Women In Comics: Simonson, Nocenti Talk Marvel & Gender Roles in Comics

[CBR News]

Throughout Women's History Month, CBR shines the spotlight on female comics creators, past and present. This week, Ann Nocenti and Louise Simonson reflect on working at Marvel, the pitfalls of writing female characters and more.


Full article here.

[DebkoX]

Hopefully we'll be seeing more female solos.

[chakal]

A recommended and interesting interview. While I grew up mostly in 90s, you can feel some magic in 70s and 80s comic books.
Ann Nocenti, I wonder if she was nicknamed "InNocenti" by colleagues.

[djsweet]

Big fan of Ann and Louise, DD and X-factor were some of my fav's! Marvel had a much larger and higher profile group of women working for them in the 80's than currently or in the Joe Q obnoxious frat boy era, why the regression? Oh yeah, Obnoxious d*ck wavers and misogynistic writers/editors. The bullpen became the type of place where guys hang out in their soiled white underwear.

[ironblitz]

I'm just glad Nocenti admitted she sucked on Green Arrow...she seems like a nice person, but what I've read of her work is rather poor.

[Hypestyle]

Does anyone speculate on why there's never been a Storm ongoing series? Never mind...

[chakal]

Does anyone speculate on why there's never been a Storm ongoing series? Never mind...

Probably no one had an idea for an ongoing. Gambit was/is barely readable. With Storm, you should have many possibilities, but somehow nobody wants to write her.

[renne]

This is an interesting interview, but the tagline "the pitfalls of writing female characters" wasn't really discussed? apart form if you did you'd get stereotyped, but female characters didn'nt last very long anyway??

[ed2962]

Does anyone speculate on why there's never been a Storm ongoing series? Never mind...

She's had a couple of mini's. As for why no ongoing? Who knows? There's the temptation to say she's got two obvious strikes against her, but I don't think it's that simple. I mean, Marvel at least attempted Bishop and Rogue ongoing series. I guess no writer or editor has handed in the right proposal yet. However, Hally Berry has been making noise about wanting to be in the next X-Men movie, so that could change in the next couple of years.

[Frank]

Big fan of Ann and Louise, DD and X-factor were some of my fav's! Marvel had a much larger and higher profile group of women working for them in the 80's than currently or in the Joe Q obnoxious frat boy era, why the regression? Oh yeah, Obnoxious d*ck wavers and misogynistic writers/editors. The bullpen became the type of place where guys hang out in their soiled white underwear.

Don't get me wrong, i'm not found of the Quesada Era but saying they are a bunch of misogynistic boys club is far from the truth. Bendis loved Gilmore's girls for crying out loud, he introduced more women characters than most writers in the past. I would say most guys there would rather write women characters.

It's just that their writing is rather cynical and not for everybody.

[Frank]

Nocenti: I think what was great about the Marvel bullpen back then was that the editorial staff was so amazing. If you needed some kind of technical military reference, you went into Larry Hama's office and he'd be handing out Xeroxes; you had Xeroxes of Wally Wood for storytelling, and you had Denny O'Neil and Archie Goodwin. There was Mark Gruenwald and Ralph Macchio and Peter Sanderson who knew the history inside out. There wasn't a single editor in there that wasn't strong. I think a lot of creativity came out of the '80s because there was a strong team there.

That's a dream editorial staff right there. All good guys most of them and surprise: very competent in what they are doing contrary to what is happening now.

[Frank]

Nocenti: "He likes women as people. Chris(Claremont) would come in, and I think he listened to opera as he wrote"

..."because he liked playing with the Barbie dolls"

That would explain a lot of things. ah ha ha

[djsweet]

Don't get me wrong, i'm not found of the Quesada Era but saying they are a bunch of misogynistic boys club is far from the truth. Bendis loved Gilmore's girls for crying out loud, he introduced more women characters than most writers in the past. I would say most guys there would rather write women characters.

It's just that their writing is rather cynical and not for everybody.

Ok, Bendis has many faults, but I don't think this is one of them. I was thinking more of Mark Millar honestly and Joe Q didn't hire any women for any prominent positions as editor or writer.

[Cthulhudrew]

Really enjoyed this interview, and hearing about the old Bullpen days from the two most prominent female writers of the time; something that I haven't seen done before, which was really refreshing. I enjoyed both Louise Simonson's X-Factor and Ann Nocenti's Daredevil and the ahead-of-its-time Longshot (and, while I appreciate Claremont for resurrecting the character, he's never been written quite like Nocenti wrote him, though PAD is the closest I've seen).

I especially loved Nocenti's Daredevil. She was such a great and strong writer to follow Miller, and she did such an amazing job with DD's Rogue's Gallery. DD #260 is a singularly memorable comic in that run for me; DD's fall at the hands of his Rogue's Gallery led by Typhoid Mary (with a penultimate loss against, of all foes, the Wildboys.) Such a great story, and so much stronger- in one single issue- than the much later and similarly themed Hush storyline of Loeb's in Batman.

I also liked hearing their perspective on Shooter's tenure, which is something else you don't see; a female perspective on it. I've read a lot of different stories, and they always seem to be polarized one way or the other, but these two (Nocenti, at least) show a balanced perspective on it.

[Hound of UIster]

I'm just glad Nocenti admitted she sucked on Green Arrow...she seems like a nice person, but what I've read of her work is rather poor.

It doesn't help at all that outside of DD her work is just bad period. I think she is been labelled the worst comic writer in the industry though Simone gives her a run for the money with the Batgirl and Firestorm books.