Marketing Superhero Comics to Women and Girls
Well, first of all hire more female creators, and y'know, don't pull crap like this (scroll down for the relevant rant).
When it comes to marketing though, I know the economy sucks and maybe comics companies can't take risks and try new things right now, but the way I look at it, if they are continually marketing to the same select group of people, whose wallets are probably going to get lighter, the same as everyone else's, and occasionally pissing those people off, your consumer base is not going to grow very much.
To me, the logical thing to do would be to find new ways to expose people to your comics. The following an idea of mine about how to market superhero comics to women and girls.
I've noticed there has been a recent trend in stores (online and bricks-and-mortar) to have T-shirts featuring superheroes. And by recent, I mean the last few years, as continuing a trend to have kitchy, funny t-shirts, often with references to characters, bands, tv shows, movies and games that are sometimes decades-old. And I must emphasize that these are not just funky online stores that by default sell men's sized t-shirts to men, with the occasional "baby doll" equivalent for women, but actual, physical, stores, that sell girl's/women's t-shirts to actual, real, girls and women.
In the summer I noticed there was a wide variety of Joker, Batman and Superman t-shirts at Bluenotes---women's/girl's t-shirts, mind you. I bought two t-shirts at Athlete's World of all places, one which features Batgirl, Wonder Woman and Supergirl, and another which has a Justice League theme going on (Superman, Hal Jordon!Green Lantern, Batman, Flash, Aquaman and Wonder Woman, to be specific).
The previous summer (2007) I met a girl wearing a really nice Batgirl t-shirt, which I'd never seen before (I've done a fair amount of searching online for Batgirl t-shirts)---I asked her where she got it, and it turns out she got it at Aritzia.
This fall, I was browsing the Urban Outfitter's online store (they also have bricks-and-mortor stores), and I came across a Batman-and-Robin shirt, a Spider-man t-shirt, and a really cool Wonder Woman costume t-shirt, but wait, the Wonder Woman shirt sold out pretty damn fast. I think I visited the site a month after initially seeing the WW shirt, and it was already out of stock.
Also, there's a crapload of Batgirl, Supergirl, and Wonder Woman t-shirts (among other merchandise when it comes to Supergirl and Wondy--Babs gets no love beyond t-shirts featuring her Silver Age/Bronze Age self) over at StylinOnline.
Alas, this is a digression---this post isn't really about t-shirts. Clearly, females DO have some interest in Superheroes. Let's face it, men and teenaged boys do not make up 100% of the ticket sales for Dark Knight, Iron Man, the Spider-man or X-Men movies. Women are NOT a minority. I repeat, women are NOT a minority, even if media sometimes represents us as though we are. Women DO like heroic, sci-fi, fantasy, adventure stories (paging Buffy and Harry Potter), they really, really do.
But for most women and girls, a trip to the comic book store is not a part of their weekly, monthly, or even yearly, routines. I'd say that buying and reading comic books just isn't as common within "girl culture" as it is in "boy culture". These are big generalizations which are probably not going to be accurate on an individual level for most of the people reading this post...but, but, from my own point of view, when I was a kid, it seemed that my brother somehow magically knew about comics (where to buy them, when to buy them, etc), but I was 22 by the time I figured them out. (22!)
By "figured them out" I mean, I understood that ongoing comic series come out once a month, or that new comics come out on Wednesdays. I realized that while bookstores might carry a variety of graphic novels and TPBs and the occasional spinner rack, that while convenience stores might carry Archie and Simpsons comics on the magazine racks, you really need to go to a comic book store if you want to keep up on current storylines.
I found out that:
- a single comic issue is generally 22 pages and often is a part of a larger story
- most books that a particular company puts out has all their characters existing in a larger shared fictional universe
- single issue comics are often collected and released in TPB format
- and that TPB means Trade Paperback, which can also be descriptively termed a "graphic novel"
These are all basics. BASICS. Basics that took me months of lurking on Girl Wonder, Scans_daily and WFA to learn. These basics that I did not know were all barriers to me, that prevented me from reading and buying comics. And I am someone who has had a love of sci-fi, fantasy, and adventure stories, superheroes, cartoons, and someone who needs very little to justify the presence of super-intelligent apes, dinosaurs, aliens, or time travel in any given story.
I would've been a big customer way earlier had I known those basics. So ignorant was I of these standard bits of knowledge, that I didn't even know what to ask in the first place to relieve myself of that ignorance, to get past that barrier and to start reading comics. I don't even think I knew the wide variety of stories in comic-form that were available, and I don't think it really occurred to me to try and seek out comics. I didn't know that I didn't know.
I get the sense I'm not completely alone in this. One doesn't have to wade very far onto fanfiction.net to find Mary Sue* fics set in the Batman mythos (usually with the self-insert being a romantic interest to Batman, a Batgirl-type sidekick or adopted daughter, or something involving Harley Quinn and the Joker). These fics are mostly written by teenaged girls who have likely never read a Batman comic in their lives, but who clearly love and have a basic grasp on the Batman mythos. (It's interesting to note that these all include made-up or re-imagined female characters, which aren't very prominent in more accessible superhero media like TV and movies. More evidence that women do want female supheroes and more females in superhero stories. WONDER WOMAN MOVIE NOW, PLZKTHX!) There are lots more superhero fangirls out there who are not on the net, too, I'm sure. (I'm also sure there are girls and women out there who would be fans of superheroes if they were just exposed to them, and well-done ones at that.)
But back to the t-shirts. Women like superheroes on their t-shirts. Women like superheroes. They just don't know much about comics. That gap has to be bridged somehow, to let girls and women know that there are great stories out there about Wonder Woman, Batgirl and Supergirl just waiting to be read**, and that there are many, many other heroes and stories to be read and enjoyed in comic-form.
My recommendation? Start selling TPBs, and maybe even some current single-issue comics, like Wonder Woman and Supergirl, Cosmic Adventures of Supergirl in the 8th Grade, Batman, Superman (and I'd suggest Manhunter, Birds of Prey, Blue Beetle, She-Hulk, Spider-girl, etc. in TPB form, since they're all cancelled now) in stores targeted towards women. Maybe not all of them at once, and maybe not a whole lot, but just a small stand that's regularly there.
Sell them in women's clothing stores--sell them at Aritzia (which I see already has a culture/literature section on their website), sell them at Bluenotes and American Eagle (stores which, IIRC, sometimes sell CDs and other junk), Urban Outfitters (which already regularly sells books and the odd graphic novel), and why not sell the occasional Wonder Woman book alongside Wonder Woman underoos at lingerie stores like La Senza? Or a Batgirl book next to a Batgirl bathrobe? (Okay, I don't think a Batgirl bathrobe exists...yet, but come on! It could be hooded with bat-ears and have a yellow belt and stuff! I would buy one of those in a heartbeat, let me tell you.)
This is just me naming off a handful of stores I might encounter at a mall here in Toronto, but I'm sure there are many other stores in the US where selling comics could also work. Hell, maybe if they printed comics on 100% recycled soy paper Lululemon would sell them.***
The trick is, make women aware of comics, make them accessible and available to them, put it under their noses and in front of their faces, and then they'll start to look for them. Then they'll go looking for comic shops, they'll look for the books they like, they'll ask the right questions, get past the ignorance/oblivious barrier and read and buy the books, same as us already-enlightened nerds.
On a side note, I'd also like to complain about the fact that most images of female superheroes found on t-shirts are old designs. Like, Supergirl-wearing-a-headband old. Bleh.
It's like the t-shirts themselves are coasting on nostalgia for a time that women my age never really lived in, and an experience they didn't have or barely remember. There probably are women my age who saw the Wonder Woman TV show in reruns, or who had access to older comics, but there's something very bittersweet about those Silver and Bronze Age images of female superheroes emblazoned with "GIRL POWER!" As if the women in comics from the 70s and 80s, and the frickin' Spice Girls are the only recent sources of female empowerment or inspiration. (Okay, women my age most certainly do remember the Spice Girls, but the rest of my point still stands!)
I want Cassandra Cain!Batgirl on a cool shirt, I want a sticker of Oracle's online avatar/symbol I can stick on my laptop, I want a purple eggplant Spoiler hoodie, and I want Wonder Woman bracer bracelets. I'm far from rich, but I would happily budget my pennies to buy that kind of stuff. Oh, consumerism, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?!?
*NOTE: I am not intending to belittle or insult girls who write Mary Sue fics, my point is that their presence is often indicative of a lack of female characters that readers can relate to or see within them a part of themselves. And yes, I also realize that not all teenagers write Mary Sues, and that not everyone writing a Mary Sue fic is a teenaged girl.
**When it comes to Batgirl, though I sincerely don't want to see Babs regress from being Oracle to Batgirl, I really think a Babs!Batgirl series is long overdue, either in its own continuity a la All-Star, or a series that takes place in the past---Post-Crisis Batgirl never really saw much action before The Killing Joke, as I understand it, and they haven't collected Batgirl stories from the 70s and 80s into trades yet. That being said, Cassandra Cain!Batgirl badly needs more page-time that isn't being written by Adam Beechen or Frank Tieri. But the modern Batgirl series in TPB form would also be a good one to sell.
***I am a horrible, horrible person, but I was about to suggest a Wonder Woman or a Batgirl yoga mat after thinking of Lululemon, and then I remembered that Barbara was about to leave for yoga class when the Joker showed up...and then my morbid mind couldn't help but picture these panels as the image on the yoga mat. So yeah, no Batgirl yoga mat, okay? =( (Unless it's Cass.)
PS --- I sound like such an unrepentant little capitalist here, don't I? How odd. =)
When it comes to marketing though, I know the economy sucks and maybe comics companies can't take risks and try new things right now, but the way I look at it, if they are continually marketing to the same select group of people, whose wallets are probably going to get lighter, the same as everyone else's, and occasionally pissing those people off, your consumer base is not going to grow very much.
To me, the logical thing to do would be to find new ways to expose people to your comics. The following an idea of mine about how to market superhero comics to women and girls.
I've noticed there has been a recent trend in stores (online and bricks-and-mortar) to have T-shirts featuring superheroes. And by recent, I mean the last few years, as continuing a trend to have kitchy, funny t-shirts, often with references to characters, bands, tv shows, movies and games that are sometimes decades-old. And I must emphasize that these are not just funky online stores that by default sell men's sized t-shirts to men, with the occasional "baby doll" equivalent for women, but actual, physical, stores, that sell girl's/women's t-shirts to actual, real, girls and women.
In the summer I noticed there was a wide variety of Joker, Batman and Superman t-shirts at Bluenotes---women's/girl's t-shirts, mind you. I bought two t-shirts at Athlete's World of all places, one which features Batgirl, Wonder Woman and Supergirl, and another which has a Justice League theme going on (Superman, Hal Jordon!Green Lantern, Batman, Flash, Aquaman and Wonder Woman, to be specific).
The previous summer (2007) I met a girl wearing a really nice Batgirl t-shirt, which I'd never seen before (I've done a fair amount of searching online for Batgirl t-shirts)---I asked her where she got it, and it turns out she got it at Aritzia.
This fall, I was browsing the Urban Outfitter's online store (they also have bricks-and-mortor stores), and I came across a Batman-and-Robin shirt, a Spider-man t-shirt, and a really cool Wonder Woman costume t-shirt, but wait, the Wonder Woman shirt sold out pretty damn fast. I think I visited the site a month after initially seeing the WW shirt, and it was already out of stock.
Also, there's a crapload of Batgirl, Supergirl, and Wonder Woman t-shirts (among other merchandise when it comes to Supergirl and Wondy--Babs gets no love beyond t-shirts featuring her Silver Age/Bronze Age self) over at StylinOnline.
Alas, this is a digression---this post isn't really about t-shirts. Clearly, females DO have some interest in Superheroes. Let's face it, men and teenaged boys do not make up 100% of the ticket sales for Dark Knight, Iron Man, the Spider-man or X-Men movies. Women are NOT a minority. I repeat, women are NOT a minority, even if media sometimes represents us as though we are. Women DO like heroic, sci-fi, fantasy, adventure stories (paging Buffy and Harry Potter), they really, really do.
But for most women and girls, a trip to the comic book store is not a part of their weekly, monthly, or even yearly, routines. I'd say that buying and reading comic books just isn't as common within "girl culture" as it is in "boy culture". These are big generalizations which are probably not going to be accurate on an individual level for most of the people reading this post...but, but, from my own point of view, when I was a kid, it seemed that my brother somehow magically knew about comics (where to buy them, when to buy them, etc), but I was 22 by the time I figured them out. (22!)
By "figured them out" I mean, I understood that ongoing comic series come out once a month, or that new comics come out on Wednesdays. I realized that while bookstores might carry a variety of graphic novels and TPBs and the occasional spinner rack, that while convenience stores might carry Archie and Simpsons comics on the magazine racks, you really need to go to a comic book store if you want to keep up on current storylines.
I found out that:
- a single comic issue is generally 22 pages and often is a part of a larger story
- most books that a particular company puts out has all their characters existing in a larger shared fictional universe
- single issue comics are often collected and released in TPB format
- and that TPB means Trade Paperback, which can also be descriptively termed a "graphic novel"
These are all basics. BASICS. Basics that took me months of lurking on Girl Wonder, Scans_daily and WFA to learn. These basics that I did not know were all barriers to me, that prevented me from reading and buying comics. And I am someone who has had a love of sci-fi, fantasy, and adventure stories, superheroes, cartoons, and someone who needs very little to justify the presence of super-intelligent apes, dinosaurs, aliens, or time travel in any given story.
I would've been a big customer way earlier had I known those basics. So ignorant was I of these standard bits of knowledge, that I didn't even know what to ask in the first place to relieve myself of that ignorance, to get past that barrier and to start reading comics. I don't even think I knew the wide variety of stories in comic-form that were available, and I don't think it really occurred to me to try and seek out comics. I didn't know that I didn't know.
I get the sense I'm not completely alone in this. One doesn't have to wade very far onto fanfiction.net to find Mary Sue* fics set in the Batman mythos (usually with the self-insert being a romantic interest to Batman, a Batgirl-type sidekick or adopted daughter, or something involving Harley Quinn and the Joker). These fics are mostly written by teenaged girls who have likely never read a Batman comic in their lives, but who clearly love and have a basic grasp on the Batman mythos. (It's interesting to note that these all include made-up or re-imagined female characters, which aren't very prominent in more accessible superhero media like TV and movies. More evidence that women do want female supheroes and more females in superhero stories. WONDER WOMAN MOVIE NOW, PLZKTHX!) There are lots more superhero fangirls out there who are not on the net, too, I'm sure. (I'm also sure there are girls and women out there who would be fans of superheroes if they were just exposed to them, and well-done ones at that.)
But back to the t-shirts. Women like superheroes on their t-shirts. Women like superheroes. They just don't know much about comics. That gap has to be bridged somehow, to let girls and women know that there are great stories out there about Wonder Woman, Batgirl and Supergirl just waiting to be read**, and that there are many, many other heroes and stories to be read and enjoyed in comic-form.
My recommendation? Start selling TPBs, and maybe even some current single-issue comics, like Wonder Woman and Supergirl, Cosmic Adventures of Supergirl in the 8th Grade, Batman, Superman (and I'd suggest Manhunter, Birds of Prey, Blue Beetle, She-Hulk, Spider-girl, etc. in TPB form, since they're all cancelled now) in stores targeted towards women. Maybe not all of them at once, and maybe not a whole lot, but just a small stand that's regularly there.
Sell them in women's clothing stores--sell them at Aritzia (which I see already has a culture/literature section on their website), sell them at Bluenotes and American Eagle (stores which, IIRC, sometimes sell CDs and other junk), Urban Outfitters (which already regularly sells books and the odd graphic novel), and why not sell the occasional Wonder Woman book alongside Wonder Woman underoos at lingerie stores like La Senza? Or a Batgirl book next to a Batgirl bathrobe? (Okay, I don't think a Batgirl bathrobe exists...yet, but come on! It could be hooded with bat-ears and have a yellow belt and stuff! I would buy one of those in a heartbeat, let me tell you.)
This is just me naming off a handful of stores I might encounter at a mall here in Toronto, but I'm sure there are many other stores in the US where selling comics could also work. Hell, maybe if they printed comics on 100% recycled soy paper Lululemon would sell them.***
The trick is, make women aware of comics, make them accessible and available to them, put it under their noses and in front of their faces, and then they'll start to look for them. Then they'll go looking for comic shops, they'll look for the books they like, they'll ask the right questions, get past the ignorance/oblivious barrier and read and buy the books, same as us already-enlightened nerds.
On a side note, I'd also like to complain about the fact that most images of female superheroes found on t-shirts are old designs. Like, Supergirl-wearing-a-headband old. Bleh.
It's like the t-shirts themselves are coasting on nostalgia for a time that women my age never really lived in, and an experience they didn't have or barely remember. There probably are women my age who saw the Wonder Woman TV show in reruns, or who had access to older comics, but there's something very bittersweet about those Silver and Bronze Age images of female superheroes emblazoned with "GIRL POWER!" As if the women in comics from the 70s and 80s, and the frickin' Spice Girls are the only recent sources of female empowerment or inspiration. (Okay, women my age most certainly do remember the Spice Girls, but the rest of my point still stands!)
I want Cassandra Cain!Batgirl on a cool shirt, I want a sticker of Oracle's online avatar/symbol I can stick on my laptop, I want a purple eggplant Spoiler hoodie, and I want Wonder Woman bracer bracelets. I'm far from rich, but I would happily budget my pennies to buy that kind of stuff. Oh, consumerism, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?!?
*NOTE: I am not intending to belittle or insult girls who write Mary Sue fics, my point is that their presence is often indicative of a lack of female characters that readers can relate to or see within them a part of themselves. And yes, I also realize that not all teenagers write Mary Sues, and that not everyone writing a Mary Sue fic is a teenaged girl.
**When it comes to Batgirl, though I sincerely don't want to see Babs regress from being Oracle to Batgirl, I really think a Babs!Batgirl series is long overdue, either in its own continuity a la All-Star, or a series that takes place in the past---Post-Crisis Batgirl never really saw much action before The Killing Joke, as I understand it, and they haven't collected Batgirl stories from the 70s and 80s into trades yet. That being said, Cassandra Cain!Batgirl badly needs more page-time that isn't being written by Adam Beechen or Frank Tieri. But the modern Batgirl series in TPB form would also be a good one to sell.
***I am a horrible, horrible person, but I was about to suggest a Wonder Woman or a Batgirl yoga mat after thinking of Lululemon, and then I remembered that Barbara was about to leave for yoga class when the Joker showed up...and then my morbid mind couldn't help but picture these panels as the image on the yoga mat. So yeah, no Batgirl yoga mat, okay? =( (Unless it's Cass.)
PS --- I sound like such an unrepentant little capitalist here, don't I? How odd. =)