Girls Just Wanna Have Fun… And Read a Good Story

By Stacey Levin

Girls – we’re all sugar and spice and everything nice, right?  Oh-my-God, we like boys and make-up and new hair products and fashion and… I, mean, like totally, right?  Fine, yes, all of those things are true, but so many of us are more than just stereotypes.  I pride myself on being one of those women.  Just because we enjoy a good date story or reading about a new tube of lip gloss doesn’t mean we don’t also like to read about solid characters in stories with high stakes and a little bit of violence every once in a while.  Come on, ladies, do I have a point?  So, why, oh why, do comic book publishers keep releasing titles that are narrowly marketed just to the stereotype?

A couple of recent titles caught my eye, but sadly, for all of the wrong reasons.  Take Marvel’s “Heart Breakers,” a compilation book of comic shorts about girls who… well, all I can really say is that they’re girls who like boys.  And yeah, that’s about it.  Oh, except for the fact that the cover is very pink.  Another freakin’ stereotype about girls is that we all love pink.  I, for one, do not.  Ok, so the first short is called “A Chemical Romance” which is about a day in the life of Peter Parker in school as he tries to manage dating girls and his studies.  In this story, he stumbles across two girls from his chemistry class who are sooooo stupid…. How stupid are they?  They’re sooooo stupid, they steal another girl’s chem notes which they don’t understand and literally create a blob monster which Peter must destroy to save the school.   And he does and then the story is over.  Really?  Yeah, really.  Another short is called “Super Boys,” a story about Tabitha “Boom Boom” Smith, a girl with incendiary super powers, and Elsa Bloodstone, a monster hunter.  We join them on a stakeout of sorts where they pass the time talking about all of the “Super Boys” they’ve dated.  Some of its cute, other parts are funny, but that’s it.  All they do for the majority of their eight pages is talk about dating, kissing and possibly having sex with boys – or should I say the male members of several monster and alien species who are effectively still just boys.  Actually, all of the stories in the book are about dating but that’s it – no substance, no context, no character.   Puh-leez, gimme a break.  Girls are, like, so much smarter than that. (Note: sarcasm intended.)

The next title I noticed was “Girl Comics No. 1” also by Marvel as part of their Women of Marvel limited series.  Sounds cool, right?  I thought so – the cover even features She Hulk beating Iron Man in arm wrestling.  Unlike “Heart Breakers,” “Girl Comics” doesn’t showcase women being just vapid or only fixated on boys although there is some of that in there.  But what’s disappointing about this compilation of short stories is that all of them simply touch upon something that could be a good layered story or feature a character we would want to read more about.  But for some reason, it’s as if the publishers don’t think girls will be interested in anything beyond a handful of pages that ultimately don’t really go anywhere.  For instance, a story called “A Brief Rendezvous” had a great start about an internet predator who’s chatting online with a person he assumes is a young girl, as they decide to meet for the first time.  But what he doesn’t know is the guy who’s posing as the girl is Frank “The Punisher” Castle and he’s being set up to head into a bad situation.  Awesome, right?  Except that’s it – four pages and out.  But, but, that’s cool and I want to see more… and it was done by all women… and it seems smart… and hello?  Is this thing on?

So where does this lead us?  Look, I’m all for dating in comics.  I’m all for really tough chicks occasionally acting like girly-girls.  Give me the high school-like drama of Batgirl and Red Robin in “Red Robin #10” or the relationship angst Wolverine is dealing with in “Wolverine Weapon X #9” – it’s funny, relatable and adds flavor to those series.  They’re also examples of how to do it right and since I’m a girl, I’m living proof I can follow a more complicated storyline that has dating involved in it.  But for the love of Wonder Woman, Ms. Marvel, Selina Kyle and the countless other women who have graced the pages of comic books, please don’t patronize your female audience!  Keep creating cool empowered female characters and tap into the next generation of an audience that longs to see more of them – on the pages as well as behind them.  And if you do, I like, will soooo totally promise to like read them and write about them.  Yah, no, like for realz.