fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #144 ]

[ SECRET POST #144 ]

⌈ Secret Post #144 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

- Con returnee is happy and sleepy. Thus you get early post!

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 75 secrets from Secret Submission Post #021.
Secrets Not Posted: 0 broken links, 0 not!secrets, 0 not!fandom
Next Secret Post: Tomorrow, Wednesday, May 30th, 2007.
Current Secret Submission Post: Here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Having read both comics and manga, there's a reason all my money's going to manga instead of comics. While some comics have lovely art (and some manga has sucky art) and some comics have good plot (and some manga has no plot), I'm sick of the utter misogyny of the comics industry as a whole. Manga's certainly not perfect (Bleach is the first manga ever that I've read that didn't involve at least one female character that made me want to rip my own eyes out) but I feel it's doing a better job. I've read some pretty well researched essays regarding how the comic industry's pretty much engineered its own downfall by continuing to ignore female readers, which is where manga got its huge boost.

It would be a really interesting topic for a paper, though...

I hate how people say that comics are geared towards men. They are, in personal point of view, the creation of the artists and story writers. They put the comics in bookstores for EVERYONE to see, read, and purchase. There is no label saying 'Men only'. Comics are read by men mostly because they are written by men, but nothing stops a girl from picking up a comic.

And about the whole comic industry engineering its own downfall what the heck is that supposed to mean? What are comics artists supposed to do? Quit writing about male super heroes and focus on teenage girls? They obviously prefer to write and draw action so how is that engineering its own downfall? They are drawing what they want to draw and they shouldn't be forced to draw something else just to bring in a specific audience because it brings in more cash. That would just be stamping out the artist's freedom.

I agree with the above.

...except the comic industry keeps complaining about not getting enough female readership. So yes, they do want the women.

They should start making pinups of men. Then they'd get the female readers they want. Yay, equal objectification!

You should look through the Marvel Swimsuit Issues, seriously. There's plenty of good Beefcake to drool over. :)

I love those things. I wish they still published them. XDDD

Oh yes! My favourite time was when I found the "Ghost Rider" picture. There's nothing funnier than a flaming skeleton on the beach. XD

They'd get women in droves if they gave us something we were interested in. The comics industry is an industry - they're not interested in art, they're interested in marketing so that people will pay money for their products. Their utter failure at reaching a female audience at this point is nothing short of sad, and makes me wonder if they're just that clueless, just that inept, or if they secretly don't want women no matter how much they complain to the contrary. (Or maybe they just think we should be good girls, shut up, and shell out the money for their products even if we're not interested...)

The cold harsh reality is that comic books is an industry. In order to keep going it needs an audience to buy its product. If there aren't enough males buying the product to keep the industry going then they have to branch out and encourage a female audience in order to survive. In order to attract a female audience, they have to give females what they want (whatever that is).

Obviously a lot of women don't like what the comic book industry is offering them or more would be buying the product. You can say that nothing stops a girl from picking up a comic but that's nonsense. What's stopping a girl from picking up a comic is that she doesn't like what she sees. If she liked it she'd buy it and apparently a lot of females aren't buying it.

As far as stamping out the artist's freedom....the big comic book companies are very very good at doing just that. At least they were back in the days when I use to buy comics.

Publishing's pretty much the same. It's an industry, so it wants what it can sell. One of the harsh truths that got beaten in to my skull when I started sending things to the slushpile is that the industry doesn't give a crap about my artistic vision.

There is no label saying "men only," but at the same time, if they're writing things that women aren't interested in, women aren't going to buy their books. So there is nothing to stop me from reading comics, but they certainly aren't giving me a reason to give them money for those comics either.

There is a difference between the individual artists and their freedom to express themselves, and the industry, same as there is in the book industry. An author or an artist most certainly has the right to create as they see fit. However, that does not give them the right to have their artistic vision published and bought by the adoring masses. There's a reason so many manuscripts languish in the slush pile year after year and are never picked up - because the book industry goes for what they think their audiences will buy, hell with the artist's vision. The industry is there to cater to their audience, because they want their audience's money, and they're not going to get that money if they don't provide a product that interests that audience.

So no, an artist isn't forced to draw a damn thing, just as a writer is not forced to write a thing (though if they're smart, they still listen to their editor instead of clinging to their "vision" if they want something the a company will publish) however, the industry is in charge of deciding what it will publish. And the comics industry has been doing a lot of whinging about their losses, and about how they're not reaching much of a female audience (and they can't seem to figure out why), and it is because they are not choosing to publish things that a wide female audience will be interested in.

So yeah, it is their own fault that they've failed to tap into a large sector of the female audience, and at this point, they're probably never going to get them back because manga's caught their loyalty.

I read both in equal quantities, I've been reading both for equally as long and I think that there is equal sexism. It's a little naive to say there *isn't*.

The problem with Western comics is that the sexism is overt in the art almost consistently, even if the text and characterization itself is not sexist. There is less of this in popular manga, however I'd argue that the textual sexism is still just as bad, just less obvious.

Also, y'know, there's a cultural barrier there. I think we're quicker to forgive manga and anime for any displayed misogyny because often, it's presented differently. *shrug* ~~PLUS THAT HUGE DOUBLE STANDARD ANIME/MANGA FANS TEND TO CARRY TOWARDS WESTERN ANIMATION/COMICS~~.

Considering that the art is the first thing you see any time you open a book, it tends to stand out. There is certainly textual sexism, but the other thing to consider is plot in general. I've been away from comics for quite some time - about eight years, now - but when I was still reading, the plots tended to cater toward male audiences, which made sense considering that the majority of comics were drawn by men. I'm certainly not saying that all women like soap opera plot lines or other things that are prevalent in shoujo manga, (and I'm also not saying that women don't read shounen manga or comics that fit in the same category, because I certainly do) but it also is worth noting that the audience for shoujo manga is primarily female, and the writers/artists are primarily female. Comics really don't have any kind of equivalent to the vast industry that shoujo manga's become.

It annoys the hell out of me when I run across anime fans that think anything Japanese is good and anything Western is automatically crap. But I also don't think the misogyny runs that differently between comics and manga, at least in shounen manga. Because what do you get? Women with enormous boobs in tight clothing. (Or, more accurately, annoying women with yadda yadda ya.) There's also a lot of the same (disturbing) violence against women in both. Not acknowledging that is very unfair.

On the shoujo manga side, it is different, more of the classic sort of thing you tend to see in romance novels - oh look at the weak little woman whose only goal in life is to get hooked up with one of the guys in her love dodecahedron. However, that said, shoujo manga (particularly in the "magical girls" type series) has a pretty good record of strong female leads. So there's still a lot of reinforcement of negative stereotypes going on, but there's also quite a bit of plot/character that is going in the right direction and does positively capture the attention of female readers. I'm thinking we'll see a lot more of this as well as Japanese women gain more ground against the basic misogyny of their society.

I don't read both comics and manga equally. I used to, about eight years ago, and then I simply gave up on comics (with the notable exception of Sandman</i) and haven't found anything to motivate me to start spreading my fun money that way again.

Being European, the American fascination with the superhero comics have always puzzled me. Never having been in the States, I also can't know whether or not I have the completely wrong impression when I think that the only comic books that are easily available (i.e. not in special stores) are the superhero genre. And being European, and as such not breastfed with the superheroes, I have never had that problem when reading comics, be they western or Japanese.

It's a lot better now - things like Sandman really opened up the non-superhero stuff, and there's some now available in regular book stores. (Though nothing like manga.) But it's still very Superhero centered.

I think the other problem is that the times I've sucked it up and gone to comic shops to find something I've wanted, there's the atmosphere of "What's a GIRL doing here?"

I haven't gone to a comic shop since my first stab at college, though (which was eight years ago) so I bet it's a lot better now. Things have changed.

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[ SECRET POST #144 ]

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