In Which We Talk Comics and Comics Merchandise

[foresthouse]

OK, before I reach the Ranty part of my post, I shall share with you the Awesomeness parts.

1. My lovely friend John K. Snyder III (he of the Sirius Black prison mug shot sketch that was donated for fundraising to Help Haiti Heal (which, btw, raised over $120,000, y'all! Three planes of medical supplies! WOO!)), has sent me his last two A-Team

Comments

[maisontv]

I ♥ this post. I am very intrigued by Iron Man Noir. I'm a big fan of film noir so it'll be interesting to see how they adapt to fit into the genre. And Ryan Reynolds having a lot of creative control in the Deadpool movie is massively reassuring to me.

I completely agree with your rant about the lack of merch appropriately geared towards women. I would totally buy a female-cut shirt with the Stark Industries logo on it. And I would buy EVERY SINGLE MOLLY HAYES HAT if they made them.

The problem is that they're not marketing to women who love comic books. They're marketing to women with boyfriends who love comic books. They're marketing what male comic book fans think is sexy, which includes a statuette of Mary Jane doing her husband's laundry in a thong.

Sadly, the comics community is still pretty sexist. When scans_daily went down, the other defense of the comm that was coming up (other than it got people to read titles they otherwise wouldn't have) was that the women who posted there felt like they were taken seriously and respected as members of the community with valid opinions.

[foresthouse]

The problem is that they're not marketing to women who love comic books. They're marketing to women with boyfriends who love comic books. They're marketing what male comic book fans think is sexy, which includes a statuette of Mary Jane doing her husband's laundry in a thong.

YES (and I hate that statue). You have just summed up between 80 and 90% of the reason we find it necessary to rant about this. The other 10-20% being when they DO try to market to women, they somehow manage to get it wrong most of the time anyway.

[maisontv]

That statue is a monument to Things That Are Wrong With the Comics Industry.

The other 10-20% being when they DO try to market to women, they somehow manage to get it wrong most of the time anyway.

And the problem with their approach here is that they assume women like comic books for reasons that do not match up with what we actually like about comics. They assume they need to produce titles like Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane to bring in female readers when they have plenty of female fans reading their action-oriented titles.

[foresthouse]

Tell me about it. I mean, I have nothing wrong with there being a variety of titles and storylines provided for different readers; just the idea that *females* in particular will only like certain titles written about certain things (with the Spider-man symbol shaped like a heart! Because no men will touch that, but women will LOOOOVE it!) is stupid. Gah.

Give me Marvel Civil War over Spider-man loves Mary Jane ANY day. At least one of them tried to discuss serious issues (even if it didn't always follow through).