- All right, well good evening.
And welcome to this edition
of History and Highballs,
as part of the North
Carolina Museum of History's
History-at-Home initiative.
We're so glad that you're joining us
for this evening's program,
The Evolution of Female Superheroes,
featuring artist and business
owner, Jazmin Truesdale.
My name is Stacy and I
handle Adult Education
over at the museum.
So whenever you sign up for one of these
History and Highballs,
you and I will virtually get
to spend the evening together,
listening to some incredible stories
about North Carolina places and people,
and what makes our state so special.
Tonight's program is just one of many
exciting digital offerings
available through MOH.
So if you'd like to learn more about
our History-at-Home initiative,
head over to our website at
www.NCmuseumofhistory.org
We would like to take this opportunity
to thank our North Carolina Museum
of History Associates and Foundation
for making this evening possible.
Our Associates and Foundation provide
crucial funding and support,
which is in addition to many other things,
helps make events like this
evening's event happen.
We would also like to thank those of you
who graciously donated funds
towards this evening's program.
We endeavor to keep our
programming free to attend,
but there are costs
associated with these series
and we continue to be humbled
by your generous support
of the museum and its programming.
So thank you so, so much for that.
If you haven't already use the link
in your EventBrite emails,
check out the cocktail
tutorial for this evening,
specially theme cocktail,
the Girl Power Cocktail.
We invite you to head over and do that now
on the museum's YouTube channel.
Make sure you also check
out the museum shop website
for fun, super women items,
and other merchandise celebrating women,
as well as lots of other great
North Carolina-related gifts.
While the museum remains closed,
the museum shop is open on limited hours
from Tuesday through Saturday.
You can learn more about
those limited hours,
as well as all of the shero
gifts that we have available
by heading to NCmuseumofhistoryshop.com.
A few quick housekeeping
items for this evening.
We ask that you please keep your mic muted
through the entirety of the program.
And that if you have any
questions for our speaker,
please type them into the chat function
located at the bottom
center of your screen.
At the end of the lecture,
I will ask the speaker
as many of your questions
as time allows.
Okay, so it is my honor to
introduce this evening's speaker,
CEO of AZA Entertainment and
AZA Comics, Jazmin Truesdale,
also known as the
superwoman of superwomen.
She is the CEO at AZA Comics,
a superhero brand known for its roster
of multicultural superheroes.
She is a nerd at heart
and loves science fiction,
comic books, action movies, and the like.
It was her passion for more empowerment
of female representation
that led her to create
the AZA Comics superheroes universe.
So Jazmin, I'm going
to turn it over to you.
Welcome!
- Thank you for having me.
And thank you everyone for joining me,
as I talk about my favorite topic, always,
which is history and female superheroes.
So as you were saying,
AZA Comics is an all-women
superhero universe.
So of course, this is
kind of like my thing.
And I'm super excited to
talk about it with everyone.
So, getting started,
just want to ask a quick question
and see if anybody knows who
the first female superhero was?
I'm giving you a minute
to type it into the chat,
and then I'm going to
jumpstart into my presentation.
Ah a lot of Wonder Womans.
Super Girl?
Let's see.
- There's actually a
little bit of a debate
on who the first female superhero is.
I think I got it.
Some interesting answers.
Okay, so I am going to jumpstart.
Don't know if anybody knows this,
but it's actually a
superhero named Phantomah.
And it is by a comic book
company called Jungle Comics.
And she debuted in February of 1940,
just before Wonder Woman
who was the following year.
So Phantomah,
actually I will pull this up
and I'll share the screen with everybody
so everyone can see it.
Phantomah had the ability to,
she could levitate,
she had flight, the ability of flight,
and she also had like a
transplantation power as well.
She is considered to be the
actual first female superhero.
And after her, it was Wonder Woman,
who we all know and love.
I'm excited for the movie,
hope everyone else is.
But she emerged at 1941, by
who we now know as DC Comics,
and she was written or
created by William Marston.
And she was inspired pretty
much from his relationship
with his wife and their life partner.
And if anyone has ever
actually seen the movie,
"Professor Marston and the Wonder Women,"
it explains a lot of
pretty much the backstory
to him creating the characters
and a lot of the struggles
that they went through.
But the 1940s, which was
the time of World War Two,
and this was an era where we
saw the draft taking place
and a lot of men going overseas
and fighting in the war,
and women stepping into the roles
that were traditionally by men,
and taking on a lot of things that
traditionally men would do.
So this was also the emergence of WAC,
which was the Women's Army Corps.
And if anyone is a lover of old films,
there's this kind of rare
old film with Lana Turner,
where she and two other women
go into the Women's Army Corps,
and you start to see kind of like
the vigorous training
that they go through.
The three women ended up
becoming like mechanics.
And there's this whole thing
where we see this kind of,
I don't want to say it's like propaganda,
but this kind of thing
that was encouraging women
to be active in supporting the war
and things of that nature.
And then we saw in general,
just a lot of women taking
on traditional male roles.
And we saw this being
reflected in comic books.
So while during this time,
yes, Superman was created
a little bit before that,
but during this time when we were seeing
a lot of women taking on these
roles within World War Two,
we saw a lot of female superheroes
being created to reflect that empowerment
and showing up alongside male
superheroes like Wonder Woman.
So this popular one was Superman.
And then I guess his
counterpart was created,
was hyped to be Wonder Woman at that time.
Wonder Woman was incredibly successful.
And actually during the
'40s, during this time,
she outsold Superman in comic books,
which is interesting.
Wonder Woman is also the
only female superhero
to be in publication nonstop
from the time she was created in 1941.
So, during this era and all the reflection
of all of these wonderful women
going out and supporting the war,
becoming empowered, self-actualizing,
and doing all of these incredible things
and seeing that reflection
in the comic books as well,
when the war was over,
that was a completely different story.
So what happened is when
the men came back from war,
a lot of women lost their jobs.
So they were like, the men are here.
Bye, girls!
Don't really need you.
Go get married.
It was actually not
uncommon during this time
for a company policy to be that
they didn't hire married women.
That was something that a lot
of women were experiencing.
If anybody's familiar with
like women's baseball,
like there was a time in American history
where that was like the biggest sport.
And then when the men
came back from the war,
they pulled all the funding
from women's baseball,
into men's baseball,
and then that slowly disintegrated.
So it was a lot of things happening
and the comic books actually
reflected that as well.
So in this transition of women
coming out of the workplace,
coming out of the army corps,
going back into, I guess
you could say the kitchen,
this archetype character
called the Femme Fatale
started to emerge.
And the Femme Fatale pretty much is,
we often see her as like the
villain in comic character.
She is the woman that kind of doesn't
want to go back to her place.
That's the way she's often depicted.
Anyone else who's really into
old films at this time as well,
this was like the era of film noir.
And a lot of times, the central story,
it's very much centered
around women who are unhappy.
Usually they're married
to men who were older,
whether they, you know,
married for love at first,
or they married out of necessity,
and they're like recruiting
some guy to kill that guy
so that they can like get
money and go on without them.
It's a mess, but that's
kind of this archetype
that was often pushed during this time,
not only in film but also
in comic books as well,
to kind of say, oh women,
you know, you should go and get married
and have some children.
Anything outside of that,
you could end up dead,
you can end up in prison.
Because of these stories
that they were telling,
who were these women, these femme fatales,
were often having these
very negative endings.
Like the end to their
story was never good.
And that was kind of something that
was pushed to women during this time.
So now as we're like ending the 1940s,
the war is over,
we're now heading into the '50s.
The '50s was very much a time period of,
I guess you could call,
you start to see the emergence of suburbs.
It was very family oriented.
During this time, it was very much about,
you know, the nuclear family,
the white house and the
picket fence, the dog,
the husband and the wife
with the two and a half kids,
or the husband and the wife with two kids
and the dog and the house
with the picket fence.
Like that was very much the pushed view
of the ideal America.
And comic books reflected that as well.
In the 1950s, we actually started to see
the decline of female superheroes.
And the superheroes that were
very prominent at that time
started to take a backseat
to the male superheroes
at that time as well.
So during this time,
there was the Comics Magazine
Association of America.
They created a code that pretty much said,
we need to tell girls
that they need to go out
and get married and have children.
That's what we need to be
pushing these values out there.
That's what we need to see.
At this time during the '40s,
there was an increase of women
who were going to go into school.
They were going to university,
they were going out and getting jobs.
There weren't a lot of women
doing more traditional things.
And in the '50s, we
actually saw the decline
in women going to university.
We saw an increase in marriage,
increase in women having babies,
less women going into the
workforce because of that.
And they wanted comic
books to really reflect,
really pushing this.
So that's why we have this
lovely comic book here
called True Love by the True Love Comics
that was basically bride-to-be romances.
And that was kind of the place of women,
or what they were trying to push to women
during this time in the '50s.
At the same time, we're
seeing it everywhere.
So if anyone watches
television from the '50s,
this was the era of "Leave it to Beaver"
and "Father Knows Best."
This is very much a reflection,
the comic books were very
much a reflection of that.
So in all of this,
when we're heading into the '60s
where we see a lot of civil
unrest happening in America
with the civil rights movement,
we see a lot of things happening in that,
there was one particular
comic book company
that did not want to conform.
DC Comics, very much conformed.
They wanted to do that.
They wanted to conform to the code.
They dialed back on
their female superheroes.
Whereas Marvel,
they created the Fantastic Four,
and created a lovely comic book character
that we're all pretty familiar with
named Susan Storm, Invisible girl.
So, in this Marvel pretty much was like,
yeah, nah, we're going to keep
making our female characters.
We're gonna keep pushing them.
We don't really care about the code.
So in this, during this time period,
we're still seeing the back,
what is to be the aftermath
of the end of World War Two.
So in this aftermath,
when we were seeing the decline
in women going to college,
this decline in women going to work,
and we're seeing the increase of
women marrying, having children,
this first of the suburbs
during this time period as well,
when we're seeing all of this,
there was this,
they called it, there
was a book that came out
in the mid-1960s called
the "Feminine Mystique,"
and it was by Betty Friedan.
And it basically explained
this overall sense
of discontentment that women were feeling
during this time that they
didn't know how to vocalize.
And it came from this
desire to want to do more
than being within the home.
Like, you know, they loved being moms,
they loved being married,
but they wanted to do more.
But society kind of wasn't
allowing them to do that.
And they didn't know how to vocalize it.
And this book became very
popular as a bestseller.
Sold over like a million
copies during this time.
And people often credited it
to being the early beginnings
of the second-wave feminist movement.
So in a lot of times,
people referred back to it.
But during this time, when you're seeing
this kind of conflicting
thing within comic books
where you have like the
big two, Marvel and DC,
where one is very much conforming,
the other one is very much
pushing the envelope still,
it's interesting to see how comic books
still play a huge role
in reflecting society
in how their characters are developed,
how storylines are indeed written.
So as we're doing all of this,
and we're heading into in 1970s,
see Wonder Woman there,
my favorite superhero.
And pretty much, people
are pretty familiar
with what happened in the '70s.
This was the era of the feminist movement.
And comic books, yet
again, reflected that.
So in the '70s,
we started to see the emergence
of all of these mediums,
all of these modes of entertainment,
reflecting women's empowerment
from blaxploitation.
We saw the emergence of
Pam Grier in "Foxy Brown."
We see television shows being developed,
like "Wonder Woman," "Bionic
Woman," "Charlie's Angels,"
all of these things being developed
very much reflecting women's empowerment,
seeing them in action,
doing all of these things.
And at the height,
or very much during women's movement,
Wonder Woman was very much
at the forefront of that.
So in this era, we're
actually starting to see her
develop her powers more.
We're starting to see
her increase in strength.
One of the things in the early
beginnings of Wonder Woman,
her lasso allowed her
to actually get people
to do what she wanted them to do.
It allowed her to be able to,
in many ways, control them.
And when Marston died, and
other writers took over,
as a reflection of the time,
they actually diminished
the power of her lasso.
And here we're actually
starting to see in the '70s
like this kind of increase in her powers
in a way to reflect the
time period as well.
And if anyone had watched the "Bewitched,"
it's interesting to see in the beginning
in like the mid-1960s,
when the show started,
to the 1970s around the time
towards the end of the show,
like the dynamic between
Darren and Samantha
and how she became a lot more assertive
in her relationship with
him during this time,
and, you know, the feminist era.
So it's very interesting yet, again,
how superheroes still
reflected that time period.
Also, we started to see the emergence
of like Supergirl, Betty and Veronica.
This was also the creation of the X-Men,
and the creation of one
of the most powerful,
most popular black female superheroes
that we know of today, Storm.
So in this yet, again, (chuckling)
Marvel and DC now coming
back into the picture,
like they are very much pushing
their female superheroes.
They're creating more, they're
bringing them to light.
They're doing all of these things
to reflect women's empowerment.
And we're starting to
see their powers grow.
We're starting to see
more of this emergence
of all of this going on within this era,
reflecting the society that we are in.
Let's see, going on to the 1980s,
(indistinct), that's okay.
So going on into 1980s,
one of the things that we actually saw
was women taking on
leadership in comic books.
Whereas before they were kind of on par.
In the 1940s when the women emerged,
they often were like the
partners of the male superheroes.
They were like his best friend.
They were his wife, his girlfriend,
and they played a role in that way.
And in the '80s, all of these superheroes,
these female superheroes
that came into play,
we actually started to see
them take on leadership roles.
So like for example, Storm,
took on leadership roles in the X-Men.
We had Wasp take on
leadership in the Avengers.
We saw Susan take on leadership
in the Fantastic Four.
By the way, notate or put in the comments
like what your favorite
era of Fantastic Four was.
I'm just really curious to know.
Some people are like the '70s better,
and people like the late '90s.
I'm just curious to see what people say.
But yes, so in this era,
we're actually starting to see women
take on more leadership roles.
And this is also in the '80s
where we're seeing women
taking on leadership roles
within the workforce as well.
We're starting to see more
women business owners.
This was kind of the emergence
of like the power CEO.
Anybody who's familiar
with Elizabeth Taylor,
she's really known for
starting this perfume,
super company.
And we're starting to
see more women like that,
taking more control of their careers,
developing careers,
furthering their careers in the '80s.
And that very much reflected
in the comic books of the '80s.
So as we're kind of like
navigating this entire space,
we're also
going over it into the '90s
where it was kind of all
about multiculturalism.
So,
in all of this,
in the era of multiculturalism
and everything that's going on,
as we're starting to see
more of that reflection here,
so in all of this, in that
reflection of the 1990s,
we're starting to see this
kind of like this emergence,
this necessity to kind
of represent more people
while women were in the '90s,
still weren't being pushed
as hard in comparison to men
in terms of like marketing
and things like that.
We were starting to see a
lot more reflection of women,
different kinds of women.
We actually saw,
what am I saying?
It was like Batwoman,
who recently they created
her and represented her
as like a lesbian character.
We see a Wonder Woman
who they reflected as
a bisexual character.
We're starting to see more,
not only just women being
put in leadership positions
in the creation of the characters,
but also being put in the
forefront in terms of marketing,
which is oftentimes where
women didn't get that support.
So now with everything,
we're starting to see more
cultural representation.
There's Ms. Marvel, Kamala
Khan, who is Muslim.
We're starting to see a
lot of different things
when it comes to, yes, someone said it,
Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy,
they had their own series.
Like, you know, maybe 20, 15 years ago,
that wouldn't have even been a thought.
The way they probably would have did it
was have maybe like a male character
and they're being supporting characters
and being pushed kind of like into that.
But now we're actually
starting to see that shift
where women are actually
being pushed to the forefront,
leading in their own films.
Wonder Woman finally got
her movie, 70 years later.
Batwoman has her own series.
We're starting to see things
like "Black Lightning."
We're starting to see a
lot more representation.
And with me, "Birds of Prey,"
yes, I actually saw that
and I really, really liked that movie.
"Birds of Prey," "Black Panther."
We're just seeing a lot of
this representation take place
in the scope of the comic book genre,
simply because it's a
reflection of the society
that we're in now, we're more open.
We are talking about things
that we need to talk about.
We're expressing the
need for representation,
where previously
superheroes and comic books
have tend to been more white,
we're now starting to
see more representation,
comic books reflecting the empowerment
that people who are often been neglected
are now getting that empowerment,
they're now starting to see themselves
in positions of empowerment.
Which then leads to me.
So my superhero universe,
me being a fan of female superheroes,
and knowing kind of this
history of superheroes,
knowing this history in terms
of how women are often
portrayed in the media,
often how even with the
creation of these characters,
the creation of female
characters are oftentimes
they don't get the budget,
they don't get the marketing,
they don't get the
attention that they deserve
so that they could be as
successful as they can be.
It's still a shame,
when you're walking into
a Target or a Walmart,
and you don't see your
favorite female character,
but then you see all of the merchandise
for all of the male characters.
That's disappointing to me still.
So for me, it was important
to create characters and
be able to develop them
kind of with the women in mind.
So a lot of times,
one of the things that I
discovered in a lot of my research
was that even with female superheroes,
they're often still marketed to men.
They're still not really
marketed to women.
And when I was presenting my characters,
when I was presenting them
to different publishers,
they literally did not
know how to market this.
Like they just didn't have the data
for marketing superheroes to women.
So a lot of it was me
building it from scratch.
I did interviews with women and girls,
different ages, different backgrounds,
asking them like why they
didn't read comic books,
why they did read comic books,
what they wanted to see,
what they didn't like
about the superhero genre,
so that I can actually
craft a superhero universe
with women in mind.
And then honestly, surprisingly,
a lot of the issues that women had,
men had a lot of the same issues as well.
So it was one of the things, it was like,
oh why don't you like this particular,
you know, woman character?
It was like, ah, she
needs her own identity.
Like it was just kind of
like, nah, it was kinda like,
you know, Batman and whatever.
Like they would give
me this kind of thing.
And I wanted to create something
with the actual consumer in mind.
So when I was making everything,
one of the things that stood out to me
was the actual format of the comic book.
And a lot of women were
actually turned off surprisingly
by the actual format of
the traditional format
of a comic book.
Like they didn't have time to
go and buy copies every month.
So I said, well, how can I
kind of merge the two together?
So the thing with AZA Comics
is we actually don't
even make comic books.
We make superhero novels
where the action scenes
are illustrated like a comic book.
So the rest is traditional prose,
and then when it gets to an action scene,
it becomes a comic book.
And then it goes back to the prose.
So it becomes like an experience
that was something that I wanted to do.
And surprisingly, not only
women gravitated to it,
like about 60% of AZA's women readership,
argh tongue-tied.
AZA's women readership are
new to the superhero genre.
They never took interest
in comic books before,
and this was their introduction.
And then surprisingly even,
about 40% of AZA's
readership are men as well.
So with AZA, I wanted to
create characters that
had different body types,
different personalities,
different everything to
really show the plethora
of all the different kinds of
things that a woman can be.
A lot of the characters were created
based as the antithesis
of their stereotypes,
to really just kind of expand the mind
of what a woman can be, what they can do.
My main characters include The Keepers.
They all have different,
not only personalities, different jobs.
My Indian superhero, Adanna,
she is a mechanic in Mumbai.
She's also darker skin.
And I speak on like the issues
that she faces with that.
So a lot of the things
with the characters,
I really delve into the creation,
the three dimension, three dimensionality.
I don't know if that's a word.
But really making them very
three dimensional characters
that you can relate to.
'Cause sometimes and oftentimes,
when female characters are created,
they tend to be based off
of female stereotypes.
Or they're not really
given that attention,
like I was talking about before.
The attention that they really need
in order to be successful.
Because if you can't
identify with the character,
then you can't really-
Or not even identify with the character.
If you don't really
create that fertile ground
in the backstory of the character,
then it's difficult to make
them a leading character.
It's difficult to create
stories based around them
when that background was
not created to begin with.
And I saw a lot of these kind of pitfalls,
that other companies were doing,
or seeing some of the things
where they failed in a particular way,
and it's like, oh I wonder how
I could have done that better.
Or just kind of thinking
of different things
in terms of how I can enhance it.
And one of my biggest dreams actually
is to do kind of a crossover
with the women of Marvel and DC.
Like I would love to do that.
But one of the things
that I did with AZA Comics
was very much kind of keeping in line
with a lot of the tradition
of the superhero genre
when it came to the women's superheroes,
taking a lot of the things that I learned,
that I loved as well,
and listening to what other women said
that they would like to have seen,
and created like an entire universe
that's really built around
encouraging and empowering women,
putting these characters into positions
that women often face,
where they're faced with racial inequity
or discrimination of some kind,
and, you know, kind of responding to it
in the way that you wish you
could have responded to it.
So really give that sense of empowerment.
But yeah.
That's my presentation.
I hope everybody enjoyed
what I had to say.
If you have any comments
or any particular character
that you wanted to mention,
that maybe I skipped over or glossed over,
I can definitely talk
about that in the scape.
But comic books are always
meant as a sense of empowerment
and very much meant to reflect the culture
at that time,
so that people can see themselves.
They can
do all of the things that, you
know, we wish that we can do.
Okay, please introduce
each of your characters
and give us a bit of their backstories.
Yeah, I can do that.
So we have Kala who is here on the right.
She is from the Gullah Sea
Islands of South Carolina.
She speaks Geechee and like
a thousand other languages.
She is the leader of the league.
She is also,
all of these girls,
the mythology around the
AZA superhero universe
is very much kind of like
an origin story of people.
So in the AZA universe, Earth,
there was a major war that
was happening in the universe,
and people fled to Earth
as a way to escape it
and seek refuge on Earth.
And that is how we got the
different people here on Earth.
So we have different realms
within the AZA universe
that are reflective of
the different continents
and the different ethnic groups of Earth.
So each of these girls actually
come from one of the planets
in the various realms of the AZA universe.
And they come to Earth to hide out
from a particular villain, Kala's father,
who is trying to kill them.
So they are the Askari,
which are The Keepers,
and their job is to protect the universe.
And they are the next in line.
Previously, the Askari
have all been corrupt
and terrorizing the people of AZA,
and Kala's father is the previous Askari.
So he's lost his powers,
they're gaining the powers,
and he is trying to stop them
so that he can gain back control.
But Kala, she is from Realm 1,
which is called the Pangeatic Realm,
and she is the leader of the league.
She has the power to
manipulate force and energy.
So she can always match
someone's strength.
She can absorb energy and
shoot off like energy balls,
things like that.
She can also manipulate gravity,
which is a force, and be able to fly.
There is Ixchel, who is next to her.
You can't really see it,
but she's actually holding a book.
She is a super genius,
and she could hold her hand over a book
and absorb all of the energy from that.
Her skin becomes electrical
when she's super nervous.
She's super shy.
She is a genius, she got her PhD, her MD,
by the time she was like 19 years old.
And she kind of serves as the team doctor.
She's from Bogota, Colombia.
There is Amaya,
she is in middle.
she's from Seoul, Korea,
and she has the power to open up portals
and go anywhere she
wants to in the universe.
She also has super speed.
She's very skilled in combat.
She's also like a bounty hunter, as a job.
Like that's what she does.
And she also is kind of like
the oldest in the group,
she sorta keeps everybody grounded.
There's Fenna, who is in the center-
Not the center, who is next to her.
She is from London, England.
She's a fashion designer.
She also is kind of like the
thicker girl of the group.
And I did that on
purpose to speak to women
who felt somewhat insecure,
maybe about their body
and things like that.
And I definitely speak on
that through her character.
Like she desired to be a fashion model,
but she was rejected because
of the way that she looked.
She wasn't as thin as the other girls.
And because of that she ended up
taking on that power for herself,
empowering herself to
create her own fashion line
and model her own things
and create them for all
women and their body types.
She also has the power to regenerate.
So when she gets cut or injured,
she can grow the limb
back or heal herself.
And she also is an empath,
she can feel other people's emotions
and she can affect
other people's emotions.
There is Adanna, she's from Mumbai, India.
She is a mechanic
and she's also like a
bit of an engineer nerd.
She can see anything and
figure out how it works.
She not only is a mechanic,
but she restores cars.
She pimps out rides and
she's like a racer as well.
And she has super strength.
And she also has the ability,
she has like morphing abilities,
so she can change into anything she wants.
Anything she wants, she can make her hand
into a, I don't know,
like a tool or anything.
She like has a auto shop with no tools
'cause she can make her hands or her body
or anything into whatever tool she needs
to fix whatever she needs to fix.
And each of the women were very
much inspired by real women.
So like Kala was inspired by the African
female warriors of Dahomey.
Ixchel was inspired by the goddess,
Ix Chel, from Mayan culture.
Ixchel is actually from Mayan culture.
There is Amaya.
She was very much inspired
by a lot of K-pop artists.
I'm a big K-pop fan.
Fenna was inspired by Anna Wintour.
And then Adanna was
inspired by Hedy Lamarr,
who gave us the technology for Wi-Fi,
as well as Geeta Phogat, who
is the first Indian wrestler.
Actually, she was the first
Indian wrestler, male or female,
to win a gold medal at
the Commonwealth Games.
So a lot of them were
created by like real people.
And I was inspired by the women around me.
One of my other characters was inspired
by my mom and Janet Jackson.
So it's like, there's a lot of real people
who are very much influential
in the creation of the characters,
in my process of how I
go about making them.
Were there any other questions?
- Jazmin, one of the questions was,
where do you see the future
of women superheroes going?
- I'm excited.
So me, I'm not one of those people that
feels threatened by other women.
I see a win for one is a win for all.
When Wonder Woman's film came out,
I said, oh my gosh,
please don't mess this up.
Like that was, (laughing)
I've waited my whole life for that movie.
But then also at the same time,
I very much understood that,
in my place as a creator
of female superheroes,
that oftentimes the weight of one thing
can impact the rest of us.
So if Wonder Woman tanked,
it would have been so hard for me
to kind of get AZA Comics off the ground.
But actually the success of Wonder Woman
made it easier for me as a business woman.
'Cause suddenly everybody
was looking up superheroes.
When I was talking to
potential business partners,
it made it super easy for me to explain.
They're like, oh it's the
universe of like Wonder Women.
I was like, yes, that's exactly
what it is, there you go.
So in all of this, you know,
from that we saw Black Panther
and how much the women of Black Panther
were so hyped and so loved
and so well received.
We saw Captain Marvel.
We're now getting a Black Widow movie.
We're starting to see a lot more chances,
like a lot more companies
are taking chances
with women superheroes.
Batwoman, getting her own show.
Like with "Birds of Prey."
Like we're seeing all of this happening.
So in my opinion,
I think that it's going
in a great direction.
I'm really happy about it.
Even AZA Comics is getting approached
by film production
companies and TV companies.
I'm excited about it.
That was a long-winded answer.
(laughing)
- It's okay.
We have another, you
already spoke to this a bit,
but there was someone who asked
if there are any plus-size women heroes?
- Yes, so Fenna, she is
my plus-size character,
and I did it on purpose.
Actually, it was one of
my aunts that asked me.
She was like, couldn't
you make a plus-size one?
I was like, yes, I can.
And she's like super into like fashion
and all of that kind of stuff.
And that's kinda that,
and like the Anna Wintour
sort of personality,
I kind of mixed them together.
And I speak a lot on body types
and how that affected her,
how she overcame that,
and hopefully using her stories.
And her storylines are
a lot of the instances
of the things that she does as inspiring
for women to feel
comfortable with themselves,
feel better about themselves,
take power of their body as well.
So yeah, for sure.
- Cool okay, here's one.
Where can your comic books be purchased?
- Yes, so you can go to AZAcomics.shop.
And that is where you find
all of the AZA Comics merchandise.
Actually you can get a signed copy
or you can get a regular copy.
We have a kid's line as well,
which was actually requested by moms.
So I have a lot- (chuckling)
The age range for AZA Comics is so vast,
from like little kids to, I mean,
70 year old women in their book clubs.
So, (laughing)
there was a lot of moms
who were reading the books
and they're like, I would
really love a kid's book
to be able to share this with my daughter.
Or dads who read it who were like,
love to share this with my daughter
who was like under the age,
I believe, mostly under 10.
And so my stepmother actually,
I have a little sister who's 10 now,
at the time she was six,
and she actually wrote a kid's book.
And I put it together and published it,
so yeah, the whole thing, AZAcomics.shop.
You can also go to Amazon,
Barnes & Noble, Walmart, Target.
They're online.
They retail it online.
So, yeah.
- Okay, you addressed this a bit
when you were talking
about how Wonder Woman,
the success of the
movie really helped you,
but we have someone who asked,
can you share an obstacle
that you encountered
while pursuing this career
or marketing your idea?
- One of the obstacles was
a lot of times with press.
They don't want to talk to you
unless you're like one of the big two.
That's one of the biggest obstacles.
Or like in some instances,
because it only seems like there's like
maybe three or four major
publishing companies,
some of them, I couldn't get past the door
because they were already working with DC
or already working with Marvel.
One of the other thing,
so it's kind of like just, you
know, navigating the market.
That's kind of been one of the things.
But I feel like I've been
able to forge my own way.
But one of the other ones was really
just not having the foundation,
or the marketing just was not in place.
So if I pitched this to say a publisher,
and they were saying, you
don't know how to market this,
like their assumption was that
I wouldn't know how to market it either.
And I was like, no, (laughing), I do.
And I would actually have like,
the marketing in place from
the research that I did.
So a lot of it was like
a lot of trial error.
And just like, I did superhero,
if I marketed superheroes
on, let's say Facebook,
I did an ad on Facebook.
And I said, okay, people are
interested in superheroes.
The marketing would be geared towards men.
So the only people who would see it
would be like 80% dudes.
So the girls wouldn't even see it.
So like a lot of it was
me trying to figure out
like all of the different
marketing metrics,
to find the women who
would be interested in this
to be able to market to them.
So that was a lot of it.
It was just kind of,
I didn't really have a blueprint,
so I had to sort of create one
and really sort of find my way
around navigating that to marketing
and get it out there
and really get creative
with how I marketed AZA Comics.
Which hopefully, with
my research and my data,
it can be used for other companies
when they're creating superheroes
and female superheroes
and wanting to market them to women.
- I have a question here about
the comics as books and literacy.
I understand these comics are books
with the action scenes illustrated.
Do you think this encourages?
- Yes, that was one of the things as well.
Actually encouraged my sister.
Like that was one of the first
chapter books that she read.
So it definitely, I
definitely would say so.
One of the things that
they were talking about
was just trying to
encourage more kids to read.
So it was like, if I could have
little illustrated surprises
throughout the book,
maybe that would encourage
them to read more.
So, who knows, maybe that can come on
to be a new format in
which they are doing,
that they're making albums
or making comic books.
That was just something
that I kind of thought of
and I said, hey, maybe that'll work.
And it actually it did, it actually did.
- I know I'm asking you lots
of questions here, it's great.
Who is the illustrator of your comics?
- The illustrator is Remero Colston.
I found him on Instagram
'cause he did an
illustration of Janet Jackson
and we're both slightly obsessed with her.
(laughing)
So it was actually one of
the struggles that I had,
was finding an illustrator
who could illustrate women
in a way that wasn't
where their breasts weren't like overdone
or kind of pornographic elements;
just kind of making it more friendly,
'cause I was like, you
know, the audience is women.
So I thought I'd make it more-
That is, I guess, offensive.
He was absolutely perfect.
His specialty is actually
illustrating multicultural women.
And when I was struggling
to find an illustrator
for my black superhero,
it was like, they would get
all the other characters right,
but they would struggle with Kala.
And oftentimes make her,
basically illustrate her
like a white woman with brown skin.
And didn't really have a concept
of what black hair looked like.
Or, I have locks, Kala has locks,
and like they just didn't
know how to draw that.
So he was absolutely perfect.
I asked if he could send over
like a test sketch in 20 minutes,
it was kind of like his audition.
Got back to me within a half
an hour and it was perfect.
So yeah.
- Okay.
Next question.
Will you expand your character line
to include transgender women?
- I would love to.
I would absolutely love to.
I watched "Pose,"
and I was looking at them
and I was like, oh my God,
all of these women could
be one of my characters
in like a live action. (laughing)
Like I would absolutely
love, love, love that.
I do not feel that I'm the
right person to write that.
So it would be something where
I would definitely bring on
a trans writer to create
the ground for that,
the storylines, all of that,
and fitting that within the AZA universe.
I mean, it's all about
women's empowerment.
Absolutely.
- Okay, going into another media,
are you thinking about video games?
- Yes, that is exactly
who I'm talking to now.
So that's kinda the next
step for AZA, is video games.
The company that I own
is AZA Entertainment,
which is a production company.
So it encompasses a lot of things,
from music publishing to television
and film development, all of those things.
'Cause when I created AZA Comics,
it was with the thought of developing
all of these things into
all of these mediums.
One of my favorite companies is Disney.
So when I was creating this,
I read this 900-page book on Walt Disney
and I studied their company
and how they did all of that.
And I was like, well, to give
women the proper marketing,
the proper exposure that they deserve,
I'm going to have to go into
all of these different mediums.
So when I was creating AZA Comics,
I actually talked to production companies
to figure out how the
film industry worked.
I didn't know anybody in the industry.
I didn't know how any of it worked.
Ann Nocenti, who's like
the editor and writer
for DC and Marvel,
she was one of my first mentors.
She sat down with me on a Sunday
and explained to me the
whole comic book industry,
how all of it works,
how you put together the whole thing.
I talked to gaming companies,
I talked to television and film people.
Like, I just really learned
how all of it worked,
so that I could definitely
be able to give these girls
that multimedia platform, for sure.
So yeah.
- Okay.
Let's see, this one is sort of historical.
Well, definitely is.
What messages are important
in our time, do you think?
And how does this time compare
to other times of repression,
like the 1950s?
Simple question.
(laughing)
- Right, a few layers.
I would say in this era,
it's definitely about accepting
people for who they are.
So a lot of the previous
era, like the 1950s,
there was this false reality
that was trying to be presented.
Like there were a lot of people
who didn't grow up in two parent homes
or they didn't have parents at all
or they didn't have a picket fence
or they didn't grow up in the suburbs.
So it's like they were
trying to push this ideal
that for a lot of people
just did not exist.
And basically saying, if
you don't have these things,
then you are not happy.
And in today's society, we're learning,
one, there are more kinds of
people that exist out there.
Happiness can look a
lot of different ways.
There is no one way for happiness.
There is no one way to live.
There are so many different ways to live.
And just because you
didn't have this one thing
or have this other thing does not mean
that there's something wrong with you.
Like, you can live your life
the way that you want to live your life.
Just be respectful to others,
be respectful to yourself.
And really that's all you need to do.
Like the time period
that we're living in now,
there's a lot of clash going on
simply because you have a group of people
that doesn't feel like
another group of people
deserve to be respected.
And they're fighting that.
They're fighting respecting other people.
(laughing)
Like that's literally the fundamental,
the foundation of that.
I think that's what comic
books are about today.
It's just reflecting the
different ways that you can be.
There is no one way to be.
- Another historical question.
Were you inspired,
and I think you mentioned this a bit but,
were you inspired by any real
historical female heroes,
like historical women
who did important things?
- Oh yeah.
Every single character
in the AZA universe,
with the exception of maybe Ixchel,
was inspired by a real person.
So Thema, who was Kala's mother,
was inspired by my own mom,
as well as, I tend to mix
together a few different people
when I'm creating profiles for characters.
So I may like this person's personality
or this other person's
characteristic or this other thing.
So yeah, like they're all
inspired by real people.
Thema, who is Kala's mother,
was inspired by my own mother,
Janet Jackson and Queen Hatshepsut,
like all put together.
And we have Nari who was inspired
by the people of Melanesia.
Basically she's dark brown skin,
she has all these blonde curly ringlets,
just like the people of that area.
So I mean, they're all inspired
by real people, for sure.
One of Kala's aunts was inspired
by Carla Gugino, go figure.
So they're real people.
Some of them historical,
some just kind of, I
guess, really popular,
who all inspire different
women, different characters.
- I have one that pulls back a little bit
from AZA to the larger comic universe.
Can you speak to the instances
where some female heroes
have taken on the monikers
of formerly male heroes,
and really grown into those
roles and in successful ways?
And they referenced Captain
Marvel, Hawkeye, et cetera.
- That is interesting.
'Cause I'll be honest,
I didn't really know
much about Captain Marvel
until the film.
For writing purposes,
I actually stopped
watching superhero movies,
and I stopped reading comic books,
just so that when I was
creating the AZA universe,
I could do it from an organic place
and I wasn't being
influenced by other people
and other things within the same-
I didn't want to create more of the same.
So I wanted to kinda come fresh.
But with the Captain Marvel movie,
I actually didn't know much about her.
I had to read up, so, I don't know,
it's been one of those things
that's kind of difficult.
Because oftentimes when you're dealing
with legacy companies like DC and Marvel,
a lot of times they'll do,
like, Wonder Woman is like
a character they created,
she is her own character.
Vixen, her own character.
And then you have like Batgirl,
who's kind of like a play on Batman.
Like, they often kinda do that.
I don't really know.
Like the most successful one
that I saw was Captain Marvel,
but I feel like it's kind
of one of their things
where they don't necessarily
want to introduce
a completely new character.
Often times it doesn't work well.
So they're kind of pulling on that legacy.
They're pulling on the
fact that everybody knows,
let's say, Batman.
So when they introduced Batgirl,
people are okay, they'll drift towards it
because they're familiar with Batman.
So, I really can't say.
I really can't say.
- Okay,
back to you,
do you have social media or Instagram?
- I do.
My personal social media,
I'm mostly on Twitter
on a personal thing. (chuckling)
It's mostly me-
It's like the most things
that are on Twitter
is me like tweeting about my telenovelas,
I love Spanish soaps.
And like (laughing) Janet Jackson.
That's mostly what I do on Twitter.
But AZA Comics,
I release content on
Facebook, on Instagram,
and I've released some things on TikTok.
My 10 year old sister has
kinda gotten me into it.
So now I'm starting to, like,
I don't know, I'll see what that's about.
But it's all AZA Comics.
You type in AZA Comics, it pops up.
But yeah.
- So I think we have time
for two more or one more.
Could you speak to the
villains in your universe?
Are there females ones?
- Yes!
As I said, I'm a huge
lover of Spanish soaps.
In the Spanish soaps, female
villains are everything.
They have the best dialogue
and the best outfits.
Their storylines are like really the best.
And so I kind of pull a lot of that
into my creation for the villain
and I actually get excited about them.
'Cause it's like,
your superhero is only as
strong as your villain is.
So I really go all the way out.
I put as much effort into the
development of the villain
as I do in the development of characters.
So for me, oftentimes the villain
is sometimes the best part of the story.
Like if anybody watches
"Once upon a time,"
like I love the Evil Queen.
Like I loved all of that.
So when creating them,
I really pushed the envelope with
how far they're willing to go.
And with this particular villain,
I can't speak on it yet
because that part of the book,
story arc, hasn't been released.
So I can't say too much about it,
but everybody's going to
love this particular villain.
My villains are not always females.
Sometimes they're men as well.
Like in the first book,
it's very much Kirin.
But the villains definitely
evolve with time.
You'll see what I'm talking about
as the storyline progresses.
But you definitely are in store
for some really awesome
stuff with my villains
'cause I absolutely love villains.
- Okay, one last one.
Maybe a silly question
but do you have t-shirts?
I want to get them for Christmas presents.
- Yes, I have plenty of t-shirts.
And if there's an actual
character that you want,
that I don't have a t-shirt for,
I can have one made for you.
But if you go to the AZAcomics.shop,
the official AZA Comics store,
there's plenty of t-shirts.
I got t-shirts for kids,
t-shirts for tweens, t-shirts for adults,
different kinds, different
characters, everything.
We have t-shirts for guys,
we've got t-shirts everybody.
- Okay, well that's the questions we have.
Stacey, do you wanna take it away?
- So thank you so much, Jazmin.
This has been awesome.
Just wanted to share that
we have so many messages
of support for you and what you're doing
and just thanking you for expanding
this old ideal of female superheroes
and kind of bringing
us into current times.
So just wanted to pass that along.
Thank you guys so much for
joining us this evening.
Please do check our social media.
We will have another History
and Highballs in September,
but in the meantime, stay safe.
And everyone, have a good evening.
Thank you Jazmin so much.
- Thank you.
Thank you for everyone for coming out
or watching online. (laughing)
- Take care guys.
- Bye bye.
