So far I've gotten some very positive feedback on my P.O.W.E.R. IN COMICS concept. (As a review - it's Promoting Ownership, Writing & drawing, Editing and Reading by women and minorities in comics.)
I did follow the advice of one commenter and contacted Cherly Lynn from the Ormes Society. She gave me some great tips for where to go and how to launch my concept. For example, she said: Create a website and forum to provide a place for women and minorities who are already working in the industry to come together for emotional support and advice; Have comic shop owners, artists and writers visit schools to give presentations on what it is like to work in the industry and film the presentation and upload it to your website and to YouTube; Hold book drives where comic companies can donate comic books to inner city schools, etc. Some good ideas that she gave me that wouldn't be terribly expensive or hard to do, and could be started community by community and grow as more people find out about it and agree with and hopefully it would grow and actually start to make a difference in the overall landscape of the comic book industry.
I'm still working out how to best make some of these things happen. Even if I only have an impact here in my community I'd feel like it was worth it. Of course I hope that those people who are on the Internet now, discussing the current status of the comic book industry and wanting change, would help out with it in one way or another in their communities, be those on-line communities or in their local comic shops or schools. One person might not be able to change things, but if a few of us get together maybe something positive can happen.
Those of you reading this - if you have ideas or suggestions PLEASE share them, either here on my blog or via an email (lisa@neptunecomics.com).
8 comments:
Just a thought here, Lisa, but what about starting a blog on this? At first, you could use it to gauge the interest and viability of such a program/organization. You could slowly adds supporters to the blogs list of authors, as/if things continue to build. It also would be an easy thing to link at other forums and blogs, to help spread the word quickly over the Internet comics community.
After that, if it seems like something worthwhile, it could become a place for members to use to put forth ideas, suggestions and plans on how to help with the cause it is devoted to.
Just one small thought on how to get the ball rolling. Hope it was helpful to you.
*beaming* Thanks so much for acting on my suggestion, Lisa - Cheryl is an amazing powerhose with a lot of terrific ideas!
Lisa I was curious how the Spiderman presentation you gave at the library went and what the demographic was? Could the library be a viable presentation venue? Or might it even be possible to team up with someone like Harry W Schwartz?
James - that is what I'll start with. A blog or on-line community where I can share what I've done, and others can share what they're doing. A grass roots thing that should hopefully spread and catch on. If the comic book community is lucky enough to have the idea really catch on then it would probably need a bit more organization, but until then I think a network of online sharing from individuals is the way to go.
Elayne - it was a great suggestion and Cheryl was very supportive and helpful. thank you so much for sharing your idea with me.
munkeyboy - it was a lot of fun, but mostly boys were there. I did have some minority participation, so in that way it worked out very well, and that is part of the overall plan. When I did my "writing a comic book" presentation there last fall I was happy to have a nice group of three girls there. So I do think that those are good signs - girls showing an interest in making comics and minorities interested in a presentation on Spider-Man. It is definately something that can and should be done more.
I'm a white male. So... well I don't know what to say since I'm not a female or a minority. However, once you figure out how you want to go forward with this, let me know and I'll helpout in anyway I can.
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