Batgirl at the SDCC
I'm surprised nobody's posted about this one yet.

San Diego Comic Con happened a couple of weeks back, and of course people from DC comics were talking about their series and trying to drum up support for the universe-wide reboot that will be happening next month.

As you'd probably guess, given that they're wiping out the decades long histories of many beloved characters, a lot of people are unhappy with them for a lot of reasons, but the events of this post are focused on one specific issue; people have been noticing that a lot of women seem to be vanishing as part of the reboot. Not just in the pages of the comics, but in real life as well. Women have gone from making up 12% of their creator base (not exactly a great number to begin with) to under 2%. Which'd be three, total.

Kyrax2 (who you'll see referred to as 'Batgirl' a lot in articles in reference to the costume she was wearing) was attending SDCC with her daughter and asked questions about these issues at a few of the DC panels. She was met with evasive and dismissive answers from the panelists and increasing hostility from the crowds of fans. DC has podcasts available of the panels, check the New 52 and Justice League panels on the 22nd and New 52 again on the 23rd. (And to that I'll add a quote from a comment on comicbookGRRL; "Newly-infamous ‘Batgirl’ and I were talking about the audio recording last night, and how it doesn’t quite get the whole experience across. You had to see Didio standing on his toes, leaning over a podium from atop a raised stage, looming over a 4′ 10” woman. His body language was all about bullying and belittlement. When he decided things were done and she shouldn’t talk anymore, he rocked back from the podium and looked away.")

Among other things Dan Didio, the man in charge at DC, said that women should submit their work if they want to be represented at DC, failing to mention that DC doesn't accept unsolicited submissions, (whoops! That one was actually Grant Morrison, though Didio agreed with the answer) and claimed that he'd put together the best team possible for the New 52 which (you'll see in the links to come) many people find hard to believe when that team includes people like Rob Liefeld while artists like Amanda Conner (who had already worked for the company) were nowhere to be seen.

And then several of the major comics news sites went on the report Kyrax2 as being a big old bully picking on the poor little major comic book company. Yeah.

DC Women Kicking Ass provides links to many of those reports, and followed it up with an interview with Kyrax2 letting her tell her side of the story.

This article at Fempop, beyond talking about what happened at SDCC, gives more background about what's happening with women in DC comics for anyone who wants more background on where this is coming from, as does this one at comicbookGRRRL (who also wrote an article about it for SciFiNow).

There are two posts up at Websnark one a pretty quick mention of it and then a more in-depth reaction which has been linked around a lot.

And finally DC released a statement acknowledging the complaints although they don't apologize for being so dismissive about them to begin with.

This probably goes without saying, but expect to find plenty of sexism, mansplaining, and general not-getting-itness in the comments sections.