Womanthology offers a new way for to showcase and support Women in Comics

Last week, I noted with sadness that Friends of Lulu, an organization created in 1994 to promote female comic creators and readers had essentially died. The organization has faced troubles over the past few years due to tax and management issues.

As someone who spends a lot of time talking about women in comics, I had been hoping that the group could reorganize itself and keep going. I had checked in with the interim group this Spring and the answer was they were “still restructuring.”

Some question whether such an organization is still needed. I said just last week that I thought it was. And just yesterday I posted a good example of why.

But last night I also posted about an exciting new project that was designed to promote women in comics - Womanthology. And I think it could point to a new way to create visibility and recognition of the vast amount of talented females in comics.

When I posted last night their funding raising to product an anthology of devoted to females in comics had raised around $1300 of the $25,000 they needed. Less than 24 hours later it has raised $22,000 more and should read their goal later today. UPDATE: They blew it away, as of Friday night they are at $33K!

The visibility this project has received in a short period of time is impressive. Twitter has been buzzing, blogs have been posted and today the Washington Post wrote about it.

In just 12 hours they have raised the visibility for women comic creators. That’s a good thing. And they have also shown that there is a clear interest and desire to see women making comics. All kind of comics. This despite the frustrating conversations and dialogues that have occurred over the last few weeks.

This kind of grass roots activism combined with angel investing may be a new model to promote women in comics, give the demise of Friends of LuLu. If this is successful, and I see no reason to doubt it will be, perhaps there can be more publications like it. Or even extend the concept to the digital model.

It’s hard to understand after seeing the critical mass that engulfed this project in such as short time why the big comic publishers don’t see the value in marketing to women or thinking smarter about to get more female creators.

Congratulations to the Womanthology organizers and creators. I can’t wait to see the finished product.