Women At DC Comics Watch – December 2012 Solicits

Ever since a very poor showing in the September solicits, DC’s been on an impressive streak with their female creators.  October was huge, November was well above average, and now December is looking good too.  It took a long time, but finally DC’s promise of more female creators is starting to show up in their books.  While the numbers are still small, they’re slightly bigger than they used to be.  Let’s go through the December 2012 solicits:

• Female writers have a busy month, with Ann Nocenti on Catwoman #15 and Green Arrow #15, Gail Simone on Batgirl #15, and Christy Marx on Sword of Sorcery #3.
• It’s a slower month for interior artists, with only Nicola Scott penciling Earth 2 #7 in the main DC books.
• However, we do have a double appearance of Fiona Staples!!  She’s doing a variant cover for Action Comics #15 and drawing a story for Batman Beyond Unlimited #11.
• Over at Vertigo, Lauren Beukes and Inaki Miranda continue their run with Fairest #10 while, as always, Yuko Shimizu is on cover duty for The Unwritten #44.
• There’s not much new for female characters in December.  Two new books, Human Bomb and JSA: The Liberty Files – The Whistling Skulls don’t seem to have any ladies in a prominent role.  The covers are all guys.  Also, it looks like there’s a dude on the Birds of Prey team now, so that’s a thing that is happening.

Altogether, in December there are 8 different female creators scheduled to be on 9 different books.  That’s a nice step up from last month’s 7 and 7, and the best part is that a lot of these women are part of the regular lineup.  Fiona Staples is the only one without a regular gig, seeing as she’s busy with the FANTASTIC Saga over at Image, but it’s cool that DC’s brought her in for a couple guest appearances.  If they can maintain this number of regular female creators, DC will be at a much better level than they were for most of 2012.

Now, it’s still not a huge amount of female creators.  While 8 women is great, there’s a couple hundred different guys on these books too.  Moving up from 4 or 5 ladies a month to 7 or 8 is a nice jump, but the numbers are still paltry by comparison.  I’m glad about the increase, and the more consistent numbers, but there’s still a long way to go.

As for female characters, it’s a really quiet month.  Since Sword of Sorcery was announced, things have been fairly uneventful for new female characters.  There are rumours of a Fourth Wave in January, though, so perhaps something will come then.