In Memoriam

So this happened.

photo provided by Scott Edelman

I did not plan to speak at the memorial celebration of the life of Fabulous Flo. But among all the stories told from the podium, none of them mentioned Flo being a pioneer for women. Which she was, along with presumably dozens of other women behind-the-scenes as well as the women in the spotlight, such as Marie Severin and Ramona Fradon.

Every generation seems to neglect its own history, and the praise for each next wave seems cursed with a lack of respect for those who came before. And so I felt it necessary to point out that Flo was a woman in comics long before we were holding panels congratulating ourselves for the invention of something that has been around for decades.

We fetishize certain jobs, pretending only they matter. The mainstream equivalent is society ignoring traditionally female jobs—nurses, teachers, caregivers, secretaries—and talking about how women were not in the workforce before they became middle management, heads of corporations, coders, and executives. Of course they were in the workforce. We just discounted their efforts and neglected their contribution.

Women have always been in comics. Just take a look past your value system. Writers and artists matter, but they are nothing without the people who presented their visions to the world.