Before she even graduated from art school, Noelle Stevenson was already making waves in the comics community. One night back in 2012 she and a friend starting sketching Marvel’s male superhero Hawkeye in the same ludicrously sexual poses that were usually reserved for his female counterparts. Stevenson posted her sketches online and, much to her surprise, the inside joke between friends blossomed into the massively successful Hawkeye Initiative. Soon artists all across the web were participating as Stevenson sent an early shot across the bow of the notoriously sexist comic-book world that predated and, in a way, predicted Gamergate and a thousand Black Widow think pieces.

Since she left art school, Stevenson has been busier than ever. At 23 years old, Stevenson just had the kind of year that would make even the most seasoned comics writer turn Hulk green with envy. She co-launched a wildly successful all-girl comic series, Lumberjanes; HarperCollins published a trade edition of her web comic, Nimona, which hit the New York Times best-seller list; Fox Animation and Twentieth Century Fox bought the film rights to Nimona and Lumberjanes, respectively; and, to top it all off, Stevenson—along with her Lumberjanes team—walked away from this year’s prestigious Eisner Awards with a table full of hardware in a female- centric sweep that made some of the old comics guard shake in their boots.

On the eve of her big Eisner win, we sat down with Noelle Stevenson at San Diego Comic-Con to talk cosplay, Hollywood, and how to make it to the top by breaking all the rules.

VF Hollywood: When you accidentally started the Hawkeye Initiative, did you imagine that kind of pushback would bleed so quickly into mainstream pop culture?

Noelle Stevenson: I think the conversation was already starting to happen, but it’s really blown up in the last two years. I think part of that is social media, which the Hawkeye Initiative is a part of, and also just with these superhero movies raking in billions of dollars, more people have an opinion. So people who don’t necessarily have a connection to comics from 50 years ago are like, Why is it like this? Why is Natasha the only woman on the team? Now one of the biggest stories is that recent Spider-Woman cover. If it had come out two years ago, everyone would have been like, O.K., business as usual. The fact that such a sexualized cover was a big deal really says a lot about where we are now.

How do you think social media—and specifically Tumblr—is responsible for the rise in female readership in the world of comic books?

Well, you don’t want to walk into a place where you feel like people are telling you don’t belong there. So maybe you don’t go into a comics shop or a message board where it’s mostly comics chatter from male fans. For a lot of people that was a barrier. Tumblr was a place where, for once, it was a predominantly female crowd. And you could share comics visually, which is one of the strengths of the design of Tumblr. When I saw Thor, I couldn’t go to [comic-book Web site] Bleeding Cool and say, “Oh, let’s talk about Loki’s issues with being adopted.” But Tumblr was totally there to talk to me about that. Even for people who have been reading for years and years, they could find a crowd here where they were more accepted.