[...] and boys 13-17″. So yeah, girls don’t matter when it comes to superhero cartoons. Which shouldn’t surprise me. What does surprise me is the conviction that only females want to watch female heroes. Although [...]

[...] go for the “Mary Jane washes Spider-Man’s clothes” statuette that incited a major controversy in the comics [...]

1.I have a friend you is a 10-year-old-girl and LOVES D.C. Comics! In fact, she has a whole BOOK about the heros and villains in them.
2. I happen to have a favorite show on H.PBS(Channel 8)called “WordGirl*”. She is a 10-year-old superhero from the Planet Lexicon! She can fly at the speed of sound, bend steel, has superhuman strength, and knows a LOT of vocabulary! She fights for ‘Truth,Justice,and use of the right word!’ Sound boring? Well, she’s just as exiciting as any other superhero*!
So, therefore, I decree that that superheros and their comics CAN be for girls! HA HA!! TAKE THAT!!!
*go to PBSKidsGO.org to find out more.She’s funny, too! She also has a monkey sidekick: Captain Huggy Face!

For girls who want to read comics (or even superhero comics) – they have existed in Japan for a long time now. There is an entire category of Japanese comics specifically targeted towards girls, romance comics, superhero high school girls, etc. There are also many genre-breaking comics that are cross-gender.

Comics are more mature creative field in Japan because they are not meant to be for children (let alone being just for adolescent boys) – there is a smooth continuum of manga from those catering to children to those that are straight pornography to those that are thoughtful, intelligent stories about, say, World War II, or about a cook trying to make his way through tough times, or about sports, or murder mysteries… Unlike in the US, where comics are either aimed at boys, or they are porn, or they are ‘indie’ comics aimed at various intellectual micro-subcultures.

So for women frustrated with American comics, just pick up translated manga. There will be one for any interest you might have.

For years, comics and romance novels and other forms of popular entertainment have walked the fine line between art, commerce, and trashy, escapist, mindless guilty pleasures.

With that in mind, where is it written that romance novels must not have stereotypes (like Prince Charming or the damsel in distress)? And where is it written that a woman can’t be drawn like a pin up girl on a comic cover? Isn’t that part of the reason people READ THEM??? So they can indulge some of their less noble fantasies? To release some of their pent-up desire to see things play out the way they don’t play out in reality? (Prince Charming sweeps princess off feet, Spider-man gets the supermodel wife, etc.)

I’m sure there are some psychologists who would argue (and have argued) that comics, horror movies, and whatever else act as a harmless release for some of our less enlightened impulses.

People have all kinds of fantasies and desires, it doesn’t mean they’re going to act them out. And it doesn’t mean that a medium like a comic book can’t indulge some un-pc fantasies (like viewing cheesecake) while STILL saying something important about the human condition.

Where is it written that pulpy, fun forms of entertainment have to be the moral template for the real world? I’m not personally responsible for the cretin who reads comics and expects “real women” to look like that.
Likewise, I can listen to and enjoy
a “sappy” love song on the radio and know that the real world doesn’t work that way.

Yes, there should be art that informs us, guides us, enlightens us, and uses realism or aspires to better things. But are comics really supposed to be on the forefront of that movement???

Amd yes, outright sexism of all kinds is bad. We should do all we can to reduce misogyny and sexist behavior. But since the world will NEVER be perfect, shouldn’t we distinguish between “soft sexism” in comics (an image of cheesecake which is not the most enobling thing a man will ever see) and what most people would recognize as “hard” misogyny? (i.e. a comic book where women are beaten, raped and called whores every month)?

To say “they’re all the same” or they “all tie together” or “they’re all interconnected” is unhelpful. That is the response of someone who doesn’t want to work toward positive change because the world will never be 100 percent perfect or meet their expectations of what it should be.

I know it’s hard to quantify these distinctions, (hard and soft sexism) but we need to be realistic about what is worth fighting over(at least in the present) and what isn’t. Translation: Let’s get blatant, rampant misogyny out of our entertainment and the real world. Let’s not worry because of a cheesecake shot on the cover of “Birds of Prey” this month.

I reject the premise that just because I enjoy a cheesecake picture in a comic book, I can’t treat women with respect and treat them as equals in the real world.

And I don’t feel every romance novel, comic book, or other form of entertainment has to serve as the beacon of morality showing our culture which way to go.

Following on from your comments re: fairy princesses, you stated that you wouldn’t expect grown adults to read comics, what with comics being for younger people, just like fairy princesses.

I would accept that comment, if it weren’t for the fact that, if comic publications were classed as magazines, a significant proportion of them would be 16 or 18 rated due to the sexual content and visceral, violent content.

***

And while I totally agree with you that companies market things towards certain genders for a reason, I do think part of the separation is due to how much they often foul up their attempts to appeal to the other gender.

Look at computer games, as some one stated above. Girls, apparently, don’t play games. Or, at least, they don’t play games like Doom, vice city or total war in large numbers.

But they do play tomb raider, the sims, wii games and mmorpgs. And in significant numbers, too. So the market is there, and yet, whenever games companies try to produce a “game for girls you generally end up with some godawful, bright pink ponies-and-kittens-and-fashion OH MY! extravaganza, which doesn’t sell well, and so people continue to say “girls don’t play games”.

And even though I know loads of girls and women that play games like the ones listed above, none of them, if asked, would call themselves “gamers” or admit to being into games”. Even those that play games more than they watch TV or engage in other hobbies.

So I guess what I’m saying is that the “girls don’t read superhero comics” thing may well be part of the same. Comic shops don’t require their customers to sign a form stating their gender when they make purchases, and online comics attract readers of all sorts. But while girls may be attracted to the ideas behind superhero comics, they maybe put off by the rampant sexism and may find the few girl-marketted superhero comics about as well thought out as those pink-n-giggly games. Even then, of those girls that do enjoy superhero stories, many of them probably don’t consider themselves part of the community or advertise it.

A large amount of the fanbase a product attracts is down to how it is marketted and perceived. Personally, I love playing the total war games, and some shoot-em-ups but, if it weren’t for my partner playing them and showing me what the games are really like, I would never have wanted to buy them from the way they are marketted.

And, yeah, I don’t want comics to suddenly be marketted as girl-friendly, considering how often that can ruin a good thing, I just want to pick up a comic without wincing when I see how the heroine’s spine has been twisted to show off her T and A. Even if no girls ever read comics, and especially if comics really were just for young boys and not adults.

Oh, and apologies for the length- was going to be a quick one but I sort of rambled. Sorry :s

I’ve just started a blog for women who are interested in comics, but are novices like me. I didn’t grow up reading comics (unless you count Hanna-Barbera and Mickey Mouse comics), but I’ve come to really like them. And I do find that the superhero comics that are meant for adults, not prepubescent boys, do appeal to me as well.

Anyway, my point is, characters in tight, colorful costumes, with weird powers, aren’t necessarily a “boy” thing at all. A lot of boys & men find them effeminate & ridiculous. So it’s really because people at DC insisted for the last 15 years on writing all superheroes as “adolescent male power fantasy” strictly for an audience of male adolescents that suck up cheap melodrama & idealized human forms–& that Image & Marvel were no better–that their market has turned out that way.

It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy to some degree, & it’s a response to the pre-existing motley weirdnesses of the direct sales market, but it’s not the fault of superheroism per se. Violent boy comics, including crime comics, sci-fi, the gross-out comics put out by 2000 AD (the UK farm team which DC has drawn its “best” writers from), overlap with but are not the same as “superheroes.”

Boy comics are for boys. But there really did used to be superhero girl comics in America, & technically that’s what a lot of “Magical Girl” manga are now.

Fair enough. I think superheroes as currently constructed are both decadent & moribund. I also think that they’re only in worse shape when they’re put into a narrow box, where they’re only written to feel like American pro wrestling with more weird powers.

I think the problem is that superhero comics historically encompass a wider range of genres & concepts than the stereotypical idea of “what a superhero comic is” acknowledges.

Spider-Man is really a soap opera where one of the main characters is a superhero. Legion of Superheroes has large dollops of space fantasy & romance. Batman is a crime comic with superhero & horror. X-Men is dystopian horror in superhero drag.

Any statement that claims that all things called “superhero comics” are somehow necessarily archetypal adolescent male power fantasy superheroes–is missing the diversity of the “genre.”

[...] simply aren’t numerous enough to influence the bookstore manga market. Given the reactions the last time someone mounted this kind of argument, we can now expect such manga fans to begin flaming and [...]

[...] on the issues faced by male-targeted manga. It’s quite eye-opening to someone used to the male domination of the American comics industry. In this case, the tables are turned, and the books aimed at older males don’t seem to have [...]

I’m sure there are occasional males who read romance novels, too, but if one started blogging about how the genre needed to be overhauled to be made more attractive to men, they’d be giggled at… and rightly so.

Might that be partly because “romance novels for men” already exist and either get shelved in the “general fiction” area or in the “sex and sexuality” section of the bookstore? Or maybe I’m just weird for failing to see the how Julia Quinn’s novels and How I Met You Mother are fundamentally different. As for girls not wanting action heroes as much as boys do, I rather think the popularity of Tamora Pierce’s novels alone puts a major dent in that idea.

You are arguing apples and oranges – shelving and public perception versus actual content.

I’d also like to add that some of the rising stars of YA fic did argue something quite similar to “romance needing to made more attractive to men” at the recent LA Festival of Books.

John Green made a comment to the effect of teen books being geared towards girls not just in terms of pov but that the boys are all perfect and idealized (ie – romance for girls). He argued that there need to be more books out there for boys that are like those for girls.

The authors all concurred – with Nancy Werlin adding that it’s not so much that there aren’t books for boys, but that the books for boys tend to cast them all as action heroes – and be shelved in SciFi – and that the books for girls tend to cast them as romantic leads.

All authors agreed that kids of both genders need idealized action heroes and more vulnerable and realistic characters available to them.

[...] portrayals — I’m looking at you, Rachel Dodson — what does their gender matter?), marketed to men, sold to men, sold by men, and read by [...]

[...] starts it all by saying superhero comics aren’t for girls. “Superhero comics aren’t for girls” is true the same way “romance novels aren’t for [...]