Dawn had a chance to attend the Women of Marvel panel at SDCC.
2018 has been declared by many
to be ‘The Year of Women’. Not only have women embraced and channeled their own
power through such movements as #MeToo and Times Up, but the entertainment
industry is finally starting to bring this female power to the mainstream. Wonder Woman and The Last
Jedi, with their female leads, broke box office records in 2017. Black Panther has been revered for its cast of mostly strong
female characters. Marjorie Liu became the first woman ever to win the
best-writer honor for Monstress at this year’s Eisner Awards. Marvel just released
the first issue of The Life of Captain
Marvel, written by Margaret Stohl, to celebrate 50 years of Carol Danvers,
and Brie Larson was recently cast to play the infamous superhero. To the dismay
of MRAs everywhere, the world of women is currently nothing short of straight
fire. Which is why when I walked into the Women
of Marvel panel at this year’s San Diego
Comic-con, I was not surprised to find a packed house.
For those
who are unfamiliar, the Women of Marvel panel
is held mainly at New York and San Diego’s Comic-cons, and has been steadily
growing in popularity since 2011. Its purpose is to have a conversation between
the women working behind the scenes at Marvel and female comic book readers. In
2014, interest in Women of Marvel had grown to such an extent, that its producers
decided to host a weekly podcast by the same name. In their pilot
episode, hosts Judy Stephens, Sana Amanat, Jeanine Schaefer and Adri Cowan
discuss the reasons behind the panel’s growing popularity. They attribute it to
an already existing female demographic of readers and want-to-be readers who
share a “collective fear of piercing the comics market”, and are now coming out
of the woodwork upon discovering the existence of a growing female, comic
loving, and comic producing community.
This
year’s panel was hosted by Producer Judy Stephens and included Sana Amanat (VP
of Content & Character Development), G. Willow Wilson (Writer of Ms. Marvel), Mairghread Scott (Marvel Rising Feature Writer), Kathreen Khavari (Voice of Ms.
Marvel, Marvel Rising), Milana
Vayntrub (Voice of Squirrel Girl, Marvel
Rising), and Kristi Reed (Voice Director for Marvel Rising). Originally intended to only be a 10 issue
series, reader interest in Ms. Marvel has pushed the series to 10 volumes instead.
Astonished by its popularity, writer G. Willow Wilson described it as the “the
little series that could.” Now Marvel has created the spinoff comic and
animated series Marvel Rising, which
focuses on the friendship of Ms. Marvel and Steve Ditko and William Murray’s
character Squirrel Girl.
Mairghread
Scott began by explaining why she chose to focus on the friendship of these two
characters by saying, “I had never really seen a buddy superhero movie before”.
Scott goes on to say that she drew inspiration from her own experience as
a college student, trying to find her voice in New York City. Attendees were
then able to see the Marvel Rising:
Secret Warriors trailer
and varying character designs. Sana Amanat discussed the importance placed on
the diversity of body types among the characters. Milana Vayntrub, who voices
Squirrel Girl, elaborated on this by saying, “representation really matters,
and I’m a white woman so I get to see myself more often, but I don’t often get
to play characters who have thighs.” She went on to explain that most of the
women we see in comics, TV shows and movies are “people who are abnormally
thin”, and “to play someone who looks like an average American girl is
comforting.”
Kathreen
Khavari also spoke about the importance of diversity in comics, expressing to
the audience that, before she landed the role of Ms. Marvel, who is a muslim
superhero, “every single role that I auditioned for was for a terrorist, a wife
of a terrorist…[or] a woman hiding out in cave in Afghanistan, waiting for a US
soldier to save her.” My mind immediately went to the Jack Ryan Experience I
attended a few days prior, and to the stereotypical scenes of muslim people
that were parallel to what Khavari was conveying. She described this
period in her career as “the most disheartening two years of my life”.
Commenting on the muslim ban, Kathreen said, “Media makes a difference. There’s
a reason people are scared of muslims and it has to do with the negative
portrayal perpetuated by the media, that’s false, and wrong, and dangerous, and
reverberates throughout the world. This is why Kamala means everything to me.”
At the end
of the panel, one audience member asked panel members, for those looking to
break into the entertainment industry, what kind of education, experience or
background lead them to where they are today? Mairghread, Kathreen and Milana
all described variations of the importance of creating your own content. How
the main thing is just to show up and do it and to keep doing it. Mairghread
Scott said “that is the most important thing to breaking into this business
because it really is a marathon and not a sprint.” Kristi Reed elaborated on
this by saying, “For every woman in this room, there is a statistic out there
that guys will go ahead and put themselves forward for something...if they are
60% certain they are capable of doing it. Women wait until they are about 90-95%
certain… Which means that guys get that new job before women do. So if you
leave with one thing today, if you think that maybe you can do it, DO IT. You
will figure it out...Be Brave and we’ll all support you.”
You can
hear SDCC 2018’s Women of Marvel panel in its entirety on their next
podcast, and find all of their previous episodes here. The
animated series Marvel Rising: Secret Warriors is scheduled for release
on the Disney Channel this fall.
-Dawn Stronski