I Don't Want to Be Special

Go Here First

Well, I suppose it's sweet to think that myself (and others) are beautiful and unique snowflakes for liking comics, as opposed to liking other mediums with messages of empowerment, such as fairy princesses* ... But you know, I'm kind of over it. I'm kind of tired of being treated like, "Ooooh! A girl who reads comics! This is so hot! Aren't we diverse for attracting women?" on male-heavy message boards and then hear the old muscles-are-just-as-bad-to-exaggerate-as-boobs speech and the "Ha-ha! Your wife wants to wait to go to the superhero movie! You henpecked loser!" and "[Female Character X] is such a whore." I mean, you hear a lot of that and the shiny veneer of specialness starts to wear off.**

Most of the times the female comic reader is a "special" one in a group of many male fans. But I think blogs like When Fangirls Attack have shown than even if we are a minority of about oh, we'll go with these ten-year-old statistics of 8 percent we're still a sizable minority that can form a community. And we are a community who are helping to hold up a medium that has been continually struggling. And you know what? I don't know about DC, but a few years ago I had a conversation with Bill Jemas and even though he was dismissive about Sequential Tart, he still said that he WANTED Marvel to have more female readers. Bill Jemas wanted more female readers. And his company-at-the-time made a few stabs at reaching them (unfortunately, a lot of them were crap, but that will be my next rant).

But honestly, the whole point isn't if the Big Two do or don't care (although I think they do, albeit in a bone-headed way, much like my male friends on the messageboards who want women to come to the table and then still treat it as a boys' clubhouse), but that they should. They should care and they should actually worry, because this is a whole medium at stake.

"Just go read manga!" is not the answer because it sets a scary precedent to say that if you girls want to be involved in sequential art, either as characters or creators you'll only get to find it in a country that isn't your own, and for all intents and purposes not as advanced in feminism as the west. It's also not the answer American-made manga (besides from mostly flagrantly missing the point of what makes manga so popular and thinking they got it just because they managed to draw a girl with big breasts and big eyes) isn't necessarily representative either. There's a lot of manga-influenced webcomics by girls, but from what I've seen, most of what Antarctic Press - the big publisher of American manga - puts out is by men.

Oh, and turn to the Indies/Vertigo doesn't cut it either. Because:

1.) As cute as those "How to Get Your Girlfriend to Read Comics" articles are, if the mainstream hasn't already hooked them, they're probably not going to go digging through a comic shop or even at Borders (most of which have horrifically messy and badly shelved American comics sections) to find their Sandman trades.

2.) They're still produced mostly by men. I think Top Shelf Comics is the best of the smaller press companies, and many of the people they've signed are talented and sweet people (or maybe Andy Runton's sweetness just overpowers everyone else). Do you know how many women they have in their catalog? THREE. Three and one is Melinda Gebbie.

3.) They aren't immune to misogyny either. Dave Sim and R. Crumb, anyone?

Like it or not, Marvel and DC, for now, are the face of the American comics industry. Even if people turn away from superheroes later in life, they, and probably the Sunday funnies, are the "gateway drug" which hook supporters into the medium. And the medium has had an insanely rocky history and is struggling. If it wants to survive, their comics OUGHT to appeal to the other half of the population. And to do that they NEED to listen to that eight percent. This is part of our culture. This is IMPORTANT.






* As an aside: I will admit that the Disney princesses from the "new renaissance" of Disney have been pretty tough and cool, but honestly, I'd rather go for the vicarious thrill of punching out evil scumbag than the vicarious thrill of trading I'm-so-awesome quips with the Prince before being saved by the guy at the end and later marrying him. Just a thought.
** I'm not knocking these communities per se. Heck, I found my boyfriend on one of them, but the whole game gets really tiresome really fast.