The kid is getting on my nerves.

In the past half hour, he’s gone through five binders worth of Magic the Gathering singles. He spends his time looking over each page carefully, weighing his options, muttering nonsense words to himself. Meanwhile, the store is filling up with comic customers. The kid does not seem to notice this, despite the fact that I leave the Magic counter frequently to ring in purchases or help someone find something. While I’m across the room, actually ringing in an item, he’s asking me how much stock we have of a specific card - one that costs 10 cents a pop. This, as I’m pressing buttons that make me at least $3 every time they’re hit. But I grit my teeth and carry on because… well, it’s retail - and everything is just fine until the kid finally closes up the last binder and realizes - oh dang! - there’s quite a few others in the store.

“Oh wow! Never thought you got this busy.”

Which is just a delightful thing to say to someone whose meals depend on traffic. I swallow this comment content with the fact that we’re often this busy - and many more times a whole lot busier. Which is when he says something worse.

“Dang, your boobs to balls ratio in this store is great.”

I take a second to allow my ears and brain to discuss what they thought they just heard. Once they agree, I respond.

“…excuse me?”

“The girls,” he says pointing (POINTING!), “You pretty much have an even ratio.”

“…happens a lot,” I say.

“Dang, really?” he says in genuine shock, “How the hell do you manage that?”

“Well for one, we never. EVER. Say the words ‘boobs to balls ratio’.”

The kid looks confused.

“Why not.”

This is why we can’t have nice things.

WOMEN IN COMICS

There is something so incredibly backwards about how the comic book industry treats women. It’s a problem that permeates almost every level of the game. In stores, women don’t always feel welcome. In the comics, a large majority of female characters are three dimensional in cup size only. In the bullpen (such as it exists in the current landscape), there’s a sharp inequity when it comes to having female creators on books. All of this is not very good - but what can be worst is how many people go about trying to fix the various problems.

IN STORES AND ON THE INTERNET

Obviously, you hang around the internet. You’ve been to many comic book sites. Hell, you’ve probably spent some time in a forum or two, getting to know a bunch of strangers, talking about this things you loved (or let’s face it - hated) about the comics you’ve all read.

Chances are, you’ve come across the “girlfriend” thread. The one that guys will toss up when they’re asking the internet at large what they should try and get their significant other to read… that is, if she’s open to the idea of reading comics. What follows is always well-intentioned. People start listing books that they think women like to read. The usual suspects are books like Fables or Y The Last Man or Runaways and the like - which are not bad suggestions. Each of those series are amazing (in my opinion), but immediately launching into suggestions forgets one very important step: finding out what the girl actually likes to read. It would be like my girlfriend asking a group of people what kind of magazines men like to read, and having someone suggest something to do with sports or trucks. Bad suggestions? Not necessarily, given a larger sampling of dudes. But for myself specifically? I could give two shits about sports or trucks. I might know the vague rules of sport ball or puck sticks, and I might know how to drive a car, but that’s where my interest in all things sporty or locomotive end. (Unless we’re also counting the Locomotion.) The same goes with suggesting comic books for women. For starters, the person who is enquiring about comics for women is asking the wrong question. He shouldn’t be asking what comics women like to read, he should be asking for suggestions for good comics, period. And that’s after he’s discerned the taste of the lady he’s trying to ply the graphic medium to. Seriously, figure out what her tastes are first, and then ask for suggestions towards that. Treat her like… oooh, I dunno, a person with their own likes and dislikes, and not the heaving singular hive mind that some dudes ascribe to women. Not only is that good advice for getting her to fall in love with comics, but it’s great advice for how to treat a lady in general. Do this.

IN COMICS

Boy, is there a lot of ground to cover here - but we can start with the fact that there is nothing wrong with having women in comics who are sexually confident and have large breasts. However, there is a problem if almost every female character is sexually confident, and has large breasts. It would be like if Iron Man and Captain America and Thor and Spider-Man and Batman and Superman all wore super tight spandex to accentuate their junk, and then all similarly said nothing but a stream of sexually suggestive innuendos to their female cohorts constantly. If this were to happen, the internet would be on fire right now. And yet, where’s the outrage about the largely single dimension characteristics of women in comics?

Fact is, women within comics are not treated the same as men. Yes, you’ll find quite a few sterling examples of female characters in the pages of a comic, but you’ll find a disturbing amount more that are nothing but empty sex vacuums with breasts and a little bit of power. There is inequality in within the very fiction that this industry thrives upon, and its a huge part of the problem when it comes to getting more female readers. Those female readers who don’t want to read Fables or Y The Last Man, the ones who want to read superhero books are told quite plainly that these kinds of books are for He-Man Woman Haters - which is bullshit. There should be something for every female reader - and again, there is - but not in the quantities that should exist.

THIS ONE’S FOR YOU

Wherein we really get into the whole vicious circle of the thing. I’ve retained very little from high school (honestly, what exactly did I need to learn conics for?) but there’s a few lessons that stuck quite deep that prove helpful when I’m attempting to make a point like a legitimate human being. In this case, the piece of information that’s floating up to the front of my mind has to do with self-fulfilling prophecies - wherein a person can believe something truly false, because their actions of sabotage (whether intended or subconscious) produce results that go along with their dubious belief. The comic book industry has a doozy of a self fulfilling prophecy when it comes to women - mainly the fact that women don’t read comics and will not read comics in the quantities needed to support “their kinds of books”. This kind of thinking is backwards in any number of ways, but let’s start with some of the low hanging fruit.

Over the past few years, there have been several “Women in Comics” initiatives put forth by various publishers. Marvel spent a year doing female centric projects, running a monthly run of variant covers, the occassional one shots, the anthology series Girl Comics and other minis such as Heralds and Her-oes. DC has quite recently gone under fire for not including female creators of characters in their recent relaunch, accusations that were met with a bit of frustration and assurances from editorial and creative alike that female creators were asked to pitch on books, and that some would appear quite soon, albeit in a subsequent launch. A few years back now, they also attempted to launch a Minx line of comics, designed to appeal to the teen female set. For many of these initiatives, a plan was put in place to hire as much female talent as possible to support the stories - and for the most part, the books were good. Just like any endeavour, some things hit, and others missed. But the sales? Whelp, they weren’t there, specifically because the thinking behind these initiatives are flawed.

Comic book publishers do not understand how to market to anyone who is not an adult male. They don’t, and they display this inability quite plainly when they try. When they try to sell books to kids they do it completely backwards, in that when they are aiming for the 5-9 market, they are putting out books that they think 5-9 year olds will enjoy. This is not how you get a kid into comics. Hell prose book retailers know better how to get kids reading, and they are generally terrible at selling their product to the masses. In fact the kids and teen book market is one of the only places where sales are consistent, if not increasing because of the way they are marketed, which is simply this: when you are creating content for 5-9 year olds, write for 10-14 year olds. And if you’re writing for 10-14 year olds, write for 15-18 year olds. Kids want to feel more grown up. They want to be treated like adults, whether or not they know what that truly means, and that longing relates directly to the content that they are looking for. This was the inherent flaw in the Minx line - they were marketing a line of teen books with books that primarily featured teenage protagonists. This was a line that should have been marketed to the younger end of the teen spectrum. (Minus the New York Four/Five books by Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly, who rightfully focused on college students.)

The problem is similar when comic book companies come right out and say “this one is for the ladies.” No one likes being talked down to, or told what they will like - and while these initiatives often feature some great books, the quality is lost with all the hand waving and back-patting. “See? We did this for you. We understand your needs.”

Bullshit. The only thing a woman needs to read a comic, is something of quality in a genre that they’ll enjoy. It’s what anybody needs. But that’s not what the industry gets, from the content pushes, or from people just talking about books in general. Women readers are still treated as though they are mythological or an vague impossibility and therefore not worth chasing down, but it’s not because there’s a lack of will - just a lack of basic common sense and decency when it comes to the production and selling of comics.

IN THE BULLPIN

The phrase “tricke-down” is somewhat apropos here. I know I generally relate that term to bullshit which applies to the situation. Because of the prevalent idea that women don’t enjoy comics - or at least that they are not a market worth chasing - there’s a general lack of female creators. A perceived lack of interest in female characters turns into a lack of produced content. The perceived need for less content also dampens a need for a female perspective. And in turn, the vicious cycle of “non-importance” tells publishers and readers alike that “comics aren’t for women” - and so less seek jobs in the industry.

This is a problem. From top to bottom. And the only way it’s going to change, is if someone, anyone really, starts to champion a modicum of equality without the damn ticker tape parade that yells “THIS ONE’S FOR THE LADIES”. The bullshit needs to be cut, pure and simple. Get out there, and produce quality product. Sell it across the board, and don’t discriminate a perceive taste based on gender. Or hell, how about we don’t discriminate taste in general. All genres are valid. Everything has a market, has the potential to sell, if everyone just smartens the hell up and sells.

This can be done, and it starts with… well, it starts with everyone. Because as much as I would love for the multi-million dollar comic publishers to smarten up, they were largely purchased and keep running based on their access to the lucrative male market. Warner Bros and Disney have other means to satisfy other audiences, and neither company will really put the dollars behind any kind of initiative that would push otherwise, in terms of comics. So it comes down to everyone. It comes down to you on the internet and it comes down to us retailers in the stores. If you want to see the industry thrive, and if you want to see, I don’t know, a modicum of equality, of an industry that’s not mired in bullshit that has (in part) been more cleansed in pretty much every other medium, then we gotta make it happen ourselves.

And it comes down to this: treat female readers like you would like to be treated. Write and create as though you’re not the guy that orders Jager-bombs in the bar with his brosephs. Have some god damn respect for your female counter-parts, and I guarentee you, the industry will be all the better for it.

And sell some god damn comics.

You’ve been reading Me vs. The Angry Mob - Issue 2012.03