Announcing Near Miss: Mainstream Comics for Women and Girls

This year will mark 15 years since I first started Comicsgirl and 10 since it was resurrected as a blog. To celebrate these milestones, I am launching a yearlong project called Near Miss: Mainstream Comics for Women and Girls.

While focus of my blog has evolved since the early days when I wanted to write about comics I thought women and girls would enjoy, I’m still fascinated by this subject and I wanted to explore the successes and failures that the big three publishers — Marvel, DC, and Image — in reaching a female audience.

This isn’t going to be academic, nor is it meant to be. My general  guidelines in selecting a title were:

• Except for earlier romance comics, the titles needed to come out, more or less, in my lifetime.
• I didn’t want anything from the past five years since I wanted to be able to have perspective on these comics.
• Other than one notable exception, I avoided titles that were direct tie-ins with cartoons or toys.

The list was compiled with input from knowledgeable friends. While there may be some debate as to why a title was or wasn’t selected, this isn’t meant to be definitive or comprehensive. Mostly, it is meant to be fun.

Near Miss will be a semi-regular feature throughout all of 2013, with the first one appearing next week. Follow the specific posts through the category page. There are some other components to this project in the works, too. More will be revealed during the year.

I hope you join me. I’ve enjoyed putting this together so far and I think you’ll enjoy the results.

This project is sponsored by Big Planet Comics.