"Hypersexualized" or "Liberated" Female Superheroes?

jdzappa wrote:

I wasn't just talking about a protest one-off, but rather trying to create series similar to what's available in Japan. That being said LarryC, I agree there's probably not a market for it here in the States. Manga is so varied in part because the majority Japanese people actually read on a regular basis. Americans probably read the least of any industrial country, which means comics are already a niche market.

I'm not sure if the current DC storylines are going to succeed either. I love campy, stereotypically guy stuff like the Man Show, Howard Stern or Duke Nuke'Em. But from what I've seen of the new Cat Woman/Starfire series, they're not particularly sexy, interesting or fun.

Yeah, the articles about them don't make them look appealing. If I was going to pick up something like that I'd just go straight to "Heavy Metal".

jdzappa wrote:

I wasn't just talking about a protest one-off, but rather trying to create series similar to what's available in Japan. That being said LarryC, I agree there's probably not a market for it here in the States. Manga is so varied in part because the majority Japanese people actually read on a regular basis. Americans probably read the least of any industrial country, which means comics are already a niche market.

From what I understand manga sells just fine in the US though, but it's sold in 100+ page paperbacks, which is a fairly hefty chunks of comics instead compared to 22 pages every month. I think it's safer to say that comic *singles* is inherently a niche market. Manga is serialized in anthologies that are sold in convenience stores and supermarkets, and the popular ones are then collected into paperbacks. If the US comic market was comparable, all those superhero comics be condensed into the "People in Skintight Clothing Posing and Punching Each Other in Dark Alleyways" anthology next to Weekly Shounen Jum- "Teenagers Fighting to Grow Stronger To Protect Those Important To Them" anthology.

I reckon the comics form in the US will pretty much captive to the current audience until there's some serious shifts in the distribution model, so for the time being, the norm for female characters will probably be closer to Slutty Starfire rather than Tara Chace.

Alien Love Gardner:

On thinking about the subject of American comics further, I think part of the problem is that American comics are right now polarized into "People in Embarassingly Skintight Clothing Beating Each Other Up" and "Really Weird Crap That Doesn't Have an Audience."

There's no middle ground, and few truly sensible attempts at expanding the market. Something either caters to the shrinking 30-something adolescent male group or it runs counter-culture to that directly (and thus doesn't have a market) or it's an "indie" effort based largely on the artist's whims (and thus doesn't have a market, either, except accidentally).

It isn't as if Western market proclivities and tastes aren't well-known. They are. I mean, I think there's a rather solid and rather rabid market for teenage vampire romance content. You make that into a decent good comic aimed at 13 year old girls and you'll probably see success. Is there anything of that sort going on, in a serious vein?

Likewise, there seems to be a solid market for good stories done with dynamic comic style (no posing please!) and framing - so much so that Japanese manga actually has a foothold on the US, despite the language barrier and the market barrier and the fact that large tankobons are inherently hard-sells, even in Japan.

But I can't pretend to understand American sexuality, so it's an outsider take, at best. A Japanese man would find a woman in a kimono to be outstandingly sexy. It seems that the American concept of sexiness remains stranded in bare skin.

LarryC wrote:

Alien Love Gardner:

On thinking about the subject of American comics further, I think part of the problem is that American comics are right now polarized into "People in Embarassingly Skintight Clothing Beating Each Other Up" and "Really Weird Crap That Doesn't Have an Audience."

There's no middle ground, and few truly sensible attempts at expanding the market. Something either caters to the shrinking 30-something adolescent male group or it runs counter-culture to that directly (and thus doesn't have a market) or it's an "indie" effort based largely on the artist's whims (and thus doesn't have a market, either, except accidentally).

It isn't as if Western market proclivities and tastes aren't well-known. They are. I mean, I think there's a rather solid and rather rabid market for teenage vampire romance content. You make that into a decent good comic aimed at 13 year old girls and you'll probably see success. Is there anything of that sort going on, in a serious vein?

Likewise, there seems to be a solid market for good stories done with dynamic comic style (no posing please!) and framing - so much so that Japanese manga actually has a foothold on the US, despite the language barrier and the market barrier and the fact that large tankobons are inherently hard-sells, even in Japan.

But I can't pretend to understand American sexuality, so it's an outsider take, at best. A Japanese man would find a woman in a kimono to be outstandingly sexy. It seems that the American concept of sexiness remains stranded in bare skin.

I think you're overestimating how hard a sell tankoubons really are. Me, I'd rather shell out 10-15 bucks on trade paperbacks or anthologies rather than 3 bucks for a flimsy pamphlet. Even if they are a harder sell for everyone other than me, I don't think it really matters, because collected works are more attractive items for retailers to stock, so the number of outlets stocking comics would be larger, increasing the number of buyers in absolute numbers.

You see this already to some degree in western comics as well; when it comes to collected works, sales shift away from superheroes and more towards stories that would fall more within the mainstream of other media. Comics published under DC:s Vertigo imprint -- which deals mainly in non-superhero genre fiction aimed at older audiences -- might not sell nearly as well as the superhero fare, but they do very well in trades.

I believe this is largely because you can buy them outlets such as Amazon or Barnes and Nobles, that don't cater to a specialty audience, while you couldn't get the same outlets to touch comics singles with a ten-foot pole.

There's sort of a bifurcation in the market: there's people who buy singles, and there's people who buy trades. Problem is, anything that doesn't do ok in singles won't get collected, and there's very little stuff that tries to aim directly at the non-singles buying audience. So any western comics aiming at the Twilight audience for instance has to get past the singles buying audience, which unless comics stores suddenly get a large influx of teenage girls, will continue to be comprised largely of 30+ white males.

Which I have a hard time seeing happening, especially when there's shelves after shelves of shoujo manga in nearly every bookstore.