Friday Mad Science: the “Finding Girl Comics” Edition

Have you ever tried to buy comics for pre-teen girls?  Let me tell you, it’s one of the most frustrating experiences imaginable.  My daughter Emma has a birthday coming up—her seventh—and she loves comics.  She likes reading in general, but mostly when we find her holed up somewhere, what she’s reading is a comic book.  Moreover, she really likes reading superhero comics.  I mean, yeah, she enjoyed Ape Entertainment’s recent Strawberry Shortcake adaptation, but what we’ve found her reading and re-reading over and over again is one of the Batman: The Brave and the Bold or Justice League Unlimited trades.  With that in mind, I headed out Wednesday to try to find her something new to read.  I was downtown for a meeting, so I decided to swing by Forbidden Planet, and when that didn’t work, I headed Manhattan’s most famous used bookstore, The Strand.  Between those two places, you’d think I’d find something, right?

I didn't realize Villains United was gonna have
quite so much rape and murder when I bought
it for my 7-year-old.

Ugh.  I ended up spending forty-two dollars at The Strand—where books are generally half cover price—and wound up with maybe one trade that I think Emma will like and that I also think is at least somewhat age appropriate for her.  Beyond that, I appear to have accidentally expanded my own trade paperback collection in some rather unfortunate ways. 

Now I’ll admit that part of the problem was that I was in a hurry.  The Strand has maybe five full shelves worth of trades, and even though I’ve got some passing familiarity with a goodly bit of what’s been published in the last few years, that still left me with quite a bit to try to sort through in a relatively small space of time.  That—and the fact that the books themselves were roughly half cover price—is why I actually bought books I wasn’t sure were gonna work. 

The Justice League seemed like a
good fit for my daughter Emma.

With that said, I know my daughter, and I know what she likes.  So it wasn’t like I was flying blind.  Really, I just needed to find something superhero-ish that didn’t also include any strippers, casual sex, or references to rape and murder sprinkled in amongst the costumed crime-fighting.  Now that might not seem like a very complicated task, but despite searching for a full half-hour, I was still pretty damned annoyed with some of what I came away with.  For example, the Justice League of America (JLA) seemed like a likely fit for Emma.  She likes Superman and especially Batman, and she likes girl heroes like Wonder Woman—a problem in and of itself  given what some recent writers have wanted Wonder Woman to do and/or wear lately—and JLA is DC Comics’ flagship title, the one that non-comics parents are most likely to see as well as the basis for any number of really successful Saturday Morning-style cartoon series.   So when I saw an entire section devoted to the JLA, I made a bee-line for it.  But, y’know, it’s just never that easy.  DC Comics ran a storyline a couple of years ago based on the rape and murder of one of its minor hero’s wife, and that story sold big.  As a result, a goodly bit of what I saw were, in fact, copies of that same story, along with any number of spin-offs or follow-ups, one of which I mistakenly bought.  And yeah, I read it and liked it.  But I’m 38.  I wanted something for my soon-to-be seven-year-old daughter.

So, the bottom line is that while I think comics for geeky adult fanboys are okay, I also find myself wishing more and more that the major companies would focus a little more of their attention on the next generation of readers.  ‘Cause my girls like comics.  They don’t just want an all-ages imprint.  They want the main stories, and they want them in a way that they can relate to.  I don’t think that’s too much to ask, but y’know, maybe I’m wrong.