Women and comics. Women on comics. Women in comics. This isn’t a new subject area by any means. The past decade has seen an unprecedented surge in women comic creators, particularly in the indie graphic novel domain. This is a medium that has gradually been gaining greater popularity and credibility as a form of literature- I’m sure many of you are thinking Persepolis right now. More and more women are picking up comics and embracing them whole-heartedly. However, at the same time, our classic British girl comics have completely disappeared, with DC Thomson’s Bunty comic holding on the longest until its final issue in 2001. Unlike their ‘boy’ counterparts The Beano and The Dandy, these girl comics simply couldn’t keep up with the times and became seen as dated, boring and uncool, little more than a throwback to our mothers’ childhoods. Despite all the promising signs on the adult’s side of comics, something seems amiss, as now more than ever mainstream children’s comics are being aimed towards a primarily male market. This was a mystery that we at Team Girl Comic, Glasgow’s all-female comic collective, were asked to explore for both London’s Alternative Press Festival and the Glasgow Comic Con 2011- a challenge we embraced wholeheartedly!
