A Sunday classic, the Women in Comics panel at WonderCon 2025 welcomed a lively discussion about the experiences — and challenges — of being female in the comic book profession.
You can read our panel recap below, right after the official synopsis via the WonderCon schedule:
Jamie Jameson (Warlord of Mars: Deja Thoris), Leah Kilpatrick (DC Horror Presents, Headless Horseman: Halloween Annual), Corinna Bechko (Cruel Universe, Sister Imperator), Rachel Pinnelas (DC’s I Know What You Did Last Crisis, comics curatorial expert), and Amy Linsamouth (Jackie and the Magical Guys, Descendants of the Undead) discuss their experiences and challenges of being a female creative in the comic industry, with moderator Jim Krueger (Justice, Earth X),
First off, one programming note: Brock Smith of ZRock Comics jumped in for Jim Krueger, and Beth Sotelo jumped in for Jamie Jameson. Anyway!
After the intros were out of the way, the panel officially kicked off talking about who inspired the panel as women creators, particularly in a male-dominated industry. “Fictional, or…” said Pinnelas to laughter from the crowd. More seriously, Linsamouth shouted out Erica Schultz for “lifting up” women in the industry, and added that most women find they’re lifted up by men — and cited that there are more women in government than the film industry, to applause.
“Batman,” Pinnelas said. Her mother gave her Batman comics as a kid, which she responded to “so strongly… That design of superheroes was” so impactful to her, and she thanked her comic for that. Even though she was an intern at Marvel in college, Batman was always a throughline for her. She also shouted out David Mazzuchelli as someone whose art really inspired her. And as a five-year-old, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm “showed me… It’s Batman, but women can also wear the cape, and be menacing, and do wild things.”
Kilpatrick was a “big tomboy” growing up, and it took a while to realize she wasn’t seeing female voices in the space. That was until she read Mary Shelley, and then when she started working in Hollywood, people like Kathleen Kennedy “who were producing on the ground were really, really important to me.” Recently she has been enjoying working with female artists because they see things in a different way.
Bechko called out Shirley Jackson, for a lot of reasons but also because she used her own name — and not a pen name that might make people think they were a man.
Why are these panels important, though? “I think it’s important because I’ve been in and out and around comics professionally since 2008,” Pinnelas said. She said that with some regularity, she’s the only woman on panels, and people will come up to her afterward and note that. Though she appreciates that, “I would like that to not happen.” She would prefer that it get normalized that women are on panels.
Kilpatrick recalled a panel where a young girl was waiting in line, and she knew she was going to ask her what it was like to be a woman in comics — which is exactly what happened. “I’m not the spokesperson for this,” Kilpatrick said. “At this point, I’m not writing as a woman. I want to write great characters.”
Bechko echoed that saying that women shouldn’t have to be standard-bearers, they should just be allowed to write characters. And Pinnelas threw her hat in the ring, noting her dream is to be the first ongoing female writer of Batman.
Linsamouth then added it’s important to have female editors to catch things like lines about how “he knew the battlefield like a woman who knew her mother’s recipes.”
Pinnelas shouted out Comic Book Yeti, where she got into data about the comic book industry. “Women have traditionally been in a lot of assistant editor positions, and not much beyond that,” Pinnelas said. “Traditionally, women have been in support positions for men… That statistic hasn’t really changed in the past generation… You don’t see a lot of women in executive editor positions at major publishers.
When asked how we get there, Kilpatrick jumped in: “Slaughter.” More seriously, she said that whenever she’s in a position of power she advocates for more women in all the roles. Bechko adds that she aims to have women work in positions as well, or at least introducing them to people and getting them in intern positions.
Pinnelas agreed, saying that the culture has been that men hire people from their friend groups, and “maybe you get a lot of the same.” Added Sotelo, you need to vote with your dollars. You don’t want to buy just “boobie books” (that was Kilpatrick jumping in), you can support projects through Kickstarter or otherwise. When she was younger she felt there wasn’t much of a variety, but the best way of changing that is showing people there’s “money to be made” in a big swathe of different types of stories.
Kilpatrick recalled, “A comic book publisher, a big one, where I was selling a female-driven story… And they go, ‘nobody wants female comics.’ And I was like, where are they? Where’s the data?” Bechko had a similar experience where she was told that a title she was working on had two female leads, could she change one to a man? Because they “already have one.”
Pinnelas brings the data into meetings to fight back against that. The panel all cited Barbie as something that goes directly against the “wisdom” that women aren’t interested in stories. “If you make something for women, they want it,” Pinnelas said.
After a conversation about what genres they operate in, as well as how they find balance as creators (to which Kilpatrick quipped, “You mean as a woman, how do we have it all?”), the panel opened to a brief Q&A portion.
First question was about any underrepresented people they wanted to lift up the names of — or what are they reading now. Kilpatrick said she’s having a problem with finding female artists for her new book. She’s working with Soo Lee on a book but is trying to find more cover artists in particular — she tends to troll Artists Alley for ideas. Pinnelas added that she tends to look not for the main critics and pundits, but those who may be under that level to find more off-the-radar suggestions. She also goes to non-fiction books for inspiration. Bechko gave a shout out to Leah Moore, while the other two panelists mentioned names that I’m sorry, I did not catch.
Next question was about how female writers get pigeonholed writing female characters, and how to get opportunities across the board regardless of gender. Pinnelas called it a “myth” and added, “All due respect to Tom King, but he’s writing Wonder Woman. Kelly Thompson is writing Wonder Woman… I was disappointed when Marvel announced a Dazzler book, no offense to Jason Loo…” She thinks that the marquee writers writer the marquee books, and when there are more female writers that are marquee, it’ll change.
Another question was about how to write when you don’t know how to do it. “Ryan North started with clip art,” Pinnelas explained. “Make… It? However bad it is, make it?” Sotelo added that you can find fellow people starting out in communities like Discord.
And that was it for the panel! See you at the next one!
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