Jun 8 2007
DC Comics Launces Manga Line for Girls
In an effort to capture the interest, and pocketbooks, of girl readers, DC Comics launched a new manga series last month which is designed to appeal to girls. MINX debuted with series like the Plain Janes, surburban outcasts who form a secret art gang; Re-Gifters, a girl falls for a surfer boy who gives a present she buys to someone else; and Clubbing, a city girl is sent to rusticate with her rural grandparents after getting caught with a fake ID at a club.
Graphic novels and manga is seen as a new and competitive market. Teen writing sensation, Meg Cabot, is having the sequel to Avalon in manga format and Karin Slaughter is having one of her novels turned into a graphic novel.
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Jun 08, 2007 @ 09:05:53
DC needs to get a clue from somewhere. This is just Princess Amethyst and Barbie comics all over again for a new generation. There are plenty of girl and woman comic readers out there, very few want to read about yet another teen queen soap opera with lots of ‘appeals to girls’ stuff–although a touch less boobs like bazookas in their mainstream titles would be nice. Oh, and some heroines who are like the heros, but female.
Jun 09, 2007 @ 00:57:17
It’s not designed to appeal to women, Emily, it’s designed to appeal to girls, teenage girls. It’s YA graphic novels. I don’t see where this is any different from YA novels.
I agree about the gist of your comment, but this line is specifically YA and some of the books sound really good. One of them (which I don’t know why it wasn’t mentioned there) is about karate.
Jun 09, 2007 @ 10:16:18
That was why I was harping back to the equivalent attempts in my teen years, which caused me to roll my teen eyes because they totally didn’t get what appealled to me, which was the same thing that appeals to any “adult” or even male reader, but with less misogyny. As a teen girl I bought a dozen comic titles and finally dropped each one when the anatomy became fetishistic and the female “heroines” were all eventually reduced to being love interests or damsels. I always thought of the lame attempts to specifically target teenage girls as the “pink” comics, as they inevoitably were drenched in this color and focused on angst-romance, perceived ‘hipness’ and ‘fitting in’ story lines [yawn]
I stll get a lot of comic titles but none by DC, and few by Marvel. Strangely enough (but not really) many stuff by indy woman writers and artists like Donna Barr.
Jun 10, 2007 @ 07:27:57
I agree with Emily. A lot of books, manga, comics etc that make an effort to appeal to a certain crowd tend to fail miserably. These sound like they WON’T be an exception: e.g. a secret ART (??) gang had better be a reference to tagging which is what real gangs do; otherwise, it’s just a club of social outcasts trying to sound tough while drawing pretty pictures.
It’s annoying that so many graphic artists draw women with these grotesquely huge boobs, show off their underwear on many occassions and keep them whining or complaining throughout the series. After a while the boob droolers MUST get bored and get annoyed with them too… er… right?
Normal chicks fighting bad guys: that’s all I ask… and a plot that does NOT involve trying to win the affection of a guy would be greatly appreciated.