Image courtesy of Michelle Lo
Brian Wood
Venus chats with the comic artist behind The Couriers and Local about how he manages to create his multi-faceted female characters
By Alexandra Edwards
Published: February 14th, 2006 | 12:58pm
It's no longer unthinkable for a girl to walk into a comic book store and shop for herself, rather than her boyfriend. But the girls on the pages rarely look like the girls in the stores. It's heartbreaking, but the trend is changing. At the forefront of that change is comic book writer Brian Wood. Beginning in 1997, Wood has consistently written female characters into his comics that reflect a multitude of real girls and their (sometimes larger-than-) life experiences.
In Channel Zero, Wood penned the story of Jennie 2.5, a self-proclaimed "info-terrorist" hellbent on saving the airwaves from censorship. Then The Couriers brought us Special, a punk rock mercenary girl who worked alongside, not in the shadow of, her partner Moustafa. In Wood's latest series, Local, twelve individual stories revolve in some way around Megan McKeenan, an average girl with a penchant for travel.
I recently chatted with Wood about his female characters, and just how it is that he writes them so well.
Have you ever thought about the prevalence of really great female characters in your work? In other words, is it a conscious decision when you sit down to write?
I think a lot of what I do is on instinct - I'm one of those people that are called "instinct-writers", designers, etc. - but it should be very clear to anyone that opens up a popular American comic that female characters are in a sad state They tend to fall into two camps for the most part: amped-up, sexed-up, power wielding vixens, or flighty idiots who invariably become victims A lot of them like to go shopping, too I don't know if its just part of the "heroic" nature of the superhero thing - damsels in distress or something, or just popular culture at play - but it's horrible It's no wonder hardly any women read American comics; they read more Japanese comics, which offer a greater balance of character types.
So the fact that I write more female characters than male may just be an unconscious reaction to all of that. I don't always sit and make a plan and think about if the lead in my new project should be a man or woman It just happens, I just do what feels right in the context I do think there should be more honest, genuine female characters in comics, but I don't believe in creating them just for the sake of it There should be a reason behind it, otherwise it comes off forced.
Have any of the women in your life inspired the women in your writing?
Directly, I don't think so I'll pull bits of dialogue and personality quirks from people I've known, but that's about it I'll ask my girlfriend questions and have her answer in the role of the character to help out when I'm stuck on something - "If you were like this, and then this happened to you, what would you say?" - that sort of thing.
I was raised by two women, my mother and older sister, almost exclusively for my entire childhood and teenage years, and I think in a general sense that's given me an edge in writing women. It's hard to pin down exactly how, because we're talking about 17 years of passive influence at work, but it's had to have made a significant mark on me.
Do you find writing female characters to be any harder than writing male characters?
Not at all If anything, I find them easier because I've done more of it The lead in this one book I'm writing now, called DMZ, is a guy in his early-twenties. It should be a breeze for me to write, but it's often rather difficult I mean, there isn't a huge difference in writing men and women because, as human beings, we all tend to have the same basic instincts and reactions to things. Sarcasm and joy and anger in a broad sense are totally gender-neutral, and the difference lies in the details, but I always find it easier when it's Megan McKeenan I'm writing.
Tell me a little bit about Megan McKeenan Who is she, where did she come from, and why is she going to be the common thread running through Local?
Megan is a tourist in this series called Local that I'm writing for Oni Press It's twelve short stories that are linked together in a couple different ways. The most important link is the presence of Megan, who appears in each story as either the main character or in the background somewhere Each story is set in a real-life town or small city across North America and, over the course of the twelve issues, Megan ages more or less a year per story In the first story, she's a 17-year-old girl dumping her loser boyfriend and hopping on Amtrak. By the time Local ends, she'll be around 32 and hopefully have worked it all out and will be settling down.
The primary point of the series is to tell a series of short stories set in real-life locations but, for the people that stick with the series and read all 12 of them, they get this loose sketch of Megan as a sort of "bonus" - her story arc from clueless teenager to adult, wise beyond her years I figured the series needed a recurring character, a P.O.V. for the reader, an unofficial guide to all the locations featured Almost everyone I know has had some form of wanderlust, a desire to travel, explore, and be a stranger in a new place. Our stand-in is Megan.
Would you consider yourself a feminist? Do you think creating characters such as Megan and, especially, Jennie 2.5 is a feminist act?
I don't know I don't know how to answer that question I guess I would say no - I'm uncomfortable with labels, and writing mostly female characters isn't a deliberate decision, at least not on the level of a social or political statement However, I don't try to get in the way of other people's interpretation of my work I just find it odd and a bit sad that a story with a strong woman in the lead has to be something that's rare and noteworthy and possibly a feminist act, and can't just be commonplace.
Issue #35
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