Via Journalista, Sarah Jaffe talks about “Fangirls” being a new demographic for Hollywood. I guess so, if you’re thinking strictly films derived from comics stories.
But she tosses in the aside of if only we could get girls into comic shops. Well, it reminded me that in a comment in this post, about a trip to the comic shop with my daughters, that I promised to follow up on a recommended X-men comic that was told from Kitty Pryde’s perspective: “Wolverine: First Class.”
I’m not going to go into the content of the comic that much – the girls thought it was fine, but they haven’t been bugging me to get the next issues like they have with, say, Mouseguard or Amelia Rules. Still, they’ve said they’d be interested in picking up the second one.
But here’s the thing, we never would have bought the first one if it wasn’t for the fact that someone specifically told us to look at it. We went into a nice comic book shop – one of a chain here in Chicago. It was clean, well lit and the staff was very nice. I had my two daughters, my niece and nephew with me.
And they just glazed over the rows and rows of magazine covers that showed superheros in various poses. The niece and nephew were intimidated, my daughters didn’t see anything that made them want to pick something up.
Even “First Class,” supposedly written for girls and targeted to that audience, featured an aggressively-posed Wolverine – claws out with a grimace on his face – while Kitty Pryde, supposedly the narrator and main character, was secondary. You can see it here.
In other words, standard comic-book cover. But, if this really was an effort to attract a different audience, then why use a standard comic-book cover? It didn’t have anything to make it stand out from among the other comic books.
Compare that to the book cover of the first Twilight, or the poster for the film.
If you don’t understand the differences here, you’re probably not a designer who understands how to market a property to a demographic.
Of course, one answer could be that the comic was probably not an effort to produce something to appeal to someone who would also read something like Twilight, but that leaves me with the idea of the standard comic book demographic (grown men) reading a comic book story that features a young, teenaged girl experiencing a new life including her first crush.
To put it politely, that’s just not a reading experience I can identify with.
I guess what I’m trying to say – and have been trying to say for a while – is that sometimes girls do go into comic book stores. And sometimes those girls have parents that will bring them in more than once or twice. And sometimes those stores and the people in those stores are very nice and welcoming.
But there’s got to be something in those stores for those girls.
EDIT: Just to clarify, my girls had been in comic shops before – they weren’t intimidated. It was clear that their cousins, though, had never seen such a thing before and had no idea what to look at – or even what they thought was OK to look at. My girls walked up and down the place, judging the books by their covers.

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