Sassy Women and a Love of Comics

By Lee Atchison
January 4, 2010

Happy new year, and thank you for joining us for another year of sassy women in love with comics. For over eleven years, we've had something to say, and Sequential Tart has given us a place to say it.

For several months now, I've been a very quiet Editrix-in-Chief. As we occasionally do to keep things fresh, Katherine Keller moved to Culture Vultures, Rebecca Buchanan moved to Features, and I moved to Editrix-in-Chief. We've been working a lot in the background to modernize ourselves and make sure that we're still relevant, interested, and interesting. It's been a time for soul-searching and figuring out "why are we still here?"

I went back recently and read our very first editorial, written by S.L. Osborne. It reminds me that as far as we've come, we've still got a ways to go. I firmly believe that the industry is growing and that women are considered more of an audience than ever before (yes, the joke is "just look at the bathroom lines at cons!"), but a part of that is because women are still here, refusing to be put into a corner, and insisting on having our say, even if we're called unreasonable at best and bitchy at worst. Being vocal is a significant part of being a member of the comics community. We can't complain about what we do or don't have if we don't stand up and let our voices be heard.

Speaking of which, over the next few weeks, I'll be using this soap box to talk about some things I see in comics that I'm really excited about. There are a lot of great things going on out there, and they really deserve to be highlighted. I'm a firm believer that we should celebrate what's good in addition to pointing out what's bad.

So, the great news is that there's still more to say and loud women to say it. With two years left until the Mayan Apocalypse, 2010 promises to bring forth another great year's worth of comics, discourse, and sassiness. And to our readership, thank you again for being so supportive in the past, and we look forward to providing you new content and hearing back from you throughout the year.