Noelle Stevenson Talked to Vanity Fair About Representation and the Lumberjanes Movie’s Male Writers

Gotta love female comic creators getting their due in fancy publications!

As part of their Comic-Con coverage, Vanity Fair interviewed Noelle Stevenson on the eve of her Eisner win about the Hawkeye Initiative, upcoming film adaptations of her work, and how she’s achieved her creative success.

When asked if she expected the Hawkeye Initiative to quickly become such a mainstream trend, Stevenson explained:

I think the conversation was already starting to happen, but it’s really blown up in the last two years. I think part of that is social media, which the Hawkeye Initiative is a part of, and also just with these superhero movies raking in billions of dollars, more people have an opinion. So people who don’t necessarily have a connection to comics from 50 years ago are like, Why is it like this? Why is Natasha the only woman on the team? Now one of the biggest stories is that recent Spider-Woman cover. If it had come out two years ago, everyone would have been like, O.K., business as usual. The fact that such a sexualized cover was a big deal really says a lot about where we are now.

Stevenson also talked frankly about the controversial all-male writing teams for the film adaptations of Nimona and Lumberjanes:

Yeah, that is definitely an issue for me, and I definitely tried to throw my name into the hat whenever possible, but it just doesn’t happen for someone who’s never written for movies before. I mean I get why it didn’t happen. I do wish that it hadn’t been the first news released about the Lumberjanes movie. But, you know, it’s Hollywood and, in a lot of ways, Hollywood is very different than comics. I think comics has this rap of being misogynistic, and that’s certainly not untrue. But it also is what it is. It’s not that hard to spot. And in some ways, that’s easier to stomach than a world where it’s just like, Well that’s just how it is … we choose the best person for the job … there just were no women. It just happens a lot and we’re a lot further away from being able to have those conversations about Hollywood.

To see Stevenson’s thoughts on Black Widow, dragons, and being a young creator, I highly recommend checking out the rest of the interview in full (you can also catch her being characteristically awesome in this interview with the LA Times).

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