Paul Levitz and girls who read comics

[sistermagpie]

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 Comics aren't made or sold the way they were originally made and sold, so new ideas are needed here.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.

Comments

[mildlunacy.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's the impulse to immediately infer to generalize that is the issue, which isn't about the um, issue at hand but about people's thinking habits, and the logic errors therein.

Hm. Well, let's start out by semi-firmly categorizing me as a 'femme' reader: I read predominantly shoujo/yaoi vs shounen/seinen, slash vs gen, fantasy/romance novels by women vs hard sci-fi. I love fantasy and adventure and realism all together, and I'll happily read hard sci-fi or shounen if it's truly based on ideas and has vivid characters (but it seems rare). I get really (really!) bored with wars, fights, battles, etc... unless there's flying or pirate ships involved. Or flying pirate ships. It's weird for me 'cause I think the closest thing to the truth I can say is that I love superhero genre *characters*, but I get bored with most superhero *comics*. The stuff I read in the genre tends to be a bit post-modern (like David Mack's Daredevil & Kabuki or Gaiman's Black Orchid... or Watchmen, of course) or just spin-offs, like I really enjoy arc novelizations. I read novelizations of both Batman and Superman arcs in the 90s, and I loved original novelizations like the GRR Martin's Wild Cards series. It seems to be that there's less emphasis on stupid fight scenes in written form, maybe, and of course no bad artists. I'm an art snob.

The problem (for me) is that I think the very thing that makes it appealing to a mass-market male audience is what bores me, thinking about how shounen works. Like, in shounen it's explicitly stated to the mangakas that the whole point is to create as many pointless fights/conflicts that go on as long as possible to draw in readers. Similar to how in shoujo, you're supposed to create as many pointless love triangles as would possibly fit. I don't read a lot of shoujo, mind you, but I've found it easier to look for shoujo that just focuses on fantasy vs romance than shounen that focuses on... what, as opposing fight-scenes? Character focused, I guess. But the whole point of shounen and superhero comics(partly) is to be plot-focused, it seems to be. Even more, episodic-plot (small arc) focused.

I always look for large-arc plots that start and then end, and don't go on and on ('cause I *will* stop reading-- lose attention/focus-- and I don't want to do it in the middle if I can help it). I love comics (LOVE comics) but I want them to end in a reasonable amount of time, too (in manga terms, even one of my all-time favorite series-- Basara-- it's 27 volumes but I've only read half). Shounen's worse about this than shoujo, 'cause they have like, 100-volume series and stuff, and sometimes a fight goes on for like, 20 of those. Of course, this is probably an ADD issue & not a girl thing, haha. ^^;;;;

[suki-blue.livejournal.com]

I'm really crap at explaining things, but this is roughly how I feel about the issue of gender in comics. I don't think superhero comics need to be changed to appeal to more women. I think it's a much wider issue. Gender stereo-typing is everywhere. It's woven into everything we see, watch, touch and hear. We don't even notice it most of the time. It's so ingrained its built into our subconcious. We're taught almost from the moment we're born that girls like certain stuff and boys like other stuff. None of my RL female friends who are not related to fandom like comics. It's for boys. They won't even consider that they might like them. It goes right back to us girls playing with Barbies and the boys playing with Action Man. But I wanted to play with Action Man and Barbie. I wanted an A-Team playset and a Cabbage Patch Kid. Perhaps that was because, for reasons I won't go into now, I spent a lot of time playing alone and never picked up that other girls my age didn't want to play with these things.

I think the female audience is there and pehaps some damn good marketing would help, but it's a fight because pink, fluffy kitty, bake-a-cake mindsets are installed in girls heads from day one. It makes me sad that I can't turn to a friend or collegue -- male or female -- and say 'OMG, you'll never guess what Bruce Wayne did!' without them looking at me like I'm a weirdo who should be avoided.

"inherently male" -- Inherent gender traits are, I believe, made up.

I'll stop rambling now. I told I wasn't very good at explaining, lol.

[mbeasi.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking hard, since I read this, really trying to pin down why it is that I haven't been able to get into superhero comics--what it *is* that I don't like about them. Because I'm one of those female readers to whom they don't currently appeal.

If I figure it out, maybe I'll try to write it down.

[ellid.livejournal.com]

I've always loved superhero comics, but the misogyny in much of the genre drives me crazy.

One thing I'd love to see that I bet *would* draw in women/girls: have some popular female fantasy/SF writers write comic lines based on books that women already read, like Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan saga, Robin Hobb's Liveship traders, or Lynn Flewelling's Nightrunner or Tamir books. I've seen dozens and dozens of such limited edition titles by the likes of Harlan Ellison, Wil Wheaton, J. Michael Straczynski, Leonard Nimoy, and so on. Why not have one of the women do it for a change?

[gramarye1971]

There's quite a bit I could say about Sailormoon and how it combines elements from both the magical girl genre and the sentai (i.e., Power Rangers) genre, the former of which is traditionally girl-oriented and the latter of which is traditionally male-oriented. However, that's going a bit away from what I wanted to write in this reply, which is that bringing manga into the discussion on superhero comics is probably not the best way to approach the issues with the genre.

Mostly, it's less a question of creation than distribution. Sailormoon came out as a serial in the Nakayoshi manga 'phonebook' magazine, which has about a dozen different stories being serialised at any different time, and AFAIK no one really buys the magazine with the expectation that they will like all of the stories. However, you're more likely to read other series if they're collected with a series that you particularly like -- which I believe is called 'stacking' or 'tentpoling' in the television industry. So in any given volume of Nakayoshi, there'll be a mix of stories, some that are more on the romantic-centric side but others that have a strong fantasy or even action component, but all of which are aimed at the same general demographic. And that approach is mostly the same for all of the manga magazines out there, from ones like Shounen Jump (for grade school boys) to Big Comic (for men) to Chorus (for women).

I can't see DC or Marvel putting together a 400-page bi-weekly compilation of a dozen of their current hot titles and expecting it to sell -- that's not how Western comics have operated, but that's how Japanese comics have operated for the past 50 years. Western comics mostly market individual titles (which are more often driven by single superheroes, so to speak), and that's a lot more difficult when it comes to drawing in new audiences. So I think the audience barriers for Western comics aren't always about the characters or storylines...sometimes, the distribution methods work against them, too.

(I may be drawing mistaken conclusions here, of course -- my experience is predominantly manga-related, so please correct me if I'm wrong!)

[r-ganymede.livejournal.com]

The shoujo thing really isn't that big of a deal. I mean, there is the sort of gender binary with the categorization between shoujo, shounen (boys), jyousei (women), and seinen (men), but it's not like anyone actually expects only girls, or boys, or whoever to be reading from each genre.

If you want a non-magical-girl example, though, Bleach and Naruto are both magical power-based shounen manga, and both are just as popular among female fans as among male fans.

You're right about it not being a matter of the outfits -- some outfits worn by female characters in shounen manga are waaay worse than any of the ridiculous costumes in western superhero comics. Though, shounen stuff tends to have fanservice for the female fans, too.

In terms of getting women interested in comics, I think the way comics are currently sold has more to do with the lack of new female readers (or new readers in general, actually) than anything else. Current female fans may be going to comic book stores, but random women who don't think about western comics aren't. Most manga fans I know started reading manga after finding it in a bookstore or seeing a prominent display in a library as a pre-teen or teenager. Or by seeing it after one of their friends discovered it that way. (Or learning about it after discovering anime). Aside from some reeaaally early anime fans I know, no one had to go to a special store they wouldn't otherwise have been going to in order to get it.

What little I've seen in the bookstore for western superhero comics is all super-expensive stuff meant for people who are already fans. It's often in hardcover, or on unnecessarily expensive paper, etc. There's also often no clear way of telling where any given volume is in terms of the story, even though the volumes don't necessarily stand alone. Who's going to pay $30+ for a thin volume of a series they've never read before that might be the very end of a story arc they know nothing about?

I know I'm not. And I'm the sort of woman who'd probably be interested in stuff like this otherwise.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Okay, I just can't stop laughing about this description:

Like, in shounen it's explicitly stated to the mangakas that the whole point is to create as many pointless fights/conflicts that go on as long as possible to draw in readers.

Because that sounds like such a nightmare! But then, same with the love triangles. I've always found that in mass market for kids writing too. A lot of the ones for girls seem to turn on jealousy and love triangles where as the guy ones are more about plot, at least. And bathroom humor. Yay!

But of course, that's still the extremes. There's plenty of places where they cross over. Like you said, not being interested in the actual comics as they are now doesn't mean you're not interested in the characters, and different writers handle them in different ways. Some of which is more character-based.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I think that was said really well! And I agree, the whole idea of genders and different stories that appeal to them is just so huge it's hard to put your finger on where it starts. Like even if there are things that are inherent to a gender, that's not going to apply to every individual to that gender, so it can become meaningless when you're actually talking about who likes a story. I mean, I'm a girl who's pretty much always been more interested in things that skew more boy, without liking all things boy. And that's going female to male where this more societal approval for it. Boy to girl can get a lot more strictly enforced.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I'll definitely be interested to read it if you do write it!

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yeah, agreed. And that's one of the things that's crossing the line into stupid because it's being openly hostile to female readers who would be interested in the characters. And I feel like it's even gotten worse--like the last post I even wrote that was about misogyny becoming this go-to joke. And the female outfits are just ridiculous and uncomfortable for me to read. But the female character I do like tend to dress in outfits that I'd feel cool wearing.

That's an excellent suggestion for comics and yeah, why haven't they done that?

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

However, that's going a bit away from what I wanted to write in this reply, which is that bringing manga into the discussion on superhero comics is probably not the best way to approach the issues with the genre.


Oh, I agree. That's part of what I wanted to say--not that the two things are completely different in terms of story, but just that there's a lot of differences in the history so people don't just look at them as the same thing. I didn't know about the history of Sailor Moon. I think there's probably things in western media that have come from the superhero genre too, but maybe not as direct.

I know practically nothing about Manga except for the little I've read so I appreciate any actual information about it! But I totally agree that a lot of it comes down to the way Western comics have been and are still distributed. That seems like one of their biggest problems, in fact.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I totally agree with all of this. I mean, also as the guy said in the quote, there are some superhero titles that had a gender balance in the audience so there too, nobody really expects it to only be read by one gender.

But I do think there's just this whole thing that is "the superhero genre" that is just like what you described--lots of expensive stuff for fans and collectors, with actual comics being harder to get, not to mention with all these storlines that go on for a long time and have all this history etc. Which is a different issue than appealing to women specifically since that probably puts plenty of male readers off too, but it's obviously within their best interests to break out of a lot of the ways they're doing things now. They need a bigger audience for the actual comics any way they can get it, so appealing to women should certainly be part of it.

Hmm :/

[jazzypom.livejournal.com]

Where I came from girls tended to read Archie Andrews digests, as well as Katey Keane. I grew up with lots of comics (European and American) and one or two of my female friends would read them. But yeah, I found that girls were drawn to the 'who will he choose?' in terms of the Archie Andrews digests, as well as Ms Keane's entire time suffused with her wardrobe and the men who tried to woo her.

So all this to say, yeah, I agree with you on this one.

But seriously, if he wanted to attract female audiences, don't do what Marvel did re: Girl Comics because that was just silly. Most women don't live lives separate from men (I went to a co ed school when I was younger, then one to mixed education, and then came out and worked in a mixed sex environment) and I don't see how making girl comics with stuff riffing along the lines of Cougar Town and then failing the Bechdale test on top of everything else.

On the other hand though, Marvel does stuff right in terms of say, their superhero digests with complete stories and anyone can access, going across from Spidergirl (old school), to new Spidergirl.

I must say though, that as a female reading the comics, there's such a male gaze when it comes to how women are drawn. Just the other day, I read Ultimate Spiderman 150, and he's supposed to be interrupting Electra from shooting someone, and the artist drew her at an angle wherein I'm just looking at her ass and taint. In Birds of Prey (a book about females, right), the art can be very cheesecakey at times to the point where it takes away the story.

Or, if they got rid of the fact that in order to seek vengeance, a woman must be raped or assaulted, that would be a good way, too.

In terms of comics though, most good comics do focus on characters, and their relationships, inner team workings and other wise, just that the backdrop is strange. I do find that the teenage comics (like Young Avengers, Young Allies, The Marvel Adventures Series, Spidergirl, Runaways, etc) are written better than their adult counterparts. In my comic book store a lot of girls buy Runaways, because they are sold in digest form, the stories are relatively complete and there isn't the spectre of rape floating about, and strangely, because to make underage girls sexy would be skeevy, they tend to make the girls keep their clothing on, and tend to be dressed relatively appropriately.

It wouldn't be hard to bring more girls and women on the comic bangwagon, seriously.

Re: Hmm :/

[lilacsigil.livejournal.com]

Yes, this is what I think, too. There's a difference between "our audience is primarily male" and "our audience is primarily male so let's happily do things that actively drive away other possible readers".

Re: Hmm :/

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

It's so bizarre when they come out with something like what Girl Comics sound like, or like with DC when they did Gotham City Sirens and they plucked 3 female characters that didn't have much to do with each other and made them roommates because they were all women.

But there's plenty of things already in comics that appeal to women. And as I said above, I don't understand how it in so many ways seems to be getting *worse* with the male gaze and misogynist jokes. I think when comics feel like they need to have the female characters in a separate world, that shows that they're not looking at it the right way, not taking the things that many female readers are actually enjoying in the comics already and enlarging on that.

It's funny that he points out that some titles have a more balanced audience in terms of gender, so you want to know: which titles? Why did they have that appeal? I suspect that a lot of them might be things like New Teen Titans in the 80s that were a group of male and female superheroes that featured relationships alongside adventures. Enough so that even the character that looked like the worst kind of creation for the male gaze with a backstory to match, was still written in a way that females could root for her and be interested in her.

Really, if women will already put up with the kind of nonsense you get in comics to read them as much as they do, just think of how well they can do if you treat them with respect as a normal part of the audience.

Re: Hmm :/

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yes! It's like using it as an excuse to be offensive--and stupid. Because this is the last industry that needs to be driving away their audience.

[ava-jamison.livejournal.com]

I agree very much with what you've said here, particularly the last paragraph. The article in question's about 75 years of DC and is not mainly about women and superhero comics, but in a way one part of a question reminded me of the discussion that rose up later. The interviewer wanted to know why traditionally Vertigo sells better to women than DC titles. But he never explained how he knew this to be the case, and Vertigo covers both superhero and non-superhero comics, so I'm not sure how helpful that information is in comparing superhero sales.

I had a longish paragraph about women in comics, and who and what I think about that (!!!) but I'm not going to post it. It's not really about marketing, except that I guess I want to say that the two top DC examples I see mentioned as good female superhero titles to bring in female readers (and the two top examples are not Batwoman or Wonder Woman) sometimes make me uncomfortable with the way the women are written.

But anyway, this:

They look at their demographic and mostly fight with competitors over an audience that's already there.

Is really, really important.

[odogoddess.livejournal.com]

Word. I agree with you, but it bothers me that (historically) owners of male-dominated industries seem dedicated to ignoring half of their audience/consumers. Worse, they don't seem to care. They are aggressive, even obnoxious about their utter lack of interest in what women *might* be interested in. In a much wider (and clearly I'm drawing with huge brush strokes here) sense, it is as if this is their way of saying: we men are not interested in anything that might please or satisfy a woman. (take that any way you like)

If you look at how they dress/position the women in comics, you can really get the gist.

oh, and about the icky boys issue

[odogoddess.livejournal.com]

I love this related article:
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/12/09/katie.starwars.geek/index.html?hpt=Mid

[franzeska]

The thing about 70s shoujo (which directly inspired most of the 80s/90s authors who in turn are the inspiration for everyone who's big now) is that it was for girls. That's it. The target audience was women; the content was whatever would sell. There's a 100-page story I like that's about a rich girl whose jealous friends throw her into an abyss. She survives and returns years later to drive them to suicide and madness before sailing off on her super awesome yacht. I suppose there are nominally love triangles if you squint. (She gets a girl to commit suicide by stealing her boyfriend and beating her on an exam, and another time she tricks a shy guy into defending the girl he has a crush on by attempting to... um... have her way with her... 70s shoujo... yeah.)

Now there's a tradition of women reading women's comics in Japan (or girls reading girls comics or whatever), though I hear more and more girls are switching to mainstream shounen in the last decade as shoujo gets further away from its so-called golden age.

I do think it's about pre-established audience. Superhero comics have a lot of different features that make them hard to get into for a casual fan who's not interested in spending much money and who's not necessarily that committed to exploring them. If you don't view yourself as a part of their pre-existing audience, there's little incentive to give them a try. The superhero part isn't the problem at all.

Though I'm not sure the "problems" are really fixable or worth fixing. It depends on whether one is trying to sell sequential art to women or whether one is trying to sell superhero comics with their current content, style, and corporate structure to people who aren't "comics fans". Some normal practices in Western comics are things that are just never going to work for me no matter what. (Like switching artists and writers. If my favorite novel series got taken over by a new writer, I'd just stop reading. If all novel series had the built-in danger of frequently and routinely being canceled or turned over to new creative talent, I wouldn't invest time in novel series regardless of quality. Obviously tv shows switch writers a lot, and many get canceled, but if a show I like switches actors or the creative vision isn't consistent, I'll usually get bored or mad and stop watching.) Frequently, when I get recommendations from superhero comics fans, they'll explain which individual examples of the genre avoid whatever structural issue I don't like or which ones are so good they're worth reading anyway, but that's not the point. The point is that as a casual not-really-fan, I'm not going to invest emotional energy in the genre in the first place because I know it generally has some characteristics that don't work for me.

There are lots of shitty manga, but I didn't come to manga with any preconceptions, and there are a number of structural things about manga as an industry that were likely to appeal to me because they resembled other entertainment I already liked and wasted lots of money on (e.g. the rape-filled, oily muscle man anatomical drawing epics that constitute 80s seinen manga mostly lasted for a few thousand pages with a plot that went somewhere and ended. The ones that got translated into English first had very consistent and high-quality art, and the same artist/author or artist/author team worked on the entire thing without much editorial interference). This was true even in cases where the content was not necessarily something designed to appeal to women or to me specifically (rape, rape, rape, fridging, rape, depowering, rape = High Art and a good source of Drama for your narrative). More recent mainstream shounen has started to not have plot resolution and to be filled with editorial interference, and it shows. And I've given up trying to read it.


Content is certainly relevant to why people do/don't like superhero comics, but I suspect some of those other marketing/placement/how comics publishers work factors are more significant overall.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

Robin Hobb's Farseer Trilogy actually was adapted to a French comic book. But yeah, comics in Europe are a whole other scene >_>

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

though there are also comic book adaptation of the Anita Blake series - which, with all the things we can say about that series definitely rate as genre novels with a mainly female audience.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

As always the hard thing about in any group besides white straight guy is you tend to get told what characters you're supposed to like or what you're supposed to like in a character, you know? People are certainly irritated by this guy saying girls just don't like superhero comics as much as guys, but there's plenty of times where people will say what DC should be doing, pointing to comics that I don't much like, or even things in that comic I don't much like.

Heh. That just made me think of that Daily Show segment where Samantha Bee was covering the opening of the Sex in the City movie. All the guys were allegedly fans, but since she was the woman she was expected to like it more. And she had no clue. I always remember her saying, "As best I can tell it's the story of a bunch of alcholics who like walking places in a line."

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

That's what makes them look like such idiots. Because with some people you feel like they're proud of it being too "manly" (in their mind) for women or something. Yet this is the last group in the world that needs to be turning people away or putting all their money on the readers who like those ridiculous outfits. (Come on, guys, it's not like they're buying comics for the porn--they can get porn elsewhere.)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

OMG, those 70s stories sound fantastic. And I agree--something like "it's for women" leave things pretty open.

But yeah, that's totally where I think they are with superhero comics, that it's about a pre-established audience and they're getting far more difficult to get into for a casual fan. And that's not even something that's always been true of these comics, obviously. I think they've really become *more* specialized in the past few decades, not only becoming moer sexist in some ways but more complicated with decompression and crossovers and complicated continuity. Maybe another problem is that a lot of comics readers like that kind of thing. They really have changed in significant ways, and those ways make it harder to jump in.

And there's so many barriers to new readers at this point I think it's a question of priorities. Like when people talk about making them friendlier to women I think they're basically talking about the women who are already fans, because they're the only ones who are already invested enough to be trying them out. To get in new readers who are women you'd have to address all these other barriers as well.

Re: oh, and about the icky boys issue

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

That article is one of those examples of why the internet can be awesome!

And I know this isn't the whole point if it, but it's just so weird to hear anybody talk about Star Wars as being a boy thing. Because that's not only probably not considered true in most places, but it was totally not true when it came out.

[pixiestks.livejournal.com]

Lurker here - hope you don't mind if I jump in! I just wanted to comment that I have always loved superhero stories and never really considered it a gender issue. I always thought that "girl comics" of my youth were pretty lame and was more attracted to the themes that were in hero comics, even if all the central characters were male.

It might've helped that I was raised by parents that both read a lot and were attracted to Sci-Fi more than other genres. My father read comics, mostly Conan and other warrior type books like Kull the Conqueror, and these would occasionally be my bed-time stories if my mom wasn't around.

I loved the epic nature of the tales and as I grew up, balanced my love of sparkly ponies with a profound love of the X-Men, which was penned by Chris Claremont at the time. I identified with Kitty Pryde but I think it was the themes that really pulled me in. Struggling with self, society, and trying to make good choices in bad situations and dealing with the consequences was what kept me reading all sorts of superhero comics for years.

What eventually drove me away were the inconsistencies of storyline and character. I think it's just not enough to look at the art when it comes to storylines. I love a good drawing of Batman looking down at the city from some high vantage point, but eventually I'm going to need more.

I admit, though, that when I heard that some artists were drawing the women from porn stills I just had to take a nice long break from my subscriptions.

Maybe it's because I'm a woman, if so, I'm okay with that. But it might also be because I've invested in the hero and I want to feel connected and along for the ride, not just ditched on the tollway in the middle of nowhere and told to suck it up.

If I were in charge of comics publishing, I think that I'd focus less on creating something that caters to demographics and more on coming up with ideas that are more universal. Something that ignites imagination and can be expanded on for the next fifty years like some of the other books we've had going for awhile now.

Also, I miss the days when there was a spinning rack of comics at more accessible places like gas stations and grocery stores. It made comics more every day parts of life and reminded you that it's been awhile since you made that trip to the local comic book store.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Totally agree with all of this. It's funny when I went back and re-read this article after reading a lot of people talking about how it erased female readers, that he does actually mention the female audience. He's just saying he doesn't think it's going to be the majority of a book.

Because the idea that girls don't like superheroes--well, that's just silly. It was never a weird thing when I was growing up for a girl to like superheroes, or when I was a teenager. But if they're going to get so openly insulting as to be like "Yeah, I draw from porn stills!" well, now you're basically forcing me to leave.

And also a lot of the other decisions make it hard for new readers to jump in--along with not having them on the racks where you can just pick them up. It's so bizarre the way this thing that started off as something that was supposed to be easily accessible in every way is now this arcane thing that you have to work and pay so much for!

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

Late again. :P

I'm wondering now why I liked certain comics and didn't like others. I never did get into the Harvey comics, not even when I was pre-pubescent. Casper, maybe, and Wendy the Good Little Witch but I didn't care much for Baby Huey. Thing is, when people got me gifts of comics since I liked them, it was usually the Baby Huey variety.

Before I go into my tangent, I think the lack of accessibility is driving everyone away. Comics used to cost about the price of a candy bar. They weren't sold in plastic sleeves, they were meant to be read and tossed away. You could Silly-Putty the pics back then, now you'd be horrified to see me doing it because it's so much more collectible now, isn't it? So specialized. So elite.

Comics I have liked:

Superman, including his stint as Super Sister.
Batman, with or without Robin. Not sure about the new guys, haven't read them.
Robin, with or without Batman.
Teen Titans.
Spider Man.
Thor.
Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos. (Oddly enough, I didn't much care for Sgt. Rock.)
Archie (& co.). Not so much The Archies but if I wanted Archie after a certain point or on TV, I had to take the Archies, too.
Sugar and Spike. Not just for the cut-out dolls.
Fantastic Four. Esp. the Thing.
Astro Boy. I was in heaven when that came out as a comic even though it was plastic-wrapped and snobby. Loved the TV show, loved the comic.
Spooky Tales sorts of comics, with haunted gravestones for pool tiles, Siamese twins who didn't get along so the one murdered the other, and so on.
Mad Magazine.
the Little Archies.
Superboy.
Supergirl. (Did Supe really have to keep her in an orphanage? Puh-leeze.)
Wonder Woman, when she wasn't back on the island with the other Amazons.

Now, if anyone can figure out the common thread, maybe the comics exec would have something to work with. I'm with whoever mentioned the Teen Titans and the gender equality between them, though, it seemed to ring bells.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

That's a great list! And I agree, I think their bigger problem in general with bringing in new readers is the current distribution and the way they've become so difficult to break into. It's very strange--though I guess you can see how it happened. I mean, I see how it became a very specialized taste, but the problem is it was created to be the opposite and it can't really support being that niche a market!