I've had a few friends express surprise when they see you mention your son here on Tumblr. They had never thought of you as a mother, as comics tend to be deeply ingrained as a masculine institution. So I'm wondering... Have you ever found yourself having

Yeah, there was a dickhead indie publisher early on, a real dudebro jackass, who was constantly making fun of women who made their own comics as ‘momcomics.’ This despite the fact that my comics routinely have such dainty, gentile activities as are seen in Secret Six and Killer Princesses.

It’s just code words for, “Women are not welcome here, unless they do as they’re told.”

Fortunately, that guy and his anemic gaggle of sycophants imploded pretty resoundingly.

Most of the crap I got about that stuff ended  years ago. I think, if you look at the industry day to day, you don’t notice the change for the better. But if you from ten years ago to now, some things really have experienced a positive shift.

I don’t think I’ve gotten any real crap for being a mom in a good while. There’s still plenty of misogynist stuff, but it seems limited to a few areas, for the most part, and I’ll be honest, it doesn’t really bother me that much, personally. It bugs me to see it aimed at friends.  But readers need to be able to state their opinions and me getting upset about it changes nothing.

The interesting thing about momhood was writing Wonder Woman, and I found the mother aspect in that book, even when written by progressive guys, to be very artificial. I never bought it. So I wanted to amplify that aspect, that’s a big part of what the CIRCLE was about.

I brought momhood into Bop and it was like, NO! OUR SEXY BABES CAN’T POSSIBLY BE MOMS!  I mean, the second I was off the book they had to not just drop that angle but EXPLODE it, and I thought that was very weird and a little sad.

Right now, it’s almost unexplored territory in superhero comics, and I am always looking for those areas that haven’t been civilized yet.

I mostly keep my family out of my online time except for very general stuff, out of courtesy. My son likes comics and loves conventions, he’s been going since he was very little. But sometimes people ask for his picture and stuff, and that makes him a little uncomfortable.

One funny side note is that when I was working on Gen13, the artist, Talent Caldwell, did a redesign of the characters, and somehow, he made Bobby, AKA Burnout, look EXACTLY like my son. I mean, a little older than my son, but strangely identical, same nose, same jawline, same hair, same hair color, everything.

And I figured it had to be on purpose, but it wasn’t. When I finally met Talent at a con, he was completely taken aback, WHOA, YOUR SON IS BURNOUT!

Everyone thought I’d given him that hairstyle to match the book. Snrk!

If I’d had a suit for him, he would have BEEN Burnout!