For ages I’ve been wanting to draw a little zine about heroines/female role models. Because, you know, it wasn’t until I was about 18 or 19 that I even had any. All my heroes were men, everything I wanted to do was what men did, and there were very few women who inspired me to want to be LIKE them.

Now, this was partly due to my upbringing in the middle of nowhere places, partly due to the general visibility of women in the areas of culture and pop culture which I was into at the time – and I quickly realised how wrong I was and how many women out there were being awesome and worth looking up to. And I want to do a little zine to honour these women.

So, this morning, I thought – why not open that up for contributors? I know tons of women who write/make art/will definitely have something to say on the matter. The response on Twitter so far has been overwhelmingly positive, so…let’s do this thing?

Now, I can only afford to print a zine, not a book, so I won’t be able to say yes to everyone.

EDIT: The project is open to both female and male contributors.

I think there should be a few guidelines put in place:

1. The deadline will either be late September/early October because else I’m too bogged down with other projects to have time to edit this.

2. Maximum amount of pages for illustration/comics – 2. Maximum amount of pages for writing/poetry – 1. I will be printing in black and white, because colour printing is very, very expensive.

3. If you’re just writing, you can totally ask someone else to do an illustration to go with the piece. I’d be happy to do a few, too. Collaborate in general!

4. I think the heroine you choose should be someone in culture/politics/science/pop culture – it’s a nice idea if someone wants to write about their grandmother or mother or auntie or best friend, but I’d like it to be so that readers can google and read/listen to/watch/learn about our collection of inspiring women.

EDIT: Depends on your submission. If you have a really good idea for something which I’m convinced will work, I’ll put it in there!

5. I want you all to feel as perfectly comfortable picking a rock star/actress/pop culture icon to write about as well as politicians, authors, scientists, etc. And don’t worry about impressing by choosing someone REALLY obscure. It’s all about what’s inspired you and who you think is important and could be important for younger girls, growing up. Basically, if you want to pick someone obvious like Kathleen Hanna or Karen O, that’s fine.

Now, submissions!

Send ideas, etc, along to julia.scheele [at] gmail [dot] com. Like I said, I can’t say yes to everyone – but I’m thinking, maybe I can make an open blog/tumblr people can contribute to so that everyone gets a chance to show their thoughts somewhere.

GO!

Hello!

For the past few months I have been working with the talented Howard Hardiman and Sarah Gordon on a new comic. It is called The Peckham Invalids and is about disabled teenage superheroines in 1906 Peckham. Really! We just got the printed copies through and it looks pretty damn awesome if I do say so myself:

You can order it online HERE, or more importantly:

We’ll be in Saviles Hall for both days of this years’ genius Thought Bubble Festival in Leeds. You can find us at table 152. Come and say hello:

I will also have some prints and some issues of Everyone Is Talking About The Weather.

Meanwhile, you should look at the Peckham Invalids website for info on the characters and some preview pages. It is HERE. There is also a Panel Borders interview with Howard about it.

See you in Leeds!

I have drawn Patti Smith.

This started out as a painting, but then I decided that I was really bad at painting and went for the usual instead – I’m not sure whether the framing works or not, or whether it’s too green. But it’s all good practice.