[...] the American side, the book of the week is clearly IDW’s first of three Toth books, Genius, Isolated: The Life and Art of Alex Toth ($49.99). I’m hoping KC will be able to [...]

[...] a second Best of Dan DeCarlo volume (JAN11 0543, $24.99 US, March 23), and the first of three Alex Toth books is resolicited. Genius, Isolated (JAN11 0542, $49.99 US, March 23) will cover Toth’s life and [...]

“…This tongue-in-cheek legal analysis of treating superheroes as property is a tad too silly for my taste, but it’s written by a couple of lawyers who are willing to tackle a bunch of similar topics, so you may want to browse around their blog…”

Thanks for recommending that blog! Law and the Multiverse is like Polite Dissent, only that one’s done by a doctor instead of lawyers. :) One nitpick, though – the post to which you linked is about treating superpowers as the property of people including superheroes. ;)

I think when it comes to the question of what genre of comics women prefer to read you can talk specifics with regards to the high percentage of women that read manga. But since no one has any hard data with regards to what else they read beside manga you almost have to talk generalities and anecdotally. With regards to what comics women were reading in the 40s and 50s (particularly with regards to superhero themed books) even more so.

I’m always curious as to why there hasn’t been a serious, large scale poll done to find out what the female comic readers are reading. Particularly now that there are more women reading comics, more women in the industry and with all the women bloggers out there. Whenever the subject of what comics women are reading comes up there is literally no hard data to refer to and every conversation begins with “generally”. I’d think someone would want the answer to that besides me. ;)

Grant, you point out that any generalization starts falling down when you look at specific examples. That’s important to remember, but there is sometimes some use to statements that begin “in general…”

If I can be forgiven some nitpickery on behalf of comics history, the “Dial H for Hero” feature that let fans submit their character ideas was from the 1980s, not the 70s.

It’s kind of a ramble so it’s hard to know what the main point is. She seems to be saying that Robbins is making the historically false point that there weren’t any female friendly superhero comics to choose from during the war and post war era. If Robbins is coming at this from a generational perspective, then if you’re growing up in the 50s looking for girl superheroes, yeah, there isn’t much as pretty much all superhero titles were dead during that period. Although, as the rant correctly points out, there were a lot during the 40s.

I think its also a given that, generally speaking, women don’t flock to superhero titles like guys. On the other hand, I see (and hear from comic shop owner pals) that women are buying more superhero titles now than ever before. And sometimes the gulf between the sexes with regards to taste isn’t always so wide. For example, my retailer friend in Calif tells me that the main buyers for Tarot, Grimm Fairy Tales and Lady Death are women (based on walk in buyers and subscriptions). So even women can have crappy taste in comics, not just guys. I find that heartening in a way. They aren’t all buying manga and Jane Austen comic book adaptations.

I think where the rant goes off track is that it implies that Robbins is talking in absolutes, and I doubt that’s the case having read some of her stuff (although I’m sure there was plenty of condescension by Robbins towards the superhero genre and no doubt the ranter is most likely reacting more to that than anything else).

All that said, I did like the cover comparisons thing. The comments about the Love and Rockets cover and the Miss America thing were pretty funny.