Publishers Weekly brings us What a Girl Wants is Often a Comic, which is partially about writing goddess Jane Yolen‘s upcoming comic for Dark Horse, The Last Dragon with art by Rebecca Guay (where has she been all my life?), but it’s about comics for girls in general and, well, just comics.
I liked Minx and I was sorry to see it go, but the article brings up the good point that teenage girls are pretty smart and often resist blatant marketing attempts toward them.
I think Umbrella Academy, which is discussed here, is a good example. Girls like Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance — why wouldn’t they pick up a comic by him? But it wasn’t specifically marketed as “a comic for girls.” Dark Horse just presented it as being a comic.
I think Dark Horse also does interesting things with their product lines — I have more than one stationery set from Dark Horse and a couple of journals. No, they’re not comics and often not even comic-related, but there’s something to the name recognition. They’ve created a brand that feels more inclusive.
Mostly, though, the major point here is that teenage girls, like most people, just like good stories. Sometimes that’s different that what boys like, but it doesn’t have to be (and I’m glad SLG president Dan Vado mentioned that teenage girls do like Johnny the Homicidal Maniac quite a bit. It’s not what most people would think of as a “comic for girls” but lots of them like it, just the same).
So: The way to get girls to read comics is to make good ones. Maybe not every girl is going to pick up a comic but I’m delighted that more and more are doing so.
(Uh, didn’t I say I’d write a review tonight? Um. I said “possibly.”)
Image from Rebecca Guay’s website. Yes, I want comics that look like that.
