From DC’s The Source: We Hear You
Friday, July 29th, 2011
By DC Comics’ Co-Publishers
Over the past week we’ve heard from fans about a need for more women writers, artists and characters. We want you to know, first and foremost, that we hear you and take your concerns very seriously.
We’ve been very fortunate in recent years to have fan favorite creators like Gail Simone, Amy Reeder, Felicia Henderson, Fiona Staples, Amanda Connor, G. Willow Wilson and Nicola Scott write and draw the adventures of the World’s Greatest Super Heroes.
DC Comics is the home of a pantheon of remarkable, iconic women characters like Wonder Woman, Lois Lane, Batgirl, Batwoman, Catwoman and Supergirl as well as fan favorite characters like Black Canary, Katana, Mera and Starfire. We’re committed to telling diverse stories with a diverse point of view. We want these adventures to resonate in the real world, reflecting the experiences of our diverse readership. Can we improve on that? We always can—and aim to.
We’ll have exciting news about new projects with women creators in the coming months and will be making those announcements closer to publication. Many of the above creators will be working on new projects, as we continue to tell the ongoing adventures of our characters. We know there are dozens of other women creators and we welcome the opportunity to work with them.
Our recent announcements have generated much attention and discussion and we welcome that dialogue.
Best-
Jim Lee & Dan DiDio
DC Entertainment Co-Publishers
Well. That’s interesting.
As I said on Tumblr, I think this is a positive move. A huge part of the problem is that DC doesn’t see its female fans (or the male fans who want to read comics by and about women) as a viable market to court. Acknowledging that we exist and that we’re unhappy is a very important step.
And as much as it’s become second nature to me to be cynical about DC public statements like this, I am going to accept it in good faith. I hope these unspecified projects pan out and I look forward to reading them. And if they don’t, now there’s a public statement to point to and go “What happened?”
I think it’s positive too. I’m stunned that they acknowledged there’s a problem at all, and made a public statement about it. That’s not what DC does! This is the first thing about the reboot that they’ve acknowledged as being a genuine problem for their readers, at all. That’s…amazing.
I was pretty surprised at the acknowledgement too! Hopefully this is a positive sign. *fingers crossed*