WonderCon Anaheim 2014

From her early work on the "Women In Refrigerators" website to her present work for DC, WonderCon Anaheim special guest Gail Simone (Batgirl) has been and continues to be one of the most influential comics writers in the industry. She has also been one of the most influential commentators on gender and sexuality in the medium. Travis Langley (Batman and Psychology: A Dark and Stormy Knight) moderates a discussion of Simone's past, present, and future career, writing characters from Wonder Woman to Red Sonja to Wolverine.

Do women in spy thrillers have to be Miss Moneypenny? Do superheroines have to be sexualized? And do femme fatales have to have hearts of gold? Michele Brittany (Spyfi & Superspies) discusses how Ed Brubaker's Velvet breaks the stereotypical spy story by leading with a strong female protagonist. Deanna Rodriguez (Texas State University) examines the letter pages of Captain Marvel to show that changing Carol Danvers' costume removes the power of the male gaze and empowers female readers. And Christine Ferguson explains why Catwoman's history as a sex worker doesn't mean, and shouldn't mean, she has to lose her edge.

For more than 50 years, American comic books were subject to the censorship of the Comics Code, a system born from a time when comics were burned in the streets and blamed for all of society's ills. Though the Code is gone, its influence remains. The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund gathers top storytellers who worked under the Code's strictures to tell the tales of how its censorship touched their creative visions. Join Marv Wolfman and others for this panel moderated by Charles Brownstein.

Brittany Tullis (St. Ambrose University) discusses how Jaime Hernandez's characters model "alternative femininities," a range of identities that shatters the boundaries of contemporary constructions of Latina femininity and patriarchal power. Grace D. Gipson (University of California, Berkeley) examines the evolution of the X-Men's Storm from African Goddess to Punk Rock Queen, and how that evolution reflects the dilemma of becoming a modern, global woman. Arturo Meijide Lapido (St. Ambrose University) explores how the Atlantic Ocean functions in Miguelanxo Prado's work as a geopolitical space to display Galician transnational identity as an intersection between Spain and America.