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So I keep thinking about the whole discussion on tumblr about the female audience of comic books in response to an interview with Paul Levitz, former DC president, saying among other things "I’m not sure that young women are as interested in reading about superheroes. The fundamental dynamic of the superhero story has historically been more appealing to boys than to girls. There are any number of very successful superhero comics over the years that have had a better gender balance than others, but the genre as a whole has been a more male genre." Not because I think there's nothing in superhero comics for girls, but because I felt like the discussion had people talking about completely different things.
First I want to get out of the way that I think the comics industry has been pretty bad about the way it markets itself, so I'm not saying here that they know what they're doing and nobody else does. I think it's particularly stupid to act like women are a lost cause when women are already in the comic store right there buying stuff. It's stupid to not jump on that audience, and even more stupid to be actively hostile to them or see it as some badge of honor when your audience is shrinking. Comics aren't made or sold the way they were originally made and sold, so new ideas are needed here.
What I disagreed with is that it just seemed like a lot of the discussion wasn't really about publishing, but abstract concepts or greater issues like gender binaries and publishers aren't really about that when they market. They look at their demographic and mostly fight with competitors over an audience that's already there. He is acknowledging there that there have been comics with more of a gender balance so he's not erasing the female audience, he's stating a general trend in the very specific genre of superhero comics and maybe I'm wrong but it seems like the evidence bears him out.
On tumblr, I made a comparison to romance novels, which have a primarily female audience. New romance lines mostly try to go for parts of that audience, or to draw people in from an audience that overlaps. So you get historical romances, supernatural romances, Christian romances, etc. This is not to say that all women like romances and no men do--I'm a woman and I've never seen the appeal. It's just that I suspect that's the audience they know they have based on studies. The place where I work just did an in-depth study of our audience and we wound up dropping one of our publications because it turned out it appealed to a different audience that our other stuff. It wasn't that we wouldn't love to have that audience too, but it wasn't a good investment to try to go after a completely new audience to which we weren't that good at appealing. The company felt like they needed to know exactly what we did well to take advantage of that.
In the discussion I saw a lot of breaking down of these genres: if this guy is saying that the fundamental dynamic is "inherently male" wtf does that mean? I suspect he doesn't really know what it means. But people pointed out things in superhero comics like adventure, or super powers or fantasy and said hey, women like these things, so he's wrong. But that doesn't seem very useful to me, because he's not talking about broad concepts like "adventure" he's talking about superhero comics, which are a thing. Sailor Moon is popular, people pointed out, and they have powers and magic etc. But when I looked up Sailor Moon (which I'd never read) it was identified as shojo, which means "comics for girls," right? Manga embraces a gender binary with Sailor Moon, which came out of the magical girl genre rather than a superhero genre. Clearly there's a lot the two have in common, but I don't think a comics publisher would be completely wrong in saying that the different backgrounds come attached to different audiences, even if there's some obvious overlap in the story elements that could possibly be exploited.
Oh, and another thing that isn't superhero comics? Are superhero movies. Notoriously little crossover there. But they're certainly proof that superheroes as characters (and so plenty of things about that "fundamental dynamic") can appeal to a female audience.
Likewise with romance novels, nobody would ever say that men don't like romance. They write love songs, they put love interests in action movies--there's a huge history of guys and romances. But romance novels=/=romance. Are there men who like them? I'm sure there are. But I don't think the romance novel publishers would want to specifically change their books to go after a new male audience or even make new lines to appeal to men.
Again, this is not meant as some defense of the status quo in superhero comics. Or a support of strict gender binaries where guys can't like Pride & Prejudice without zombies and girls can't like The Dirty Dozen without slash. Or a way of dismissing the female audience that is there and could potentially get bigger. Especially because it seems like there's plenty of things already there in superhero comics that appeal to them as well as a male audience. Not everything that is considered standard wisdom is necessarily true, and need to be challenged to prove it. On the other hand, for all the sexism I think is very much there and real in the comics industry, and hurting them, I don't think all the standard wisdom is false. I don't think there's some huge female audience hovering on the edges of the superhero comics section who would pounce on Wonder Woman if only they stopped ruining her (I was going to try to put some specific example there but I admit I just don't get WW), or if they stopped with the cheesecake outfits. (Hell, Gloria Steinem wrote that giving Wonder Woman a pair of pants was sexist!)
Basically I'm saying that I disagree with the guy, but I'm not offended by what he's saying, because I think he's just coming from a different place than a fan--especially a female fan--would be. I guess I'm also saying that I think any serious discussion on improving comics for women does better to start closer to the "historically they seem to be more appealing to a male audience" than speaking as if they couldn't be. Sure Levitz is just describing his own failure to come up with a solution here and maybe somebody else will be able to create a superhero comic that not only appeals to the current audience but sucks in people who previously read shojo manga and had no interest in the spandex set. But I didn't feel personally erased or insulted by what he said, or feel like there was absolutely no truth in it. Not an eternal truth that can't be changed, but truth.
First I want to get out of the way that I think the comics industry has been pretty bad about the way it markets itself, so I'm not saying here that they know what they're doing and nobody else does. I think it's particularly stupid to act like women are a lost cause when women are already in the comic store right there buying stuff. It's stupid to not jump on that audience, and even more stupid to be actively hostile to them or see it as some badge of honor when your audience is shrinking. Comics aren't made or sold the way they were originally made and sold, so new ideas are needed here.
What I disagreed with is that it just seemed like a lot of the discussion wasn't really about publishing, but abstract concepts or greater issues like gender binaries and publishers aren't really about that when they market. They look at their demographic and mostly fight with competitors over an audience that's already there. He is acknowledging there that there have been comics with more of a gender balance so he's not erasing the female audience, he's stating a general trend in the very specific genre of superhero comics and maybe I'm wrong but it seems like the evidence bears him out.
On tumblr, I made a comparison to romance novels, which have a primarily female audience. New romance lines mostly try to go for parts of that audience, or to draw people in from an audience that overlaps. So you get historical romances, supernatural romances, Christian romances, etc. This is not to say that all women like romances and no men do--I'm a woman and I've never seen the appeal. It's just that I suspect that's the audience they know they have based on studies. The place where I work just did an in-depth study of our audience and we wound up dropping one of our publications because it turned out it appealed to a different audience that our other stuff. It wasn't that we wouldn't love to have that audience too, but it wasn't a good investment to try to go after a completely new audience to which we weren't that good at appealing. The company felt like they needed to know exactly what we did well to take advantage of that.
In the discussion I saw a lot of breaking down of these genres: if this guy is saying that the fundamental dynamic is "inherently male" wtf does that mean? I suspect he doesn't really know what it means. But people pointed out things in superhero comics like adventure, or super powers or fantasy and said hey, women like these things, so he's wrong. But that doesn't seem very useful to me, because he's not talking about broad concepts like "adventure" he's talking about superhero comics, which are a thing. Sailor Moon is popular, people pointed out, and they have powers and magic etc. But when I looked up Sailor Moon (which I'd never read) it was identified as shojo, which means "comics for girls," right? Manga embraces a gender binary with Sailor Moon, which came out of the magical girl genre rather than a superhero genre. Clearly there's a lot the two have in common, but I don't think a comics publisher would be completely wrong in saying that the different backgrounds come attached to different audiences, even if there's some obvious overlap in the story elements that could possibly be exploited.
Oh, and another thing that isn't superhero comics? Are superhero movies. Notoriously little crossover there. But they're certainly proof that superheroes as characters (and so plenty of things about that "fundamental dynamic") can appeal to a female audience.
Likewise with romance novels, nobody would ever say that men don't like romance. They write love songs, they put love interests in action movies--there's a huge history of guys and romances. But romance novels=/=romance. Are there men who like them? I'm sure there are. But I don't think the romance novel publishers would want to specifically change their books to go after a new male audience or even make new lines to appeal to men.
Again, this is not meant as some defense of the status quo in superhero comics. Or a support of strict gender binaries where guys can't like Pride & Prejudice without zombies and girls can't like The Dirty Dozen without slash. Or a way of dismissing the female audience that is there and could potentially get bigger. Especially because it seems like there's plenty of things already there in superhero comics that appeal to them as well as a male audience. Not everything that is considered standard wisdom is necessarily true, and need to be challenged to prove it. On the other hand, for all the sexism I think is very much there and real in the comics industry, and hurting them, I don't think all the standard wisdom is false. I don't think there's some huge female audience hovering on the edges of the superhero comics section who would pounce on Wonder Woman if only they stopped ruining her (I was going to try to put some specific example there but I admit I just don't get WW), or if they stopped with the cheesecake outfits. (Hell, Gloria Steinem wrote that giving Wonder Woman a pair of pants was sexist!)
Basically I'm saying that I disagree with the guy, but I'm not offended by what he's saying, because I think he's just coming from a different place than a fan--especially a female fan--would be. I guess I'm also saying that I think any serious discussion on improving comics for women does better to start closer to the "historically they seem to be more appealing to a male audience" than speaking as if they couldn't be. Sure Levitz is just describing his own failure to come up with a solution here and maybe somebody else will be able to create a superhero comic that not only appeals to the current audience but sucks in people who previously read shojo manga and had no interest in the spandex set. But I didn't feel personally erased or insulted by what he said, or feel like there was absolutely no truth in it. Not an eternal truth that can't be changed, but truth.
