Comic Allience: It often feels like superhero comics have a difficult time attracting women and young girls as readers, while the animated shows based on comics tend to do a much better job of cultivating that fan-base. As someone who created a show for girls that still has a huge following, who’s now taking on a comic series that originally found success doing the same thing, do you think that disconnect is there? And if it is, how do you deal with it?
Christy Marx: Being on television, animated shows are simply more accessible and it’s easier to pick up a wider audience. Buying a comic requires a girl or woman to locate, travel to, and enter what can feel like strange territory — a comics store. Savvy store owners will work hard to make their stores look and feel female-friendly, but it still takes an effort to get the female readers in the first place. There’s been some growth of female readership over the past couple of decades and I think it can continue to grow now that comics are permeating more of the overall pop culture and being geek is finally chic. Having comics available in digital form could potentially help, too, as tablets become more and more a part of everyday usage.
However, as long as superhero comics, in particular, indulge in hypersexualizing female characters, there will be a barrier to reaching female readers. The solution is to stop doing it. Stop pandering to that mentality. I personally deal with it by writing what I enjoy reading or watching because that has proven to be a winning formula in reaching the readers or viewers I want to reach.
-
itsjessmehere reblogged this from yencid
-
yencid posted this
