Posts tagged comics

My worlds are colliding with the recent announcement that Marvel and Hyperion are teaming up two publish two books about Marvel heroines, She-Hulk and Rogue, that  “showcase strong, smart heroines seeking happiness and love while battling cosmic evil.” The press release and descriptions of the books can be read on Marvel.com.

I’m not opposed to the idea at all. Books about female superheroes with romantic subplots sounds right up my alley.

But boy I do hate the title The She-Hulk Diaries. It’s so cliched. “The ______ Diaries” seems to be the go-to title for marketing something to women, an easy call back to Bridget Jones’s Diary or The Carrie Diaries. Rogue Touch isn’t so bad, though I’m generally not a fan of pun titles.

I think novels based on Marvel’s female characters have HUGE potential to be action-packed stories with kick-ass heroines that just happen to have some romance — exactly what many readers are looking for. The current approach seems like a joke, though. There are other ways to make products and market them to women without sticking cartoon lipstick on the cover. (Again, Rogue Touch is okay; I may pick that cover up.) Also, I’m not sure it who it will really appeal to. Non-romance readers will be turned away from the “chick lit” packaging (just read the comments at The Mary Sue, which should be their target audience really) and will non-comic fans be interested in a title with  “She-Hulk” in it as opposed to a more subtle reference?

And let’s not even get into The Hollywood Reporter’s barf-inducing headline that it’s going “Marvel Comics Goes ‘Fifty Shades’” — because apparently the media still believes novels with romantic plots didn’t exist until that book  (*coughAustencough*). NOTHING suggests these books are similar Fifty Shades of Grey in any way.

1) Goodreads has blog post based on their Tools of Change presentation with some interesting stats on how members find books. Via Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.

2) The controversy over depictions of female character in comics has directly inspired at least one new project: Mara. The story sounds pretty interesting, and kudos to creator Brian Wood for this quote:

In addition to just feeling like I had a powerful, relevant story to tell, I wanted to prove, if only to myself, that a story like this can be told without reducing it to or otherwise relying on these sorts of base depictions of women.

I cannot get over how awesome this is. Tim Gunn discusses gender & fashion in Star Trek and comics: