The females of Fanaticon sketch a new path.

by Melanie McGee Bianchi . photo by Matt Rose

In an industry that’s “totally dominated by dudes,” as local hairdresser and comic writer Tiziana Severse says, girls who create comics are making ever-deeper impressions.

Asheville-raised cartoonist Hope Larson became an A-list graphic novelist. And the headliner of this year’s Fanaticon2—an expo encompassing all things comic and the rest of the fantasy genre—is Gail Simone, current illustrator of Wonder Woman.

Still, it’s taken most of a century for women cartoonists to rise. The superhero canon, Severse notes, relegated female characters to roles of “devices to be killed or rescued.” (At best, they were love interests.) She reckons the shift began in the ’80s, when cartoonist Cathy Guisewite created her eponymous strip about a harried working girl.

Illustrated by her husband, Brent Baldwin, Severse’s Hair and Therapy strip riffs on her own career travails. Besides gradually accruing more estrogen, comic books have also made a thematic detour into real-life drama versus supernatural heroics.

Locals Lindsey and Justin Mashburn (he writes, she draws) do an online comic that details the antics of their hilarious bowling league. Lindsey was reluctant to spoof her friends—especially since one of them is a UNCA math professor. “So we showed them what we were doing and asked, ‘Are you OK with this?’ Luckily, they thought it was awesome.”

Fans are increasingly receptive to female artists and characters. Severse notes the otherworldly popularity of the Twilight series as evidence that the entire fantasy genre is enjoying a good deal of buzz and flash. “Industry insiders are realizing, ‘Hey, girls are people, too!’”

Fanaticon2 runs 10am-6pm on May 21, at Asheville Art Museum. Www.fanaticon.org. For more of Severse and Baldwin’s work, go to www.hairandtherapy.com. To see the Mashburns’, check out www.bowlcomic.com.