“In June 2011, the first Ladydrawers strip appeared in the online publication TruthOut. The impetus was to provide a reaction to the attention-getting 2010 media-monitoring project called The Count, which tabulated and displayed the male-female gaps in a few “thought leader” journals and literary publications such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic and Harper’s.

The strip responded to those findings and in a progression of frames turned the focus on its more permanent theme: how the comics business marginalizes female talent. A sampling of Marvel Comics’ creators, for instance, were shown to be “88 percent dudes,” a figure that rose even higher to 90 percent for independent (or indie) comics.

Since then, the loose-knit group of creators has produced over 20 strips, interviewed prominent women in the field and created an ongoing portrait of discrimination out of ongoing research and data gathering.

Not only are the major comics publishers printing more work by male creators, men are getting solicited, accepted and paid at a higher rate, says Moore, who has been researching gender issues in her field for a decade. “It’s not even like the system has gone wrong; this is what the system is,” she says.”