Blogaround Challenge

Because a couple of kind folks have stopped by looking at our site with critical eyes with this challenge in mind, I decided to take Tegan’s Blogaround Challenge. Here are a couple of sites that caught my eye:

Four Realities
Nice extensive reviews and use of historical artificats. I learned quite a bit looking over the site.

Focused Totality
While the shopping lists weren’t necessarily my taste, he posted a really interesting article on the “cold war” between mainstream, indie and manga fans. And I had to give some props since he listed Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life on his greatest hits banner.

Beaucoup Kevin
I absolutely loved this site. Every single item on his shopping list was justified, which is nice because it can be boring to just see a list without really knowing why someone is stoked to go spend their hard-earned cash that week. And although unrelated to comics I loved his “podcast” (although more like a downloaded mix tape) which was a fun listen.

Fanboy Rampage
Most of what I read was comic news, which I normally don’t read comic blogs for. I usually go to Comicsreporter.com or Newsarama.com. But what made me list this was his reporting of Fox News analyzing the “manga invasion of America.” Why did I not hear about this anywhere else? Perhaps I missed that tag elsewhere, but what an interesting story.

Zilla and the Comic Junkies
I found this site to be one of my favorite comic blogs for aesthetics alone. It is well designed and thought out, with scanned panels and a nice color scheme. With a lot of information coming from a couple different contributors, this is certainly one that will be added to my bookmarks.

Spoilt!
I really appreciate the whole “damn the man” esprit de corps found on this site. It’s focus is exactly what the title suggests: spoilers galore. The reason listed on the site for this is they feel the corporate stronghold on fans to fork over money to DC and Marvel weekly to read up on their superheros is unfair. So a group of contributors (though it seems Chris and Johanna are the ones posting the most) spill the beans. Good for them.

Female Characters in Comics

Last week at work during a break I was in the break room reading a book (I believe it was Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware). I was hoarding the one comfy chair and was so completely engrossed in the book that I didn’t notice a coworker standing in front of me. He started to chuckle, so I looked up.

He said I was confusing because I come across as this socially aware, liberal, political minded woman and here I was reading comics of all things. I asked him what was so uncool about reading comics and he said it was because of the female characters. He said that the women always have big boobs, raging hormones, and little to no character development. After diving into the conversation a bit deeper, ends up that my co-worker is more a ’superhero’ comic book reader. I started to think about how the different divisons of comics represent female characters, and also whether most women like me prefer independent comics to the mainstream comics for this very reason.

There are a couple great resources representing women in comics. I really like Sequential Tart and Friends of Lulu for just existing. But I wanted to get out of my comfort zone and really dive into this inherent divide in the comics world.

So I did a little researching online. I ran across an interesting article on how to convert your lady friend to reading comics. The article basically stated women want more character development and emotional attachment than fights and crashes. Duh. I also read an piece that Silver Bullet Comics summarizing why women don’t like comics and what to do about it. However, the most interesting read was a more historical dissection of comics and gender differences. It also addressed the different ways independent and small press comics represent women compared to the bigger publishing houses.

There are obviously a lot of articles out there, but the common themes addressing women and comics were how to attract women to comics for better sales and how to convert women to reading comics so you don’t have to worry about her getting mad about spending money on release dates. It makes me wonder if the only reason why women are even being considered as a small but growing faction of comic fans is because we have money to spend and companionship to offer. I hope there will be a time when Marvel or DC will have books with characters like Enid from Ghost World or Hopey from Love and Rockets. But for some reason I don’t see this happening any time soon. Is there room in the comic world for a female character with a great rack and a brain?

« Previous Page