“Comics court girls inspired by Japanese manga.”

While I think it’s great that comic companies are finally starting to acknowledge that girls, in fact, to read comics, I’m not sure they’re going about directing their marketing at females in the right way. First of all, they’re focusing on teenage girls and practically ignoring adult women readers. DC’s Minx line’s (don’t get me started on the title) titles sound like they were pulled off of Nickelodeon’s Saturday morning lineup. Now, if I’m remembering my days as a teenager right, I never read or watched anything marketed at teenagers. I liked that stuff when I was a preteen, and my friends had similar tastes. I didn’t read comics as a teenager (I picked up my first comic when I was 20), but if I had, I more than likely would have read the stuff I read now: superhero comics, the stuff directed at adults. Nevermind that DC’s efforts completely disregards the female readers that they already have, teenage or adult. What about the girls who already read the superhero comics?

The article points out a couple of efforts Marvel has made to appeal to women, namely bringing in Eric Jerome Dickey and Joss Whedon to write X-Men titles, along with the new Anita Blake series. While I think the Anita Blake comics are laughably bad (same with the books, but that’s a different rant), I do see how they can appeal to adult women readers, much like the book series. Paranormal romance is very popular right now, and it might be a smart way to draw in female readers. Hell, I wouldn’t mind more comics along this line, as long as they’re not based on Laurell K. Hamilton novels.

Now, I definitely appreciate Joss’s run on Astonishing X-Men. Joss knows how to write strong women, and John Cassaday’s art doesn’t turn the women into sexpots (well, except for Emma, but that’s her schtick). Kitty and the female students like Hisako look like real young women, and it’s refreshing. I haven’t read the Storm mini, so I can’t comment on that. But the thing is that these writers are men. If Marvel really wants to make steps toward both bringing in new and satisfying current female readers, I think they should start bringing in female writers on their major titles, not just smaller projects. Bring in women to write X-Men and the Fantastic Four, the superhero titles.

And work on that whole “drawing women as huge-breasted semen receptacles thing.” Let’s just start somewhere, eh, comic companies?