Red Room Where the Writers Are

(Visit Australian feminist group blog The Dawn Chorusto read the interview in full.)

By Clem Bastow

Having posted on the topic of comic books, superheroes and feminism before, it will be no secret to readers of The Dawn Chorus (and even less of a secret to those who know me personally) that I am a massive, massive geek.

But through my time spent reading comic books I felt there was something missing; I wanted a superhero to call my own, a kickass woman who didn’t have to be, well, “boobs up, ass out” to get things done. How fortunate, then, that I recently stumbled upon Huntress: Year One, DC’s six-part series introducing readers to the second woman to wear the Huntress mantle, Helena Bertinelli. Helena/Huntress is a no-nonsense, strong and independent woman with a wicked right hook and an even more wicked wit - she even takes a break, in Huntress: Year One, from beating up Batman to discuss anarcho-feminism with Catwoman. But I was delighted to discover that so, too, was the writer behind Huntress: Year One, Ivory Madison, a writer, feminist, activist, and businesswoman.

Ivory is something of a superhero herself - when she’s not writing (and even when she is), she is the CEO and founder of Red Room, an online community for writers (and editors, and publishers, and readers!) that has been hailed as “MySpace for writers” and counts luminaries like Maya Angelou, Amy Tan, and Barack Obama amongst its many members. All this, and she is just 29.

With the final issue of Huntress: Year One having just hit the stands this past week, I asked Ivory how she manages to be so unfailingly awesome across so many fields, without so much as a cape or superpowers to assist her.

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When you were growing up, were there particular women in your life who had a major influence on you?

“In real life, no, I don’t think so. But in the world of pop culture and history, that’s where I found my heroes. I’ll never forget the moment in Star Wars, when I was little, seeing Princess Leia roll her eyes at Han Solo’s rescue attempt, grab the gun from him, and start shooting storm troopers. A moment like that, you store those up as a little girl as proof the dominant culture is wrong, and women can be strong.”

And what about in the comic book universe; who were your favourite characters and why?

“Wonder Woman and the original Huntress were the only feminist heroes in comics when I was little, but now there are so many. At the time, all I knew was they were characters I wanted to be. Now I know that Wonder Woman was consciously created by William Marston as a feminist archetype, to show that women could be strong, and that strength could be based on truth and compassion. Like Joss Whedon fifty years later creating Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Marston felt girls were being damaged by only seeing portrayals of girls as helpless victims.

“Of course, I was also always a huge Batman fan and wanted to be Batman above all. But it was always “me” as Batman, in my head. Catwoman was fascinating too, but the female characters who had any power in those stories were typically immoral, sexually manipulative, and the villain.

“The original Huntress was amazing because she was the daughter of Batman and Catwoman and had the best qualities of both characters, creating a sort of healing of the psychologically split society they came from—the height of the American feminist movement in 1977. You have Paul Levitz, now the president of DC Comics, to thank for writing that.”

As a long-time comic book reader, becoming a comic book writer must be something of a dream come true. Had you been mulling over potential pitches for a long time? Also, you initially pitched to DC with a Batwoman rejig. Had Huntress been your official second choice, or did the idea come to you, “Eureka!”-style, once Batwoman was shelved?

“Yes, it was a dream come true to finally write comics, and my pitch was a lengthy Batwoman origin story. For your readers who aren’t comic book geeks, Batwoman is an obscure character I was hoping to reintroduce after fifty years. My Batwoman was a Jewish, lesbian, feminist District Attorney, and in the weirdest coincidence ever, they were about to reintroduce Batwoman anyway… as a Jewish, lesbian, feminist District Attorney. I’d been working on that story on and off for years, and in an instant, the project was dead.

“But you have to roll with the punches. You have to catch your breath and say, ‘Oh. Okay. Hmmm. Well, how about…?’ And once I pitched a Huntress miniseries, they said they wanted to step back and do Huntress: Year One, to do the complete origin story, so I got to write a favorite strong female superhero origin story anyway. I got very lucky. Frank Miller started the Year One concept twenty years ago with Batman: Year One. It was an honor to help shape pretend history, as I like to say.”