Ladies Making Comics

Weekly roundup of cool news: March 3-9, 2013

Here’s a new feature I’m trying, to draw attention to some of the news things I curate elsewhere and also get to talk about them more in-depth.

Red Sonja roundup: As you’ve probably heard, Gail Simone is going to be writing that “iconic non-DC female character” Red Sonja for Dynamite starting in July, and she gave a ton of interviews on the subject with Comic Book Resources, Comics Beat, GeekMom, and MTV Geek. Though for my money, Simone’s best quote comes from the press release:

What I love about Sonja is that she isn’t polite, she says what she means and if you give her any lip about it, hello, sword in the gut. She’s smart, she has a heart, she has some compassion. But when it’s go time, she’s a hellraiser, a mad general, she’s a sword edge virtuosa, she’s death on wheels. She is the woman you never want to mess with. I can relate, Sonja. No offense to all her guy writers, but THIS Red Sonja is about sex and swords! It’s everything you love about Red Sonja, except with more monsters getting stabbed in the eye.

We’ll be getting covers from Fiona Staples, Nicola Scott, Jenny Frison, Colleen Doran, and Stephanie Buscema

Penny Arcade’s Strip Search, a web reality series searching for the “next big webcartoonist” is three episodes in now. The winner will be getting $15,000 and will be “embedded” in the Penny Arcade offices for a year. In the first episode, contestant Katie Rice voiced relief at seeing just one other woman, but it turned out half of the original 12 contestants were women! I’d like to think that’s a nice little microcosm of the current direction of comics. The other women contestants are Abby Howard, Amy Falcone, Erika Moen (which frankly doesn’t even seem fair to the rest), Lexxy Douglas, and Monica Ray.

Though I meant what I said the other day about not expecting women to make comics about (predominantly) Women’s Issues, they can and I’d like to share a few that have. Paula Knight talks about talking about miscarriage and the comics she’s made to deal with hers. This reminded me of Diane Noomin’s comic about her four miscarriages, which she discusses in an audio interview with the Jewish Forward. On the other side of the ex-pregnancy coin, Samantha Meier interviewed Lora Fountain, the creator of “A Teenage Abortion”, from Wimmen’s Comix #1, published before abortion on demand was legal in the US and depicting a teenager attempting to get a back-alley abortion— a process that struck me as a dystopian fever dream, but of course was all too real. Fountain also edited Facts o’ Life Sex Education Funnies, which she also talks about. I own Facts o’ Life and find it still basically holds up except for the absence of HIV/AIDS, which was not yet a thing when it was published.

There are ElfQuest T-shirts on WeLoveFine.com in celebration of the 35th anniversary of Wendy and Richard Pini’s classic fantasy comic. A new story is running on boingbong.

Bonus Art Thing:

Emily Carroll has a new comic up, “The 3 Snake Leaves”, and you never want to miss a new Emily Carroll comic.

Warner Bros. Shuts Down ElfQuest Movie So As Not To Compete with ‘The Hobbit’

This weekend, Wendy Pini posted this to the official ElfQuest Facebook:

After close to four years of suspense - and longer than four years of your much-appreciated interest and support - the word has come down from Warner Bros. And the word is “no.” Their simple explanation is that they don’t want to compete with “The Hobbit.” This was a possibility, among several, that we were prepared for. It is a relief, at last, to know.

So…where that leaves us is that Wendy has done all she can, for three decades, with regard to an Elfquest movie. There is nothing more she can do or wants to do. As for Richard, he will continue to manage Warp Graphics’ properties and pursue publishing and licensing opportunities.

Thank you so much for all your love and encouragement. Believe us, it has not fallen on bare rock. We will spend the next few years producing Elfquest “The Final Quest.” Then, who knows? Our capacity for dreaming big has not diminished.

I can’t say that makes much sense.  Apart from the vast differences in story, it would make sense to me that Warner Brothers would want a new fantasy movie/franchise to follow up the two Hobbit movies.  Hopefully they’ll look back into it in a few years.

ElfQuest Screenplay Gets Rewrite from Doctor Who Director

According to Deadline, the quest to bring Wendy and Richard Pini’s ElfQuest to the screen has taken another step forward.  Joe Ahearne, director of five episodes of the Eccleston series of Doctor Who, and creator of Channel Four series Ultraviolet and BBC series Apparitions, has been hired by Warner Brothers to rewrite the ElfQuest screenplay first drafted by attached director Rawson Thurber (Dodgeball, Mysteries of Pittsburgh).

The Pinis have been trying to get an ElfQuest movie made for decades, and Warner Brothers has a huge hole to fill in their annual slate since the end of Harry Potter.  Perhaps this will be the successful comic book franchise WB has been looking for?