This is an audio clip of Dan Didio at San Diego Comic Con this past weekend one of DC’s MANY “New 52” panels regardinging their massive reboot this coming September.

During the beginning of the panel, Didio went around the audience asking them what they wanted to see change in the DCU. A fan in the audience asked him why the percentage of women on DC’s creative team dropped from 12% to 1%.  Didio’s response was, “What do these numbers mean to you?” and “Who should we be hiring?”

His tone appeared aggressive, badgering the fan enough to cause an awkward slience to the fans that were overwhelming positive after the initial point was raised. There was barely room to respond, and his repetition in increasingly agitated tones of, “Who should we hire? Tell me right now!” sounds like it would belong better in an interrogation room than a comic panel. The fan’s answer is not heard, as it is muffled and Didio moves on.

From his tone, Didio seemed  very much on the defensive. Personally, it sounded to me as if he legitimately thinks that there are no women good enough for him to have hired, other than Gail Simone and Amy Reeder. Which is hard to believe, considering Amanda Conner’s run on Power Girl gained the company a lot of positive buzz, not to mention catapulted her to becomes the first female artist to crack Wizard Magazine’s Top Artist list.

Marvel got it right with their short series “Girl Comics” last year, a three issue anthology entirely created by some of the most talented women working in comics. However, I don’t want to see these ladies only be featured in a special – I want to see them doing runs on major books!

The Big Two seemed to be welcoming a feminine touch in comics, but recently have taken a step back. As reported by Bleeding Cool News last June, Gail Simone went to back for these female creators, once again starting one of her infamous twitter flame wars.

This saddens me, as a female comics fan, to see such a aggressive response to an extremely fair question.

As of this past May, 16 women worked for DC’s creative staff . This coming September, that number will be cut back to 2 women.

This reboot is DC “changing”, fine – but they aren’t innovating! It’s a bandaid on a stab wound and nobody seems to notice but the fans.

DC is pulling a Nintendo in a sense – sacrificing hardcore fans (because they know we’ll stay for anything) on the chance to get newer, casual readers to buy their comics on their iPads.

What they shouldn’t be changing is history, what they should be doing is ORGANIZING themselves. Inside their universe and out.

Keep dead characters DEAD, and bring in new and exciting ones in their place. Don’t change old characters to fit “modern times”, but create new and exciting stories with new faces.

I want strong women characters. I want strong gay characters. I want diversity to come to to point where it’s not even an issue anymore. I don’t want a white washed universe, but I don’t want my old characters to change in order to fit these wishes.

If you’re going to change the universe actually CHANGE IT.  I want new talent, I want good writing and art from ALL GENDERS AND ETHNICITIES.

If you feel even moderately strongly about this, there’s a major petition up calling for DC to hire more women. Dan asked who he should hire, and after seeing all the list of names on here makes you wonder why he even needed to ask the question

UPDATE:

As of Friday July 29, 2011, DC Entertainment co-publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee posted a statement called, simply, We hear you:

Over the past week we’ve heard from fans about a need for more women writers, artists and characters. We want you to know, first and foremost, that we hear you and take your concerns very seriously.

We’ve been very fortunate in recent years to have fan favorite creators like Gail Simone, Amy Reeder, Felicia Henderson, Fiona Staples, Amanda Connor, G. Willow Wilson and Nicola Scott write and draw the adventures of the World’s Greatest Super Heroes.

DC Comics is the home of a pantheon of remarkable, iconic women characters like Wonder Woman, Lois Lane, Batgirl, Batwoman, Catwoman and Supergirl as well as fan favorite characters like Black Canary, Katana, Mera and Starfire. We’re committed to telling diverse stories with a diverse point of view. We want these adventures to resonate in the real world, reflecting the experiences of our diverse readership. Can we improve on that? We always can—and aim to.

We’ll have exciting news about new projects with women creators in the coming months and will be making those announcements closer to publication. Many of the above creators will be working on new projects, as we continue to tell the ongoing adventures of our characters. We know there are dozens of other women creators and we welcome the opportunity to work with them.

Our recent announcements have generated much attention and discussion and we welcome that dialogue.

Best-

Jim Lee & Dan DiDio
DC Entertainment Co-Publishers

Nice to see we go the ball rolling, now it’s time to see where it goes!