The Brains Behind the Madness

Upon searching the world wide web, I found Gail Simone's message board on her website. I found her response to the question of why not many women submit to Marvel to seek work to be very interesting. It may, perhaps, answer the question I posed before as to why there are not many female heroines. Simone writes,

"I like Marvel. I have a lot of friends at Marvel. But there is definitely a Howard Stern/partytime/fratboy/strip club element. Again, I like Marvel. But when I was there, it was inevitable that every female who left or was let go would be referred to as a ‘crazy bitch’ at some point. I don’t blame any one person for it, but it is something that could bite them in the ass if they’re not careful."

On Marvel's behalf she does make shoutouts to welcoming editors and admits that it's been years since she was there, stating that perhaps the atmosphere has changed. However, her experience leads her to believe Marvel has an institutionalized faux ‘badboys’ environment, to say the least.

It's interesting to see that Marvel has few female heroines in their headliners. It's more interesting to see that few women work for Marvel. Now, to me at least, it's most interesting to see that most women don't even want to work at Marvel. All along I thought the problem was that Marvel didn't employ women writers, but yet it's the writers who choose not to go to them. In holding onto the stereotype of the Marvel environment, women would rather dedicate their efforts elsewhere, "in a place where I don't have to fight an offensive atmosphere, can more easily get work, and oh, yeah, make more money," as an aspiring woman writer says.

Maybe the problems of the comic book aren't attributable to one company or one series or one writer or one anything. Perhaps the problem stems from the perpetual stereotypes that no one seems to be capable of letting go of, neither the companies nor the writers. Maybe change has to occur from the very core to revolutionize this industry.