CROSSHATCHINGCarlo Pagulayan's Online Journal and Portfolio
Test Introduction

Nope it’s not about female characters appearing in the funny books, rather those who work on books.

During the last couple of Cons we’ve attended and on the radio interview, people asked why the Comics industry is dominated by males.  It wasn’t the first time I had been asked that; the first time was  from a female friend who had then aspired to be a colorist.  She didn’t feel at all positive or at least motivated to enter the business because of the male-female ratio.

I told her that it’s probably more on personal interest.  I’ve observed more guys are interested in drawing. And we all know a lot are also interested in comics.  And since the more famous genre happens to be superheroes, adventure, and sci-fi rather than romance and drama and fantasy, guys are easily drawn in.  Males tend to relate to adventure stuff and sometimes daydream or fantasize about being the hero.  I guess that’s why they say females are more mature than us hehe.  (I remember being chastised back in college by a a friends Highschool girlfriend of  being childish, because I loved to draw hero stuff)

If the market was saturated with romance comics it would be safe to say there’d be a lot of female creators.  Girls love novels, IMO novels aren’t really that much different from comics.  That’s probably why more girls turn up as writers.

Another factor maybe was the way society has brought us up and we’re just going along with it.  On UPLBs first Comic Convention; Komikstrip,  Gerry Alanguilan pointed out that there’s nothing really barring girls from entering the business, if you want to tell a story, absolutely nobody would be disappointed.  That much every creator agrees on.   We no longer live in the past where women would be criticized for a job unladylike (and since when was art unladylike?).

The industry has no difference with others, especially with employments.  If anything other industries have gender related jobs especially if jobs concern dexterity; studies find females have better hand-eye coordination, while males are better at spatial judgment. That’s why most factories hire females for delicate assemblies, and males are hired for driving and engineering.  But that’s not entirely across the board

Another thing that I have observed (but I could be wrong) is more women have been entering the comic book business at the advent of digital production.  Maybe it’s because us males are rarely bothered by messy studios, (if you can only see my room) and Photoshop and Painter and other digital programs have allowed painters and artists to maintain clean, uncluttered work stations.

I hope I’m not offending people out there.  Fact is most of these are just observations and an attempt to answer why are women just a handful in the comic book business when it comes to art chores.

What’s your opinion?

About Carlo

I am a freelance comic book illustrator based in the Philippines and have mostly contributed work for Marvel Comics. I do mostly pencil works for interiors and covers, but have also expanded to digital painting and colors and the occasional digital sculpting.
This entry was posted in Comics, Stuff. Bookmark the permalink.

One Response to Women in Comics

  1. Lizz says:

    IMHO, it’s also a bit disappointing for women trying to get into the industry because there are some men who try to use professional contacts to get “personal”. That happens in any work environment, of course, but I suppose it happens more often in a male-dominated environment. It can get tiring if you’re serious about the job and just want to work.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Browse by Topic