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Reaching New Readers

This article isn’t about Disney, I swear. However, it is spawned by Disney’s acquisition of Marvel, which many optimists see as a way to spread the gospel of Spider-Man and get issues of Runaways into the hands of people who SHOULD be reading Runaways instead of creepy fanboys old enough to be the protagonists’ fathers.

Disney has done a lot to ingratiate itself with young girls (and I’m not just referring to Walt Disney’s early Alice cartoons and also thanks to their whole “Princess” legacy and more recent properties like Hanna Montana, High School Musical. By acquiring Marvel, Disney can now effectively court the young boy crowd with Spider-Man and other superhero properties.

However, this article is not about how to make young boys read superhero comics. Most comic book readers started out as young boys, the problem of making comics for female readers, however, remains.

There has been a recent bit of talk of appealing to new readers, though, even Sarah Jaffe of Newsarama (Google her to see her blog) has explored the idea of the acquisition being able to effectively bring in female readers because of Disney’s brilliant ability to market to girls. She and Marvel Comics Executive Editor Tom Brevoort (more on him in a bit) can be blamed for inspiring this article.

It’s another development in and potential solution to the persistent issue of how to get girls to read comics. What most of these arguments tend to do is to ignore that comics DO sell to girls. The comics that do sell to girls are Japanese and ghettoized as being a completely different beast from “regular” comic books. Never mind that a startling number of mainstream American comic books are made by international talent. So, just by looking at Manga we can see that girls DO read comic books. There you have it. End of question.

But alas, nobody on either side of the “Comics vs. Manga” debate sees it as smart or sensible, forcing me to harp on this topic even further.

So, here’s another 700 words.

Getting new, diverse readers: it shouldn’t be as difficult as people have been making it out to be. Let’s look at the facts, particularly regarding women because nobody will shut up about that.

Fact: There are so many genre television shows that appeal to women; Buffy the Vampire Slayer, is one huge example.

Fact: Many comic books are genre books. Think of a major comic book that is a straight drama with no supernatural element. And you can’t say Strangers in Paradise; because that’s everybody’s go-to comic for getting women into comics. Not all women like Sex & the City, some of them want stylized punching and hitting as previously mentioned – Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Fact: Twilight. This point is unrelated to Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

The solution is simple, and I’m not even done with this article yet: make smart comic books featuring female characters that don’t pander to the reader, again…like Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Another very legitimate example is: Marvel Divas (which I reviewed here) was a step in the right direction, albeit a move with a footfall that lands a bit too close to pandering by obviously cribbing Sex & the City. Too bad Marvel shot themselves in the foot with that horrid boy-baiting J. Scott Campbell cover. However, the interior still has (FOUR!) positive female characters as the protagonists. Never mind that they spend most of the first issue just talking about boys. It’s something. Maybe they should have gotten a woman to write it…just thinking out loud on this one.

So, to conclude my erector-set point, it’s easy to market to women, as easy as it is to market to anyone else. Aside from the fact that women DO read comic books, it’s a bit silly to think women are such a difficult demographic to penetrate…I probably could have chosen some more non-punish wording, however, I’m leaving it.

Rather, there’s a reason why there aren’t very many mainstream books that appeal to women, and it’s the same reason why comics have such a seemingly limited appeal to begin with.

On 09/02/2009, Marvel Comics’ Tom Brevoort gave us the answer. Fielding questions on his blog, he was asked why Marvel Comics featuring non-Americans (that aren’t Wolverine) sell so poorly. He answered honestly and frankly: because Marvel Comics is an American publisher, and a majority of American readers are white males. Thus, most Marvel Comics feature white American males in the lead. Assume this is true for most mainstream American publishers — especially their counterpart DC Comics.

The question was about Alpha Flight and Captain Britain, but Brevoort makes it about women and minorities — a bigger, more relevant question than “Why does the Union Jack comic sell so poorly in America” — though he admits that not all of Marvel’s readership wants to read exclusively about white men (I sure as f**k don’t) and that readership growth will allow for more diversity in their books.

So, yes…let’s blame white people, as is often the solution.

The White-Bread Threat aside, marketing is the obvious key. Spider-Man Loves Mary-Jane writer Sean McKeever, as quoted in Jaffe’s article, is on the right track. When a new book comes out, there are a few promotional bits (interviews, preview pages) on places where comic book people normally look. So the Newsarama crowd may check out Punch Girl: The Series, whose readership may or may not contain the readers that you KNOW will read the continuing adventures of Punch Girl and love it.

And this is a comic book we’re talking about, which means that every other popular medium already has a head start. Comic books need to be marketed aggressively to those said that comics are meant to appeal to. No other medium has this problem, and other mediums aren’t as good as comics!

So, that’s it. That’s the answer. Don’t pander, just put in an concerted effort to market effectively to your intended audience. And pray people buy it. Now go make some comics, and I better not see any more white people in them.