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Post by gothos on May 29, 2014 17:21:46 GMT -5
And I loved that Stephanie Brown Batgirl run! (And the Power Girl run at the same time.) Ditto for both of those (&, a few years earlier, Dan Slott's She-Hulk). And as a kid, echoing DubipR above, I read plenty of Harvey & Archie girl-centric titles -- Little Dot, Little Audrey, Little Lotta, Betty & Veronica, et al. Not sure how many individual issues of Lois Lane I bought, but of course I loved the LL 80-Page Giants. You've reminded me that although at a certain age I didn't want "serious" female leads like Lois Lane and Nancy Drew, in earlier years I had no problem reading kid-comics starring females-- Dot, Audrey, Lotta, B&V, and also Wendy the Witch. |
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Post by Action Ace on May 29, 2014 17:29:53 GMT -5
I've read and collected a lot of Lois Lane, Wonder Woman, Supergirl and Barbara Gordon doing whatever. There's also plenty of other DC heroines I've bought over the years from Helena Wayne to Chase. None of my comics would fall in the romance category. I've bought exactly two issues with a female lead in the history of Marvel Comics, the first two issues of Spider-Girl. I can't think of a single Marvel character on the distaff side that would entice me to buy a comic book.
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Post by Deleted on May 29, 2014 18:21:42 GMT -5
I can't think of a single Marvel character on the distaff side that would entice me to buy a comic book. Wait just a second. You harbor no love for Squirrel Girl? I'm ... I'm going to have to go lie down. And weep. |
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Post by Deleted on May 29, 2014 18:22:21 GMT -5
Since the character has been invoked a couple of times now, I should note that after I exhausted my hometown libary's Hardy Boys books, I moved right on to Nancy Drew. Dunno if I felt any reluctance in doing so, but seems like I might've, briefly.
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Post by hondobrode on May 29, 2014 18:32:11 GMT -5
From the earliest days I picked up whatever looked cool, including Wonder Woman, Lois Lane, Supergirl, Spider-Woman, She-Hulk, Ms Marvel, Ms Tree later on, Somerset Holmes, but never romance comics.
I picked up a few hundred from the 50's and 60's in a draw with a classmate, including a ton of westerns too. Sold em all in college but I regret it now. Actually I'd love to read some of those old romance comics. The art was great and the stories were so corny, they're great in a zeitgeist kinda way.
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Post by Deleted on May 29, 2014 18:43:36 GMT -5
When I was a kid I mostly bought from the quarter bins, so whatever was in there. I wouldn't say I read a ton of comics with female leads, but I don't think I really took note of it when I did. I didn't actively avoid them either.
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Post by Rob Allen on May 29, 2014 18:47:05 GMT -5
I read Nancy Drew books right along with Hardy Boys and Power Boys books. One of the earliest library books to really capture my imagination had a female protagonist: The Teaspoon Tree, which I read in 4th grade. Does anyone else remember that one?
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Post by Deleted on May 29, 2014 19:44:54 GMT -5
Is a "girl book" described as a book with a female lead?
What about Vampirella? Female lead, but her tits and ass covers are honed towards male buyers. That goes for many other bad girl types, especially from the 90s. Dawn comes to mind too...and these days, any of those Grimm Fairy tale books....
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Post by Deleted on May 29, 2014 19:57:11 GMT -5
Yeah, that's why I don't see much of any comics I read as "girl books"
They're either obviously geared toward men or gender neutral.
Not like some of the novels I read. I love Erica Spindler and Tami Hoag, but you can tell they come from a romance novel pedigree, and you can see the difference between their crime thrillers and say Robert Ludlum's crime thrillers. But that may be a conscious choice to market toward women (I think women read prose fiction at a much higher rate than men) or just a woman's perspective on a genre of fiction typically seen from a male perspective.
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ironchimp
Full Member
Simian Overlord
Posts: 456 
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Post by ironchimp on May 29, 2014 20:10:35 GMT -5
what killed the romance / girl's comic ?
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Post by Ish Kabbible on May 29, 2014 20:38:28 GMT -5
what killed the romance / girl's comic ? My theory? Romance comics of the 60s were mostly done by male artists who hated what they were doing but needed the money.The better artists were grabed for the superhero books.The stories were insipid and repetitive and the art was bland.Marvel and DC never took that genre seriously from the 60s and up.I know I'm generalizing but there's truth behind it.Romance was treated as 2nd class by comic companies.Girls started to abandon them for other romance formats and of course when comics left the newstands it was all over |
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Post by Fan of Bronze on May 29, 2014 20:51:56 GMT -5
what killed the romance / girl's comic ? After the Sexual Revolution, Code-approved romance comics presented a view of romance that was difficult to take seriously, and was probably irrelevant to the lives of most teen girls. |
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Post by Ish Kabbible on May 29, 2014 21:08:07 GMT -5
what killed the romance / girl's comic ? After the Sexual Revolution, Code-approved romance comics presented a view of romance that was difficult to take seriously, and was probably irrelevant to the lives of most teen girls. Your point of view is probably a better reason than mine.I had a younger sister in the early 70s that would have been a perfect age for romance comics.But I remember the Comics Code restrictions of that time. And I remember overhearing my sister's conversations with her girlfriends about boys and romance etc. It was 2 different worlds |
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Post by gothos on May 31, 2014 15:34:45 GMT -5
So here's a corollary question:
Even if you yourself were unprejudiced about reading books with girl protagonists, did you know of peers who were so prejudiced?
And a corollary corollary question:
How did the idea get started that "men read only for power fantasies?"
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Post by gothos on May 31, 2014 15:42:02 GMT -5
Is a "girl book" described as a book with a female lead? What about Vampirella? Female lead, but her tits and ass covers are honed towards male buyers. That goes for many other bad girl types, especially from the 90s. Dawn comes to mind too...and these days, any of those Grimm Fairy tale books.... That's a valid point. Since I was originally talking about my own early experiences, I was thinking only of the "girl books" aimed at girl readers, whether they were WONDER WOMAN or NANCY DREW. I didn't see a lot of books like VAMPIRELLA early on, and I didn't follow that particular title in The Day. At the same time, there's long been the assumption that even some female-centric features that weren't as overtly sexy as VAMPI were primarily purchased by horny male buyers. Gerald Jones asserted that the 1940s WONDER WOMAN had more male than female readers, basing his verdict on his (or someone's) study of the ads featured in the WW books. He assumed that the main reason males would've read WONDER WOMAN would be the same one for which they would read VAMPIRELLA later. And the agreed opinion of the "jungle-girl" features was that males bought most of those, too. However, I will note that a few recent studies have claimed that there were a lot more female comics-readers in the Golden Age than has been supposed. If this was true, what impact would that have on the above characterization? |
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