The breadth of interviews is impressive, as Stotter is able to talk with all of the most important figures when it comes to women in the comics industry, including most everyone listed above (save for Severin, presumably for health reasons), in addition to several voices that are able to add insightful commentary about various eras from different angles. She Makes Comics drips with passion, both from its interviewees and its filmmaker, for the comic book medium and for the fight against the sad realities that have plagued women in the industry for decades.This includes everything from not being taken seriously as an artist to cosplay harassment to judgmental eyes in a comic book shop. The real success of the film, however, is not simply describing or complaining about the problem, but addressing it head on and reinforcing the dedication with which they view comics; that comics are worth fighting this battle for. The sense of conviction is inspiring -- for anyone in any field, I would imagine -- but particularly so for women looking to break into the comic book world, either as a creator or as a fan.
As inspiring as the movie can be at times, as a thorough history lesson, it comes up short. With just over an hour to explore over one hundred years’ worth of comic book history, She Makes Comics breezes past a lot of things that could be expanded upon. The depiction of the impact of Jenette Kahn, for instance -- who took over as Publisher of DC Comics in 1976 at just 28 years old and led the company into a bold new era in the 1980s -- is stunningly brief. In this way, it becomes clear that She Makes Comics is more interested in the broad strokes of the subject than being the definitive resource on it.
Though entertaining, informative, and inspiring, She Makes Comics has glaring technical issues and questionable creative choices that hinder the experience. The production quality varies from interview to interview, with noticeable differences in video resolution and audio quality. Juxtaposed with professional-grade interview segments, the ones that drop so severely in quality pull you out of the narrative and distract from the insight the speaker is sharing. There’s also the smaller issue of the lower-third banner always being present, announcing who the person on screen is. No matter how often we see the person, it’s always there, clogging up the screen.
And then there are the grimace-inducing reenactments and cosplay shots. There are no shortage of cosplayers in the midst of fog machines and stage lighting, and the even-worse “comic shop guys” acting out the narrator’s experiences in a supposedly comic way. Both of these things are meant to spice things up a little and serve as cutaway shots, but they are just overbearing and unnecessary. One would assume the filmmaker wanted to add another layer to the narrative, but instead, like the technical issues, these things distract from the narrative.
