Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio. This week, Bennett looks at selling comics to women, plus The Thundermans and Nancy.
I really thought I had finished writing about women, comics and NYCC (see "Confessions of a Comic Book Guy--Get Over It"), until I Googled "women and Marvel comics" and came across a couple of interesting pieces on the subject on The Atlantic Wire, written by Alexander Abad-Santos. One, titled "Meet the Women Who Are Changing Marvel and Comics," put the focus squarely on Captain Marvel writer Kelly Sue DeConnick. It's well worth reading for its clear, concise repudiation of the "minorities and women are making too big a deal of wanting to be represented in comics," "women don't read comics," and "men aren't interested in stories about female superheroes" memes.
I was also impressed with a quote from DeConnick: "I think that the message is that no one is 'other,' that white males are not the 'default human being.'" All of which seems self-evident enough, until you read some of the comments on it which included, "The cultural Marxists will not rest until they've taken over EVERYTHING;" and "of course no one will actually read these female-written comics except lesbians who are obsessed with 'grrrll power.'"
The piece also highlights the number of new titles Marvel is producing with female leads, which include Elektra, Black Widow, She-Hulk and of course Captain Marvel, which is starting over with a new #1.
But it's the other piece by Abad-Santos, "If Wall Street Is More Open to Women than Comics, We Have a Problem," that highlights the main problem when Marvel or DC publishes comics with female leads. They may publish the comics but to quote the piece, "the higher-ups don’t seem invested in marketing to young women."
Of course publishers aren't necessarily interested in marketing comics to anyone. Their attitude is it's their job to print the comics; if an audience finds them, swell, if not it's the fault of either the comics or the audience or both. But that seems especially true when they try female-skewing titles. I'm hoping it might be different this time because of the new digital market. As you may have heard (if you haven't check out "Good news, dudes: ladies read comics, too" by Caitlin McGarry on the TechHive website) there's a new comic customer who’s female and 17-26 years old. When comiXology launched in 2007, its user base was 5% female, and now it's 20%. And that number is only going to go up.
Frankly I believe that women are the hope and future of comics, hope that there's a future outside of the ever shrinking, ever graying current market, a way of short circuiting the endless cycle of booms and busts we've always considered to be inevitable. And if Marvel was smart they'd start making an effort to court that new readership. And if we were smart we’d do more to try and give these new readers a reason to give the comic book shop experience a try. Not to be "nice" or "politically correct," but because it's in our enlightened self-interest.
And finally, I can't honestly say I've been following the Nancy comic strip but I must confess I've been impressed with the skill of its current caretaker Guy Gilchrist, who manages to bring a fresh take to classic characters. Well on Monday, October 14th I became a regular reader of Nancy after Facebook friend Tony Isabella pointed out Gilchrist had introduced Oona Goosepimple to the cast. The strange little girl who lived in a haunted house was the creation of writer John Stanley and she made frequent appearances in the Dell Nancy comic books. For those interested it's available for free on the GoComics website.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
