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In an industry over-saturated with big-busted heroines and vixens, created primarily from the male mind, it’s hard to separate the female characters that are essentially just male eye-candy from those idealized in a more feminist perspective of a modern heroic woman. If that’s not enough, your average comic reader could likely name 50 male comic creators for every 1 female creator they struggle to remember. Coming in March, Marvel aims to break this glass ceiling when they introduce Girl Comics, a three part comic anthology series created entirely by female writers and cartoonist. Girl Comics will celebrate the large role women play in the comic industry, and will feature such diverse talent as Stephanie Buscema, Jill Thompson, Jo Chen, Colleen Coover, and many, many more.

Girl Comic will be presented much like the similar indie anthology Strange Tales. Each individual story will not only be written and illustrated by women, but every detail of the comic, from inker, letterer, all the way to editorial will be overseen by a female staff. Reported from the Beat, series editor Jeanine Schaefer elaborated about the purpose behind the series:

“My original hope with this was to show that women in comics are already creating just as diverse a range of stories as men. I think the characters and the stories will draw in just as many men in as women, and will get people thinking that good comics aren’t about the gender of the writer or artist, it’s about where what you like to read intersects with what they like to create.”

The series is not intended to only feature female Marvel characters, and the whole cast of the Marvel universe is being consider for each individual chapters. I think one of the most interesting character choices is the Punisher, written by Valerie D’orazio and art by Nikki Cook. It will be exciting to see how they will approach the traditionally machismo character.

With any luck, this will not only be a limited anthology, but a progressive change in the industry as a whole. Girls Comic #1 hits comic shelves March 3rd.

-Jon

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