlimited or Stela both of which cost $10 a month for unlimited access to their online library of comics. Also consider looking at second hand shops, which might have older or out of print graphic novels.

Do you have gobs of expendable income? Are you interested in having a direct relationship with creators you read? What if you are a bazillionaire and want to dedicate all your money to comics?

Well walk into any store that you want and buy all the things my big spender. OR be even cooler and do things like back Kickstarters and support creators directly via Patreon. Patreons allow you to support those creators directly so that they can keep living and creating cool work. Lastly, most of the time each tier of support (either one time things like Kickstarter or monthly giving like Patreon) you get something like a unique comic or digital version of something for your money so it’s just going down a black hole.

How do I start doing the subscription/pull/regular weekly floppies thing?

If there are individual issues that you want to follow that come out in physical form this is the best way to support that industry. Pre-sales orders (aka what you put on your “pull” or subscription list) are what get reported and influence what series continue and which get axed. It was the source of recent controversy over at Marvel and so pre-sales are a really important way to make sure the books that you want to read keep getting published. For me, this means books that star and/or are created by POC, women, and LGBTQA folks.

Once that’s figured out look around for what shop is closest to you, check out their subscription/pull policy, as they are not standard, and visit it to make sure it’s got the vibe you want. Try to chat with employees to see if you like the vibe, and after checking their pull box policy, ask about starting a subscription box. If you don’t like the vibe or their policy, there are usually multiple options in an area and try those out. If you aren’t in to going to a physical shop for many local shops will ship to people (for an added fee), you can get find an online only service like TFAW, and digital subscriptions through publishers are always a possibility.

What about protecting my comics?

There have been many recent articles and great twitter threads discussing the “value” of comics. Namely, that the collector market in many ways is made up. Regardless of what floppies you buy, get them because you want to read them not because of some assumed increase in value down the line. OLD comics are worth $$ now because they were trashed and so while lots of them existed, few survive. This is no longer the case. Comics are printed in huge batches and many people out there are looking for “perfect” versions. That means, if you want to protect your comics you should be interested in protecting them for your own pleasure. That means bags, boards, or both depend on what you want for your collection and always means an added cost to reading comics in protective supplies. These are better to buy in bulk and to shop around (online or at a variety of local shops) for the best price and if you want some tips on preserving home collection in general check out this.

I read the stuff, now what do I do?

I recommend, once you’ve found creators/writers you like, follow them on Twitter and Tumblr. They often post great art or story tidbits and make you feel part of the comics community, even if you don’t go to a local shop. You can see what new projects are going on and often get great recommendations from them for new books or artists to follow or kickstarters for unique titles.

I want to reiterate There is no “right” way to get into comics. Just like getting to music or print books, everyone gets there in their own fashion, Unfortunately, because of histories of gatekeeping, comics can seem more intimidating than they have a right to be. And remember, however you get here, if you are interested you belong anywhere comics discussions are.

The Rule

Note: This blog was initially written as part of an application for the comic website Panels on 25 Feb 2016. - Paulina

I didn’t start buying floppies until I was 22, just before I finished my first year of graduate school. It wasn’t because I didn’t enjoy reading comics, I did, it was that as a kid my parents encouraged the use of the library. Also we were middle class and at the rate that I read manga buying them really made no sense.

Anyways, soon after I started collecting I became interested in the diversity of the comics industry. While not something I had actively cared about before I started collecting, the more I learned about it the more I realized that lack of diversity had kept me from pursuing my interest in American comics as a child. As a 9-year-old girl of mixed-race (Filipino-Polish if that matters to you) it was much easier to pick up manga like Sailor Moon, Card Captor Sakura, or Inu-Yasha and relate to those characters than it was to start reading Batman where 1) there was no clear place to begin 2) it was hard to imagine myself as a stupidly wealthy middle aged white man.

So this got me thinking and after a year of collecting and going religiously to my local shop and grabbing up whatever sounded cool I realized I was adding too many books to my list and I needed a way to pare down the possibilities. (Not that you necessarily should, I just didn’t have the income to support my growing habit). And after some thought I came up with one rule:

No diversity within the comic or its creation, no way its getting my money as a full-priced floppy.

What does this mean?

It means that I don’t buy comics for full price that are made by white males about white males.

What doesn’t this mean?

-It doesn’t mean that those stories are bad.

-It doesn’t mean that the stories I’m left with are good.

-It doesn’t mean I would buy any story that met that criteria.

-It doesn’t mean I won’t ever read those stories.

-It doesn’t mean that I won’t eventually purchase those stories.

It was a way to merge my passions and meet my economic need. I could promote diversity in comics by putting my money where my mouth was and pre-ordering books with main characters who were women and/or people of color and/or stories that women and/or people of color made. To boot, it’s a pretty easy rule to remember and follow.

After I started filtering books by this rule, I realized how many new titles, creator owned and those promoted by the big two, didn’t meet my qualifications. It was a comics Bechdel test and there were months that would go by where no new titles followed my rule AND sounded interesting enough to purchase. Also like the Bechdel test, I knew it isn’t/wasn’t a perfect rule. Furthering the parallel though, it made me think seriously about all those stories that didn’t have women or people of color as main characters or as key creators.

Most of us know that what keeps women and people of color from entering the industry is an intersectional problem that involves the conception and a perpetuation of the idea that those industries “are” middle-class and white and male. This is a problem in almost all nerdy industries. More striking to me was the lack of women and people of color as main characters. What was it about a story that involved a “young boy discovering his destiny as X” that required him to be a) a boy (or male or gendered at all) b) illustrated as Caucasian. Was there some sort of special penis requirement for this destiny that also required the palest of complexions with European features? No, there wasn’t. Instead, these stories revealed a level of contentedness with “industry” standards and a lack of questioning of the ideology of the “typical” comic-book character. The industry assumed a white male audience and so they continued to give that audience stories that they could easily identify with. It wasn’t that white-male audiences couldn’t identify with diversity, we all know they can, it’s just that the industry didn’t think to make them try.

Thankfully, this is changing and every week more titles are coming out from DC and Marvel and Image that mimic the reality of comic book reading audiences. Where the characters and creators are increasingly diverse in age, gender, sex, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and class background. But I keep my rule anyways. Partially because my comics are piling up in another state and I’m not adding any books at the moment but also because it’s still a good rule to have. If a comic can’t find a woman and/or a person of color to be a part of its creation, in any capacity, and they don’t have them incorporated into the story in a significant way is it an artistic choice or just laziness?