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What taking my daughter to a comic book store taught me

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Re: What taking my daughter to a comic book store taught me

#41

Post by k-mcgrady »

I'm surprised at the number of comments in this thread excusing it because of the market. The fact that nearly everyone who has made that point felt the need to create a new account to do so is very telling.

The market is influenced heavily by human beings. And no human being is morally perfect. There are lots of comics that sexualise women because there are lots of guys who, for some reason, enjoy seeing sexual cartoons. The people who draw comics, for some reason, also seem to enjoy drawing comics like this. That doesn't excuse the problem. There have been markets for plenty of things that we decided as a society aren't morally right to sell anymore.

Re: What taking my daughter to a comic book store taught me

#42

Post by belorn »

pdpi wrote: post #10
[deleted] wrote: post #5

[deleted]

The curves themselves are excessive, but look at the outfits and your argument comes tumbling down. Male superheroes are rarely portrayed in a sexually suggestive manner. Female superheroes see physically impossible cleavage and tons of skin as par for the course. The exaggerated features make male superheroes look powerful, while female superheroes look like playboy bunnies. It's like you're supposed to identify wit…

Male superheroes are portrayed as powerful, older, athletic, and rich. Those attributes are also the exact same attributes that dating services announce as the stereotypical attributes women look for in men.

When comic want to side-kick people should laugh at, they often reverse those attributes. A meek, young, unathletic and poor male is the steriotypical joke for a superhero.

So I find male superheroes are exaggerated portrayed in a sexually suggestive manner in comic books, maybe even more than Female superheroes. At least they don't try to reverse the female stereotype so people can laugh at it.

Re: What taking my daughter to a comic book store taught me

#43

Post by xienze »

vidarh wrote: post #29
xienze wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you really expect? Comic books are overwhelmingly read by men. Men who generally -- and don't downvote me, you know it's true -- don't get much female attention. Of course the authors are going to spice them up a bit for their intended demographic. Men have comic books, women have romance novels (and don't tell me the covers for those books aren't intended to sexualize men and titillate their audience). It's…

It's not that simple. This is a cultural issue. Go outside the US and see what comics sell. The best selling comic in Norway for decades was Donald Duck. These days the most popular comics in Norway are Pondus - a comedy series about a pub landlord (previously bus driver) and his friend who sells music (after previously spending years on the dole) - and Nemi, a series about a 20-something female goth, written by a wo…

> You'll country after country where the most popular comics have little to no sexualized content.

First of all, you're making the assumption that our popular comics are popular because of sexualized content (i.e., no MJ with big tits = no one is gonna read Spiderman; doubtful).

Second: Japanese Manga. When you put it in perspective, a couple scantily-clad women, eh... could be a lot worse!

> There's been a drastic change in them to in the last 20 years or so. They used to target boys, not men.

You might want to dig up some of your old comics. The women were always drawn "sexy", it's just that the boundaries of good taste have shifted. You can get away with things in terms of sex and violence that you never could decades ago.

And is it really puzzling why comics are targeting men more? It's because they're the only ones left reading comic books! Kids don't read them and don't care.

Re: What taking my daughter to a comic book store taught me

#44

Post by facepalm »

po wrote: post #12

I can already hear the debate raging about weather or not the images or particular examples in this article are acceptable or defensible or not. I think it's totally fine for the comics that this one shop has are there. Artistic freedom! Great! What's not super is that it's really the only kind. It's like netflix with only action movies. This article should feature a bunch of blank photos representing the comics that…

Are you saying you want quotas for comic shops?

Why shouldn't they be allowed to just sell the things their customers actually buy?

If somebody has a vision for a better comic shop, why not create one, instead of calling for rules and regulations?

I suppose you could even apply to YC with the idea of launching a better comic book chain.

Edit: since HN prevents me from commenting atm - sure, write more articles about it. But writing articles about there being a market for x doesn't make it true. Buying better comics would make it true. What if some poor soul reads the articles, pours their savings into a fancy comic shop and then goes bankrupt because nobody is buying? Also, I suspect a lot of comic creators scratch their own itch - they make comics they want, not comics that other people want.

Re: What taking my daughter to a comic book store taught me

#45

Post by cauterized »

clarkevans wrote: post #4

I might tend to disagree with the author's final conclusion, that his daughter is too young to understand (at least about sexism and double standards, if not sex). Talking about this subject with your daughter when she brings it up is absolutely appropriate. There is lots of societal pressure on very young girls to fit a specific mold. It starts with very mundane differences... like short/long hair. Two weeks ago, fo…

His daughter.

Re: What taking my daughter to a comic book store taught me

#46

Post by calibraxis »

[deleted] wrote: post #33
po wrote: post #12

I can already hear the debate raging about weather or not the images or particular examples in this article are acceptable or defensible or not. I think it's totally fine for the comics that this one shop has are there. Artistic freedom! Great! What's not super is that it's really the only kind. It's like netflix with only action movies. This article should feature a bunch of blank photos representing the comics that…

[deleted]

Yeah, you'd have lots of angry men sending the woman cartoonists death threats, like the Gamergate domestic terrorists. Where's the profit in that?

Re: What taking my daughter to a comic book store taught me

#47

Post by cauterized »

elberto34 wrote: post #31

Garfield, Dilbert, Foxtrot and Calvin and Hobbes is about the extent of my comic repertoire Taking a 7 year old to a comic store is like tasking her to a pg 13 movie.. . Not too surprised it didn't work out. Comics tend to deal with adult themes and are aimed at older people.

When I was a kid, comics were for all ages. When my parents were kids, comics were for kids. That seems to have changed.

Re: What taking my daughter to a comic book store taught me

#48

Post by xienze »

normloman wrote: post #37
xienze wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you really expect? Comic books are overwhelmingly read by men. Men who generally -- and don't downvote me, you know it's true -- don't get much female attention. Of course the authors are going to spice them up a bit for their intended demographic. Men have comic books, women have romance novels (and don't tell me the covers for those books aren't intended to sexualize men and titillate their audience). It's…

I think that was the point of the article. Comic book authors don't consider that women might want to read their books, and so they unwittingly cut women out of their audience. Also, there's a difference between comics and romance novels. Comics are a medium, while romance novels are just one type of book. A book store will have many types of books including romance novels, but comic book stores may have just one typ…

> Comic book authors don't consider that women might want to read their books, and so they unwittingly cut women out of their audience.

I'm guessing Marvel, DC et al have done a lot of research over the years and found out yep, it's pretty much only males that read comic books. They've attempted female-targeted comic books over the years and they don't sell. Not really worth spinning your wheels on something that's not going to happen.

> A book store will have many types of books including romance novels, but comic book stores may have just one type of comic, and it's usually for men.

Men and women shop at book stores, so there's that. Comic book stores (are there more than a couple hundred left in the US anyway? Who cares) are really only frequented by men because WOMEN DON'T CARE ABOUT COMICS. No amount of hand-wringing over this issue is going to change it. Sometimes it really just is "men do this, women do that". It doesn't need to be over-analyzed.

Re: What taking my daughter to a comic book store taught me

#49

Post by po »

[deleted] wrote: post #33
po wrote: post #12

I can already hear the debate raging about weather or not the images or particular examples in this article are acceptable or defensible or not. I think it's totally fine for the comics that this one shop has are there. Artistic freedom! Great! What's not super is that it's really the only kind. It's like netflix with only action movies. This article should feature a bunch of blank photos representing the comics that…

[deleted]

the comic market isn't a fixed thing and it can and will change over time.

nobody but the small population of fathers of daughters who think boys and girls, on average, should behave identically and have identical interests.

I have no idea what comment you are replying to here but it doesn't appear to be mine. I was explicitly saying that boys, girls and grown men and women have different interests.

Re: What taking my daughter to a comic book store taught me

#50

Post by johnchristopher »

That feels weird to me because I like comics (I am from Europe, so "european comics" is a weird name for what I'd roughly translate to `Drawn stories` or `graphic novels`) and there are a lot of interesting indie or ya comics out there (edit: I mean, in the US too).

I suppose comics bookstore are just dump ground for Marvel/DC/Images/DH production of the week ?

For a 8-12 years-old, of the top of my mind: http://www.mouseguard.net/ and lmgt.

There are also the translated comics from Europe.

But I understand these are not weekly `updated` and that might not appeal to an american audience (cultural heritage).

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