DC Rebirth: Where are the Women? ⋆

Over the weekend at Wondercon, DC held a big panel to announce the creative teams for their Rebirth books. Since the DC New 52 launched back in October 2013, there’s felt like a revolving door of books and teams, but a few have remained pretty consistent like Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo on Batman.

That’s all coming to an end though and all-new teams are being put in place (you can see the full line-up of books and creative teams at the bottom of this article). The creative team for 31 of the books were announced over the weekend and they’re filled with impressive talent, but they’re also impressively short on female creators.

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The books that do have female creators on board are also primarily books that star female characters. While that’s cool and all, it’s getting to be pretty boring to just put women on books where they’re writing other female characters. Over at Marvel, Becky Cloonan is writing The Punisher and that’s HELLA cool and prior to Rebirth, Ming Doyle was one of the co-writers on Constantine, which is also really freaking cool.

Let’s do some math here (this is all approximations):

31 creative teams for DC Rebirth titles have been announced
31 x 3 people per book (hypothetically with 1 writer, 1 artist, 1 colourist each, at least) = 93
Out of those potential 93 slots for creators, 8 have been given to women

RebirthBatgirl-5fe4c That is a pitiful number given how many amazing female creators are out there. I’m not going to start listing all of the women who COULD be on these books, but it’s seriously getting pretty ridiculous that relaunch after relaunch doesn’t mean squat to the higher ups when it comes to having teams that represent a wider audience.

It’s a really amazing thing to see the giant ship that is comic books turning towards a more diverse world when it comes to characters, but part of that is bringing on different people to help bring all of this about. There are great male writers out there that can and do write wonderfully diverse characters but we’re never going to have new, interesting stories to sustain our industry if we rely on the same talent over and over. Things need to get shaken up and different people need to have try their voices out. Maybe it doesn’t translate every time and maybe the story isn’t an instant classic but people need to try and they need to give something new a chance to usher in future eras.

Part of the reason that it’s taking so long for our ship to change its course is that too many people from the old regime of comics are lingering and holding on for dear life.

In 2012, Becky Cloonan became the first woman to ever draw Batman in the main series. HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE?

Batman first appeared back in 1939 and it took 73 YEARS for a woman to be on that book. Some books and characters have NEVER been written or drawn by a woman and that’s ALSO appalling. How did we let this happen and how are we CONTINUING to let this happen?

Rebirth, to me, means a revival and a change that is potentially for the better (in theory). There are a few titles that are not revealed yet but unless they announce 80+ women on those remaining books, we’re nowhere even remotely close to having a balance at DC. While I’m aware that the days when it’s 50/50 split between male and female creators are probably not going to exist within my lifetime (depressing), I can hope for better and hold the creators I choose to give my money to a higher standard that everyone should be living by.

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