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On Aug. 14, 2010, Seattle, Wash.'s Comics Dungeon held a Ladies Night; according to their website, "only female staff, female guests, and female fans" were allowed in the store from 7-9 p.m. Attractions included an author signing (Jennifer K. Stuller was promoting
Ink-Stained Amazons and Cinematic Warriors: Superwomen in Modern Mythology); special discounts; a raffle and
cookies. Comics Dungeon buyer Chris Casos, inspired by tales of similar events on a blog about a year back, arranged the affair, publicizing it through community sites such as
The Stranger blog. He said, "we had a great turn out, I think the count was around 35-40 ladies showing up." (At 8, there were about 20 people there, minus employees, volunteers and Stuller.)
Some women, such as Eunice ("over 40") and
Tara Gallagher, 50 (who brought her 10-year-old daughter) came because, according to Gallagher, "It just sounded like a really good idea, and I wanted to support it. I'd like to see more girls and women reading and involved in comics." (She explained that her daughter was sometimes the only girl in the comic club at her school.[1])
Erica McGillivray, 26, tipped off by a male friend, came because she wanted to meet other female comics fans. In general, attendees seemed to emphasize the community-building aspects of the event, [2] which Casos stated was his goal: "honestly, we just thought it would be fun and a nice way for our female customer base to meet and socialize."
Several of the attendees had had difficulties at other comic shops. McGillivray said, "I definitely had one experience where the guy didn't even tell me how much my order was, trying to avoid looking at me. I was like, "What? What's going on here? That was probably the worst experience. I'm definitely picky about where I put my money down." Stuller: "I've definitely been in comic shops where I felt like I wasn't really supposed to be there, or like it was above somebody to take the time to help me." Customer and volunteer
Wendy Scodeller, 36, had a more positive comic-shop history, "I've actually been pretty lucky to find comic shops that, once they realize that I know what I'm talking about, they're pretty open and receptive. There is that initial hurdle, where they are kind of wary of you. But so far, I've been pretty lucky."
Some remarked on the efforts the stores owners and managers have made to counteract comic-shop stereotypes. Nicolette, 30, who's been employed at the store for eight years, described the Comics Dungeon's transformation. "It used to actually be really daunting to walk in here, because we used to have these really tall shelves down the aisles, so it was like going into corridors. It really matched more of a dungeon than it does now." Eunice, a customer at that time, broke in to say how excited she was when Nicolette was hired. ""It was so funny, because when we walked in (we had been going here a long time), [Scott, the owner] went, "We hired a woman — and we were like, "YES!"
[laughs] —"and she's
cool!" Eunice went on to summarize, "This is the best store, because the people here are very knowledgeable, they really care about their customers, they changed the store around so it was customer friendly."
There appeared to be regulars in attendance (Stuller only shopped for her comic-book research at Comics Dungeon and Mile High) while others, such as Gallagher, only come in a few times a year. During the event,
the dollar bins were heavily trafficked. Customers bought
Patsy Walker: Hellcat, the
Scott Pilgrim series and '80s Marvel
Doctor Whos. Crumb comics,
Strangers in Paradise, Ellen Forney, Dykes to Watch Out For, Trina Robbins' The Great Women Superheroes and Hate were name-checked.[3] The 10-year-old said that she liked Archie, The Simpsons, and Futurama.
Casos wrote that, "So far we've had some great feedback from our customers, both male and female. A number of our male base were [sic] actually helping to promote us on Facebook because they thought it would a fun event. It's kind of funny, we've also had a lot of responses that seemed like they were confused as to why we would do this." He hopes that Ladies Night will become "a regular annual event if not more often" and to that end, he's "planning on shooting out on our newsletter and on our Facebook/Twitter pages a request for some feedback and see if this is something our customer base would enjoy to have annually, quarterly, or even monthly."Notes:
[1] Girl Genius's Phil and Kaja Foglio run the club.
[2] Eunice, who "started reading comics probably about 15 years ago," said of the comics community in general, "it's a really nice community. And, as we [referring to her husband] always say, no matter where we travel in the world — and we travel a lot of places — we always have our little embassy. Because you can go into a comic book store any place in the world and it's like you know everybody, because everybody is familiar with comics. So it's a really, really cool common denominator."
[3] Eunice, who goes to CCI: San Diego and also collects original comics art said, "The first comic that I looked at was the Robert Crumb comics. And, I really liked them, because I loved the art, they were beautiful, and I liked the way he depicted women. I know a lot of people think that he's misogynistic, but, the thing is, when you look at his stuff, you can see how fearful he is of women, and how vulnerable, to me."
Photographs by Kristy Valenti.
Kristy Valenti currently works for The Comics Journal and Fantagraphics Books, Inc.
Uncharted Territory is © Kristy Valenti, 2010
