Hi Gail! I just started reading your work and WOW! I was going to call it "ahead of our times", but it's more a case of our times needing to catch up. Do you think that the portrayal of women in comics still have a long way to go before they're treated equ

Oh, sure, but it’s getting much better. Right now, it’s more about volume, there’s still not nearly as much good female-lead material and I think that will change, too.

I am not a person who ignores when things are improving. I give the industry credit for making a lot of huge strides. And I also don’t feel every book has to have ‘girl appeal.’ I am fine if there are books that cater more to boys or men (in general, I really don’t want to typecast all guys as having the same taste); I don’t care if there are books that are cheesecake, I don’t care about any of that. People should have the books they like. I believe in real diversity, which means I can think some books are terrible and still be glad they are there for the people that want those particular books. A lot of people probably loathe the books that are most cherished by me, that’s fine. That’s how it should work, in my opinion.

There’s a ways to go, and in particular, I am hoping women get a little more representation in the editorial and publisher levels. They are out there, a lot are doing magnificent work, but I’d like to see more.  And I’d like to see the types of books available continue to expand and be supported.

I don’t know if ‘treated equally’ is really even the goal. I feel like ‘not excluded’ is the hurdle we are working on now, ‘having their full value and potential realized’ is maybe a goal I can get more behind. I want all these amazing characters to shine (I feel that way about a LOT of boy characters who are under-utilized, as well). It’s just that we are still sort of emerging from a pretty dark cave in this regard, and it’s taking a while to adjust to the light.

But we’ll all get there together.