In recent years, comics have grown into a legitimate—and big money—business. Yet some in the industry haven’t felt the impact of the popular success of the now ubiquitous form. More often than not, it’s the female-identified creators who aren’t being encouraged to submit work, aren’t being sought out for anthologies, and aren’t getting books turned into big movie deals. In comics and elsewhere, women creators of all sorts of media are starting to ask: Why? Ladydrawers, a new semimonthly comics collaboration on Truthout, looks at a few possible reasons and impacts—in, of course, comics form. Read the series here. Feel the love here. More love, Dutch-style, is here.

The column builds on volunteer and student work conducted in and around Chicago, where Moore teaches a course called Ladydrawers: Gender and Comics in the US. In 2010, we released a comics anthology about women’s comics anthologies. Last spring, we initiated a national conversation about gender and comics with a postcard project. This summer, we created a new anthology combining gender, sex, and representational theory called Unladylike. It is available for your online perusal or download here. A blog collecting research and digital output is occasionally updated here.