On July 1, 1998, the first incarnation of Comicsgirl officially launched. The internet was a very different place then and no, I didn’t think I’d still be trying to hang onto this 20 years later. I mean, 2018 was completely the future! I have no idea if that teenager who thought it would be cool to make a website would be happy or sad I’m still doing this. I may have been overly ambitious, but it was 1998 and there was a need!

I admit to being naive in some of the language I used but I do admire how generous I attempted to be, even if I was — admittedly — really imperfect at it.

The early days of Comicsgirl are long since gone from the internet, for the most part. There’s still the Wayback Machine, so let’s revisit some of the things I wrote (not all are from the earliest version of the site — the oldest version I could find was from October 1999, but close enough!) Also, I just tossed these images in — they weren’t ones from the original site (and the introductions to these posts did have creator/publisher information and such).

About The Sandman:

The Sandman was an ambitious project about the Lord of Dreams and his family, The Endless (Destiny, Death, Delirium, Destruction, Desire, Despair), and the mortal (and often not so mortal) dreamers they encountered. The Sandman delved deeply into mythology, history, and literature. It has been said that The Sandman is a story about stories, and I will easily agree with that.

The Sandman, mainly because it was a nontraditional comic book (meaning that it generally lacked men in tights and capes fighting crime), appealed to many women. Neil Gaiman’s personal estimate of its readership is about 50/50 split between males and females. Three and a half of the seven Endless are female (Death, Despair, Delirium, and sometimes Desire), and many strong female characters play prominent roles in the storylines. Even though some of the female characters may be strippers, or murdered, they are never presented as being mere sex objects or victims. From the coldly independent Thessaly, to the sweet, lonely Nuala, to the quick intelligence Johanna Constantine, every woman in The Sandman has self-worth and is presented as being nothing less than whole. One character remarks in The Sandman that “All women are remarkable.” Everything about the women in this title would agree with that. Highest recommendation possible.

About Elfquest:

Elfquest is a fantasy comic book concerning a group of elves named the Wolfriders. These elves evolved after a race of being accidentally landed at the wrong time on a fantasy world. They struggle against humans who believed them to be demons, cruel trolls, and even other treacherous elves in a struggle for survival in a world where they do not belong.

Elfquest, which was written and illustrated for many years by a woman, has an abundance of female characters, each multidimensional with her own strengths and weaknesses. The female elves are treated on the same terms as the male elves, and neither gender is made to look superior or inferior. The writing and artwork deals with them both equally. While the women are sometimes scantily clad and well-figured, the men are drawn exactly in the same manner, and neither is offensive. The stories are excellent, the art is great, and Elfquest is just downright fun. Highly Recommended.

About Batman: The Dark Knight Returns:

In this dark and historic miniseries, Frank Miller explores what effect superheroes have on society. Ten years after Bruce Wayne retired from being Batman, a new crime wave has hit Gotham City. Although he is older, Bruce Wayne feels the drive and desire to become Batman once again, and does so not realizing how the world has changed since the last time Batman appeared.

I almost did not want to review this, because the question came up…is The Dark Knight Returns “female-friendly”? Well, it’s not “friendly” in any way, although it is a monumental work–as relevant today as it was ten years ago, and it probes deeply into the psyche of one of the world’s most beloved superheroes, but is it something female comic book readers would enjoy? I can only speak from experience that I am a female comic book reader, and I liked it a lot.

I would like you to be warned–this is no simple superhero tale. It is violent, unnerving, unrelenting. Those aspects of the book can’t be ignored. But The Dark Knight Returns is also about the sweet, fatherly relationship Batman has with the new Robin, a thirteen-year old girl, and Batman’s continuous attempt to save himself from the torture of the memory of the violent killing of his parents he witnessed as a child. These aspects humanize the book. It’s not just mindlessly violent, nor a thoughtless tale of fighting crime. It’s about one man’s misguided mission to save his city from crime–to stop what happened to him from happening to anyone else. In that regard, the book is worthy of being read and something will be gained from doing so. So reservations about “female-friendliness” aside: Highly Recommended.

Yeah, and that’s enough of that. Did I mention I was a teenager and this was more or less 20 years ago?

In all honesty, though, doing this has brought so many good things into my life. People were generous with their comics and I got to read a lot of things I wouldn’t have otherwise. I was once vaguely considered an “expert” and people even interviewed me about my site! It lead to getting involved with Small Press Expo and that’s been amazing. I’ve made countless friends — including people I absolutely consider to be my family. It indirectly (and directly) lead to job opportunities. It has been frustrating at times, sure, but I think there’s a good reason that even after 20 years, I haven’t wanted to let go of this.

Mostly, it’s been such a huge part of my life and I’ve loved it so much.

I’ve watched the internet change from websites (remember when I used to run a webring? Do you even know what a webring is?) to blogs to … whatever space we’re in now. I like change but I hope I can keep up.

I had fun going through my site and rereading things. I’ve collected a few of them.

Favorite posts (that aren’t reviews):

• Can we stop pretending all comic book stores are now awesome? Plus bonus followup: The Big Bang Theory’s Alice is the future
• Girl Scouts have a Comics badge! (Girl Scouts have since created Comic Artist badge for Cadettes)
• In defense of Cathy
• Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki at Politics and Prose
• Library Con at Petworth Neighborhood Library & Comics by Women (Bonus presentation! I will still happily be on your panels!)
• Near Miss: Minx
• Remembering BoHoS: A conversation with Maggie Whorf
• Revisiting The Sandman (also known as “that time Neil Gaiman linked to my site.”)
• Revisit: The Tick Omnibus (You will be happy to know I did get my Man-Eating Cow action figure since then)
• Super Art Fight at the Red Palace

My favorite reviews:

• A Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes
• A Drunken Dream and Other Stories
• Insufficient Direction
• Laika
• Through the Woods
• Skim
• Smile

Three reviews by special guests:

• Molly on Sisters
• My mom on The Book of Genesis: Illustrated
• The Destruction of Spider-Man: A Review of Turn Off the Dark by my friend Steve Kopian (despite what the name on the post says! Also check out Steve’s work at Unseen Films.)

Despite the fact I haven’t updated this site in nearly a year, I don’t consider it “dead” — I’m just … taking a break. I have some plans for the next era of this site. I’m getting there! I may even bring the podcast back! But really, thank you to everyone who has ever indulged me with this. You’re all a delight.

But my one thought after reading it was “That could’ve been a Minx book.”

An imprint of DC, Minx launched in 2007 and was dead by 2008, but there were problems as soon as it was announced. The name Minx never bugged me — it was cute and just salacious enough — but the lack of female creators was an issue. Minx had too much to prove and had to do it too quickly.

But Minx ultimately faced a bigger problem than just skepticism: The books just weren’t very good.

The majority of the 12 titles follow this extremely set format: An introspective, outcast teenage girl flirts with danger and boys before learning some very important life lesson, delivered with some moralistic overtones. They play a bit too safely, shying away from any real issues. For a moment in Confessions of a Blabbermouth, there was an implication of possible sexual abuse before it was quickly resolved into a “twist” that had been obviously almost from the beginning. Emiko Superstar isn’t the worst of the bunch, but when compared to the devastating and beautiful Skim, also written by Mariko Tamaki, it feels obvious the Minx editors didn’t trust their audience’s ability to handle anything that could be perceived as “dark.”

If this was just one or two of the titles, it could be forgiven. But when faced with about seven titles that all share what is more or less the same character and the same plot dressed up in different ways, it begins to feel a bit paternalistic and tiresome.

Not every one is like this, though. Ross Campbell‘s Water Baby is refreshingly crude and physical and has teenagers that actually act and talk like teenagers. The New York Four, by Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly, has its issues, but at least felt like something teenage girls would want to read. I don’t know where Aaron Alexovich‘s Kimmie66 was originally pitched to, but with its twisty sci-fi story about identity, it’s definitely the oddball of the bunch (and is perhaps the most interesting because of it).

But I think beyond issue of repetitive plot structure, what bothered me the most about the Minx books is that they’re all basically a waste of good talent.

The editors had a good eye at hiring creators who appealed to young women but then buried the exact things that made them appealing to that audience.

Jim Rugg is a phenomenal artist, and while his work on both of the Plain Janes books is attractive enough, it lacks the kinetic, playful energy of his Street Angel. Both Andi Watson and Derek Kirk Kim are poetic, thoughtful writers, but Clubbing and Good As Lily suffer from the lack of their art. For the most part, there’s very little chemistry between the writers and the artists. These books feel like work for hire and it shows.

Still, there’s a part of me that admires Minx not for what it ended up as, but for what it wanted to be. Minx was definitely an attempt to capture the young female readers of manga, but I think it provided a point of transition for publishers to realize this was an audience worth catering to. I can’t think of too many graphic novels aimed specifically at teenage girls before Minx. I can think of way too many that have come out since then.

I don’t think it’s quite right to say that Minx opened the door for those graphic novels. But, at the very least, I think Minx deserves some credit for making publishers realize that there was a door worth opening.

Near Miss is a semi-regular feature that will be appearing on Comicsgirl throughout 2013-2014. This project is sponsored by Big Planet Comics.

The New York Five
Buy on Amazon.com

I was prepared to write off all of the Minx line before I read The New York Four — finally, there was a book in this imprint I felt like teenage girls would actually want to read. Of course, ultimately, it didn’t matter since DC Comics dropped the Minx imprint.

But I was happy to see that The New York Five found a home in the Vertigo line. Sure, it was maybe a little outside of the typical Vertigo title — there isn’t an abundance of sex or violence here — but as far as comics that are for more than usual audiences, it fit right in.

I bought The New York Five happily. I want more comics like this, after all.

Well, maybe not exactly like this.

Picking up where The New York Four left off, our heroines Lona, Merissa, Ren and Riley are still dealing with the repercussions of their first semester, and they’re now all sharing an apartment. More or less. Lona is still coping with her new reality and who she is in New York; Merissa has family to deal with; Ren is a bit too much of a free spirit; and Riley is trying to make up with her estranged sister.

It’s a lot of drama and purposefully so. But I’d say it’s almost too much drama, especially once street kid Olive (the fifth in the New York “five”) is thrown into the mix. If you haven’t read the first book, you aren’t going to get to know these girls much at all — in writer Bryan Wood’s hands, they are broadly drawn character types. I wanted to get to know them, but that the whole point of this series was that the characters withdrew from each other, it was almost impossible to do so.

Ryan Kelly’s New York still feels like a real place, however, and his art gives these character life. They are still pouty lips and tousled hair, but their fashionable glamor is part of the reason why The New York Five works when it does — it feels aspirational. Even if you don’t want to be these characters, you easily admire them.

Still, whereas I enjoyed the intimate drama of The New York Four, The New York Five just seemed to pull in too many directions at once. I feel like it tried to be too big and lost sight of the power of just telling the stories of these four young women out on their own for the first time. Maybe if it had been five issues instead of four, I would’ve been happier with it.

But for all my complaints, I’d still pick up The New York Six if that ends up happening. Even if I wasn’t 100 percent sold on this one, I still want more like it to exist. I will still buy them. Clearly, for all my complaints about The New York Five, I’m still completely sold on it.

(This review is obviously based on the four issues of the limited series — you know, since the collected version isn’t out yet. You can still, more the likely, pick up the individual issues at better comic book stores. If you want it, I encourage you to do that, but I will happily take the few cents you would send my way with the pre-order of the collection.)

I was never really a Spider-Man fan so I don’t know that much about Mary Jane. She has, however, always struck me as your basic pretty girl character — she only has a personality when it suits the comic. And as you know, she’s been ditched in favor of Gwen Stacy as the love interest in the upcoming reboot of the Spider-Man film franchise.

But that brings me to Mary Jane: Homecoming and Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane: Sophomore Jinx. These, if Wikipedia is to be believed, are more or less part of the same series although they don’t feel all that connected to me, honestly (granted, though, these two parts aren’t directly continuous, so I have missed some things in between the two).

Mary Jane: Homecoming Buy on Amazon.com

In Mary Jane: Homecoming, Mary Jane is dealing with her relationship with Harry Osbourn as well as Flash’s crush on her and troubles with her friend Liz. It’s all pretty typical high school stuff — Harry is aimlessly angry and he and Mary Jane just seem to be together because they are. Liz and MJ have a conflicted friendship — they like each other, sure, mostly because they’ve been friends forever, but they’re competitive with each other, too. Oh, and Spider-Man shows up and fights some bad guys a couple of times, but that’s pretty inconsequential (except MJ does feel a growing connection to him — and to Peter Parker).

In writer Sean McKeever‘s hands, the story’s twists have the right amount of drama without ever becoming over-the-top. These kids are just trying to figure themselves out as well as each other. The shifting alliances and confusing relationships feel natural. He has a wonderful grasp of how teenagers behave without being condescending. Takeshi Miyazawa‘s art is cute and soft and is just manga-like enough to make it distinctive from a superhero title. I love the eye for detail he has, from MJ and Liz’s updos for the homecoming dance to the emotional glances characters give each other.

Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane: Sophomore Jinx Buy on Amazon.com

Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane: Sophomore Jinx feels a bit different. It has another creative team of Terry Moore and Craig Rousseau and everything feels a bit bigger — more drama, more action, more conflict. Here, MJ is just starting her sophomore year of high school (hence the title) and struggles to find her place after someone starts some cruel rumors about her.

I don’t think anyone would accuse Moore of not being able to write women well. Even when Strangers in Paradise began getting more and more convoluted, it was always clear his female characters were fully realized. He does less well with teenage girls, though. This isn’t particularly bad, but he doesn’t seem to quite grasp the intricacies of teenage relationships (and maybe I’m wrong, but I’m almost sure no teenager was appending “not” to the end of a sentence to make it a negative in 2008). Rousseau’s art is stylized and has an exaggerated, animated feel to it, but also comes across as a bit more generic. I don’t think he gets to shine here.

Neither of these books are bad. I liked Homecoming more than Sophomore Jinx, but I liked both. But I was left with one major question: Who was this title for?

Now, I ended up with them because I am interested in this sort of thing (you know, comics aimed at girls). Homecoming was a dollar at a comic con and a friend gave me Sophomore Jinx because he ended up with it and figured it had a better home with me.

But other than me, who was this intended for? I can’t really picture the audience for this title.

Mary Jane is presented as likeable, sweet and smart, but she’s also one of the popular kids. She has some problems at home, sure, but a lot of that just feels thrown in to keep her from seeming too perfect.

I can only use myself as an example, but as a teen — even as a preteen — I wouldn’t have been interested in Mary Jane. I was a misfit and I didn’t hang out with cheerleaders or football players. I wasn’t interested in reading about them. And I’d guess that a lot of teen girls that are into comics wouldn’t really either.

(I did see some girls excited by Archie comics, so maybe I’m wrong.)

While I was critical of a lot the Minx titles for feeling too young for their intended audience, they were mostly about girls I would’ve wanted to read about at that age. I could see a 12-year-old enjoying Homecoming that her loving father (or even older brother) bought for her, but I do think Sophomore Jinx, while still pretty innocent, is probably too old for her. I don’t think any older teen girls who like comics would’ve sought this out on their own. It’s possible I’m wrong there, though.

I think Marvel has done some interesting things aimed at women (even before last year’s push, and even when they’ve put stupid covers on them) but I’m not sure why they felt like Mary Jane needed to be its go-to teen girl character, other than the company thought she was (or would be) “popular” following the Spider-Man movies.

Which I guess means we can look forward to some comics starring Gwen Stacy.

Water Baby

I realize it’s a little moot to review Water Baby at this point, one of the titles in the defunct Minx line from DC Comics, but it’s still worthy of a discussion.

Out of the Minx titles, I wasn’t particularly interested in Ross Campbell‘s Water Baby at first. I passed up picking up an advance copy at the MoCCA Art Festival last year. Then I started reading Campbell’s Wet Moon and I kicked myself. Campbell has an uncanny understanding of what it’s like to be a late adolescent teenage girl. I really have no idea how he’s been gifted with this knowledge, but I am in awe of it.

Water Baby follows surfer girl Brody, who has had her leg bit off by a shark. After the stunning and graphic initial sequence, the story picks up a year later when Brody’s ex-boyfriend Jake returns to her life. After some ups and downs, she drags him and her friend Louisa on a road trip to take Jake back to New York state.

The story ends a little abruptly, but I like where Campbell finishes things. Brody’s allowed to be a strong, young woman on her own. That seems like a rare thing in a lot of young adult literature.

Brody is surprisingly physical — I almost want to use the word “vulgar” here, but I think it implies the wrong things. She’s tattooed with a shaved head, bisexual (or at least, her sexuality is fluid). She doesn’t like to shower and she enjoys belching and picking her nose. Brody likes to control her physicality — even before she lost her leg to the shark — and I think that’s refreshing. She’s delightfully earthy, even if she’s sometimes off-putting. She doesn’t care much of what anyone thinks of her.

The sequences of her nightmares are amazing. Campbell renders them wordlessly and Brody sometimes morphs into a shark, or a shark morphs into a man. It’s a revealing insight to Brody, who, for all her matter-of-factness, is still haunted by her accident, but also seems to understand her own power.

I love the way Campbell draws women. He certainly has a fetishistic love for tattooed and pierced women, but his girls have curves and weight in the way real women do. He draws them in all shapes, sizes and colors, something that’s incredibly refreshing.

Water Baby is what I always wanted the Minx line to be — something that teenage girls could see themselves in. This title, along with The New York Four, shows what the line was capable of, even when I had problems with it. I’m still sad that the line wasn’t given enough of a chance to succeed.

Dirk Deppey has an interesting analysis, and one I mostly agree with — DC wasn’t thinking long term. The Minx line is less than two years old and despite that deal with Alloy, was never really marketed to its target audience. I think it was just beginning to find its footing and its direction, but because it was underperforming, DC just scraps the whole thing.

I understand DC is a business and while I admire them for trying to get teenage girls as an audience, they obviously had no clue what they were doing. The books, for the most part, were good and not great and didn’t really appeal to the teenage girls reading Twilight or watching Gossip Girls.

In the end, it was a nice attempt but it was one that was pretty much created to fail.

(Also known as reviews of Emiko Superstar, Janes in Love and The New York Four.)

I read Emiko Superstar and Janes in Love back-to-back on the train returning home from MoCCA (which tells you how long I’ve had them — they were giving them out for free). I more recently read The New York Four.

Emiko Superstar Preorder from tfaw.com

Emiko Superstar, written by Mariko Tamaki with art by Steve Rolston, follows Emi, a slightly overweight and awkward half-Asian teenager in Canada as she finds herself drawn into an underground group of performance artists. I like Emi – I liked her geekier tendencies and her introspective nature. I didn’t exactly buy the whole performance artist scene – I didn’t believe that a guy who looked a lot like The Dude from The Big Lebowski would truly be able to get a group of young people to perform in a warehouse space, nor did I find Emi’s object of admiration, Poppy Galore, to really have that much going on. Her tentative, possible romance with Henry has a sweetness about it.

I did like the way everything unraveled, though, and how Emi realized everyone has secrets and can be surprising, including herself. Rolston’s art has a curvy softness about it that compliments the cuteness of the story well. But ultimately, I found Emiko Superstar to be fairly forgettable.

Janes In Love Buy from tfaw.com

Janes in Love picks up where The Plain Janes left off, with the same creative team of novelists Cecil Castellucci and artist Jim Rugg. I think it’s basically pointless to read this if you haven’t read The Plain Janes first. To me, it was more of the same. The Janes are now dealing with the fallout after the bust-up of P.L.A.I.N. and find themselves drifting apart as boys enter the scene. The main Jane seeks a way to continue making public art while dealing with her mom’s reluctance to leave the house after a friend dies from an anthrax attack. I noticed a very subtle shift in Rugg’s art, emphasizing the various Janes’ ethnicities (I did a side-by-side comparison and the style isn’t that different, but it’s there). This one fell a little flat and felt a little unnecessary to me (I’ve read there will be a third one). Whereas the first book was about the girls’ self-discovery, they didn’t have enough to do in this one. The conclusion and reunification of the Janes came across as a little too neat for me.

And after I finished this one, I realized something about Minx: all the books have the same sorts of rhythm. They all emphasize some Big Important Life Lesson. They all share the same sort of pacing and the characters all have the same sort of epiphanies and self-discoveries. They all seem to learn that in the end, it’s best to be true to yourself.

I do think that’s an important message and one that teenage girls don’t hear enough, but the more I read of the Minx books, the more preachy they feel. Instead of being art or even entertainment first, they seem to be lessons in self-esteem. They seem to be more the sorts of books well-meaning adults and comic book bloggers (myself included) think teenagers should be reading. (I did a quick bit of research on some message boards where teenage girls hang out – I didn’t spend too long because I didn’t want to be creepy – and I didn’t find any mentions of any of the Minx books. I’m not sure if teenage girls are actually reading these.)

But I still keep picking them up. I keep giving them a chance.

The New York Four Buy from tfaw.com

I was surprised to see that The New York Four comes closest to what I think Minx can be capable of. Coming from Vertigo veterans Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly, the story follows reclusive Riley as she reunites with her sister and tries to make friends during her first year of NYU. The New York setting feels like the real New York (I like Wood’s little asides in his NYC 101 lessons) and not just some “exotic” tacked on locale. This is the New York where people actually live. Riley is an interesting heroine and as it’s delightfulas she breaks out of her shell. The rest of the “New York Four” – Merissa, Lona and Ren – feel a little undeveloped but I get the feeling Wood and Kelly plan to continue this story. While I think Kelly draws the girls a little too sexy, with over-emphasized lips and prominent bustlines, his art has an attractive grittiness to it.

But while Riley has her share of disappointments and Big Life Lessons – and, of course, discovers it’s best to be herself – this book felt different. There was drama. There was anger and love. There was uncomfortable situations. There was, in other words, the sorts of things teenage girls encounter every day.

I know that Karen Berger said that Minx is “real stories about real girls in the real world,” but I can’t help but want it to be more like the manga series Nana. Granted, in its own way, Nana is about as far from reality as you can get, despite not being fantasy, but underneath its rock-star melodrama, it feels real. It’s heartfelt while still being escapist. I want to feel the same way after I’ve read a Minx title.