I think I might take the presence of women authors and artists in the current comic/graphic novel scene for granted. I also think that webcomics skew my assumptions about women involved in comics in general - they're there, not a super small minority, but present less frequently than men. I wonder what the actual numbers are but then I suppose we'd fall into a debate about what constitutes a comic/graphic novel and the importance of being published through traditional mediums vs. the internet.
As I said in class - I'm surprised that Aline Kominsky, Robert Crumb's wife, was an artist. Truth be told I am not a huge fan of Crumb's work so maybe that's why I never investigated his ties to other artists. It occurs to me that for the vast majority of the golden age there no prominent artists who are women. I'm sure there are a lot of factors, and logically it makes sense with the historical context is realized. Even so I was only reminded of the absence until we got to section in Kaplan's book dealing with underground comics.
There is an assumption expressed on page 139 (the first full paragraph) that doesn't sit too well with me. I'm a little unconvinced that autobiographical comics/graphic novels are really mostly in the domain of women because 'they like to share more'. What about the subtle influences Will Eisner put into his work that were certainly representative of aspects of his life? Coloring the process of sharing one's life experience through art as an almost entirely female artist's pursuit seems silly. Even if it's not as overt as an autobiography real life experience shining through artistic expression has been a large part of this book. It has been exhibited or analyzed with most of the artists introduced in previous pages.
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