New Gods for Old; Women Who Work in Comics

Over at Comics Alliance, an essay by Chris Sims on why the archetypes running loose in Jack Kirby New Gods can trouble our thoughts thirty years after they first appeared. "[Darkseid's] actions are geared towards conditioning people to embrace and exploit their own base hatred and fear. That's how he wins and remakes the world in his own image... devoted not to death but to Anti-Life... a slavery that masquerades as freedom by allowing its victims to give in to the dark side of humanity. [Darkseid] is a villain who exploits the small selfishness that we all see, experience, and even commit on a daily basis and shows how it all adds up to towering evil, and that makes him one of the most genuinely terrifying villains in comics."

Pursuant to an earlier conversation with friends, there's also a short list of prominent women working in comics-- my own favorites, like Amanda Conner, Gail Simone, Colleen Coover, a mention of Karen Berger's importance as an editor on Sandman-- and some I'd never heard of, like Emma Rios and Ramona Fradon. In the appendix of David Hajdu's The Ten Cent Plague, roughly half the artists who lost their jobs in the Wertham purge were women. The only one I knew as a child was Marie Severin on Dr. Strange; at least two generations have no idea the big studios used to cater to all readers, and they've never quite recovered.

Kirby and the splash page for the first episode of New Gods; Amanda Conner, one of my imaginary girlfriends, and her take on Supergirl and Power Girl; Colleen Coover on an unintended side-effect of four color printing.