Most of us have read about Dan DiDio’s recent outburst at San Diego Comic-Con. During a panel about DC’s relaunch, a fan stood up and asked why DC’s creative team had skewed to a jaw-dropping 99% male, 1% female ratio from the previous 88% male, 12% female split the company had employed in earlier years. If you haven’t read it, here’s an excerpt:

Fan: “Why did you go from 12% in women [creators] to 1% on your creative teams?”

DiDio: “What do those numbers mean to you? What do they mean to you? Who should we be hiring? Tell me right now. Who should we be hiring right now? Tell me.”

Really, Dan? You’re going to put a fan on the spot like that in front of a crowded hall of fans, journalists, and creators at the biggest convention of its kind?

Initially, I was shocked to hear that someone so far up the ladder at DC Comics would say such a thing but after a few days of mulling it over, it started to make perfect sense to me. Of course he would say something so short-sighted. Mr. DiDio is part of the problem.

DC is relaunching their universe in an attempt to bring back readers and give new fans a jumping off point amidst a print industry that is slowly swirling down the drain. An industry that, instead of embracing the future, is one that openly mocks their established fanbase by offering digital comics at such a price that it would make a music executive blush and then turn green with envy. An industry so rife with teenage boy power fantasies that it doesn’t even think there are girls out there qualified enough to play in its sandbox.

With that in mind, is anyone surprised at how the past ten years have shaken out for Marvel, DC, and other American comic publishers?

The comic book market isn’t shrinking. If anything, it’s bursting at the seams, waiting for someone to swoop in and take advantage of the horde of untapped demographics waiting to consume a product they can’t find. Webcomics are taking advantage of this market. Soon, the iPad and Android tablets will begin to gain leverage and take advantage of it through iBooks, Kindle, Nook, and other book-related apps. It’s not that women, minorities, and other demographics don’t like comic books, it’s that so few things sold in print cater to their interests that even if they did enjoy the medium, that person would have to get over the hurdle of “creepy comic book store dude” and walk into a specialized store to find that the comic book industry makes material beyond “muscle bound cape & tights guy” or “steroid Barbie in a thong”.

Instead, Marvel and DC continue to push forward with their antiquated business models, direct distribution, and boys’ clubs, all the while hollering about market decreases and lack of participation from non-traditional comic book fans. I liken it to a mutated form of Ouroboros but instead of the tail-consuming dragon signifying eternal life, it’s simply a retarded animal, oblivious to the world at large while it munches on its own tail. And sooner or later, that dragon is going to run out of tail to eat.

Here’s a fact for you, DiDio: there is no shortage of female, black, brown, just plain different talent out there. The problem is that none of you are looking for it. Take a look around the growing webcomics world and you’ll find Der-Shing Helmer (The Meek), Sarah Ellerton (The Phoenix Requiem), Holly Laing (Terra), and Jules Rivera (Valkryie Squadron) doing their thing. Those are merely the women I can immediately pull from memory and every one of them writes and draws a comic that’s better than most of what I see on the shelves of my local comic book shop.

I read an article earlier today that mourned how women creators don’t fit into the mold offered by Marvel and DC because those two companies are selling an “image” (sic) that customers identify as immediately recognizable and quality. In an industry that, in kinder words, is commonly mentioned as being in a tailspin, is this an image worth preserving? The Big Two should reconsider whether the band needs to keep playing until the Titanic is entirely underwater. There is plenty of time to make things right again but publishers have to take a long look at how and why they do business. I’m not saying that superheroes are killing the industry (even though that’s a real possibility), only that there is plenty of room for other ideas, styles, and perspectives if the Ivory Towers in New York are willing to let them in the door.

When I became a comics fan in the mid-80s, there was a lot of excitement going on around me. Frank Miller had finished his Daredevil run and The Dark Knight was on the horizon. Alan Moore was ready to break the entire industry open with The Watchmen. Art Spiegelman kicked open the door to legitimacy by creating Maus, a comic so highly regarded by outsiders that it won a bloody Pulitzer Prize. A few years later, Jeff Smith started to write and draw the “so adorable and awesome that it makes your brain melt” Bone series. Neal Gaiman was spreading his wings under the Vertigo brand with his brilliant run on Sandman. A few years after that, Garth Ennis would do the same with Preacher. Everything was changing and it was nearly impossible to keep track of all the ground-breaking work that was releasing on a monthly basis.

So what happened?

I don’t know if people got too comfortable, if Image really did that much damage to the industry with its shallower-than-Kim-Kardashian attitude toward comic books, or the multitude of crossovers, alternate covers, or whatever else it was that hurt the industry so badly. The reason we still talk about it is because no publisher has honestly tried to re-create the atmosphere that drew in readers 25 years ago. Ground-breaking, good, different comic books. Comics that weren’t necessarily about superheroes, supervillains, or the death of supermen. Comics that broke the boundaries of what we thought was possible with the medium. Good stories that engaged the readers. That kind of drive is what comic books need again to thrive in the market and regain public attention. If the Big Two aren’t willing to deliver, there are thousands of independent creators out there willing to do it themselves via the Internet. Marvel and DC can either jump on board or continue to rely more and more on licensing and less and less on original content at the risk of milking the cow until it falls over, spent.

The choice is theirs to make. They can grab hold of this brave new world and enjoy a renaissance or they can go down kicking and screaming like their music and book publishing counterparts have over the past decade.

In final, Mr. DiDio, instead of attacking a reader for bringing this point to the public eye, you should consider that diversity may be just the thing comic books need to regain their glory. New ideas, new outlooks, new stories, new perspectives from new (and different) people. It’s not a concerned fan’s job to find that talent for you. You’re a creative head at one of the largest publishers on the planet. In the 1960s, 1% was unacceptable. In 2011, it’s abominable. Instead of sifting through the wreckage of inbred ideas and talent, look outside that bubble and you’ll see legions of people creating brilliant stories, looking for a forum in which to tell them.

Diversity. An old, old wooden ship. That could be just the thing we need in this business.

Or women and minorities. Whatever. That kind of diversity is keen, too.

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