6 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ JULY 29, 2019
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and sexism in comics publishing and retail during the early
1990s. The panel showcased the “founding mommies” of
FOL—including editor and writer Aninna Bennett; editor and
Eisner Awards administrator Jackie Estrada; Heidi
MacDonald, editor-in-chief of the comics news blog The Beat
and a cohost of PW’s More to Come podcast; cartoonist Lee
Marrs; cartoonist and comics historian Trina Robbins; and
former FOL board member Liz Schiller—and revisited FOL’s
beginnings.
After an initial meeting of about 30 women in 1993, FOL
incorporated in 1994. The name is taken from the comics
strip Little Lulu, created by Marjorie Henderson Buell in
1935, and is about the antics of its young heroine, who always
outsmarted the boys.
Robbins described the comics industry in the early 1990s
as “openly hostile to women and girls.” The prevailing—and
erroneous—belief among male retailers and publishers of
the time, she said, was that “girls don’t read comics, so pub-
lishers didn’t want comics that featured or appealed to
women.” She added, “It was a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
According to Bennett, the goal in creating FOL was to build
a “friendly but subversive organization to challenge these
biases, but the industry still thought we were a bunch of man-
hating feminazis.”
FOL went to the conventions and documented the numbers
of women attending and which comics they read, collecting
data to refute anti-female attitudes. “We were out to prove
them wrong,” MacDonald said, which is exactly what they
did.“It was great to be at the Friends of Lulu booth at
conventions and have girls and young women come
up to us,” Marrs said. “They could see that these
comics were made for them.”
The “Expanding the Black Comics Canon” panel
brought together a group of young and old, black
and mixed-race creators, offering their perspectives
on creating comics with African-American readers
in mind. Panelists included David Walker, a veteran
black comics writer and cocreator of Bitter Root (with
artist Sanford Greene), a paranormal adventure
series set in 1930s Harlem. Young artists on the panel
included Ebony Flowers—author of Hot Comb, a
debut collection of stories partly focused on black
women’s hair, as well as on race and class—and Ezra
Claytan Daniels, whose new graphic novel BTTM
FDRS (with artist Ben Passmore) explores gentrifica-
tion, race, and cultural appropriation.
The panel suggested that there’s a generational
division: young book-focused artists such as Flowers and
Daniels operate outside traditional superhero comics, unlike
longtime superhero work-for-hire artists such as panelist
Alitha Martinez. Martinez is a pioneering female Afro-Latinx
illustrator who has worked in the comics industry for 20 years.
But, she said, “I’m as invisible now as when I started.” She
used the panel to retell a litany of indignities, including being
made to illustrate black and female comics characters in a
manner that emphasized sex appeal. Indeed, she noted, after
20 years working on major comics characters, this was the
first year that she had been invited to SDCC.
“I’m still fighting an uphill battle,” Martinez said. “No one
asks me what I want to work on.” She also embraced the
freedom and accomplishments of Daniels and Flowers, who
in turn recognized Martinez’s struggles, praising her for
paving the way for minority artists to publish what they choose.
Pop culture is being transformed by technology and new
business models—such as streaming media, digital content,
and crowdfunding—and all of these category-changing trends
were represented in one way or another in the programming
featured at this year’s SDCC. The annual Publishers Weekly
panel, “New Publishers, New Plans,” offered a look at the
future of the comics publishing business models, using six
new or expanded publishing programs as examples.
Panelist Ted Adams left his post as CEO of indie comics
house IDW Publishing to start Clover Press. Adams said he
was burned-out running a large public company. Clover, he
added, will be a “progressive, eclectic boutique” house with
a small list backed up with marketing. By eclectic, AdamsFrom the Friends of Lulu panel, moderator Alexa Dickman (back l.) with FOL
founders (clockwise from back center) Bennett, Estrada, Marrs, MacDonald,
Schiller, and Robbins.©^ JODYCU
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