Adweek probably had one of the more interesting dissections (Note to Adweek: Lame headline. It’s going to bring changes? Really? Yes, I know sometimes you just have to write a headline, but come on.)

Everyone’s talked up the “Disney wants to bring in the boys!” point, which makes sense, sure. The Adweek piece mentions that Marvel wants to bring in the ladies:

Still, Disney is expert at attracting young women to titles they may not normally be interested in (see, Johnny Depp making the ultimate young-boy fantasy, a pirate-adventure, popular with girls). For all the talk about Marvel continuing to run independently, don’t be surprised if the studio accesses Disney’s stable of talent to make some pics more girl-friendly.

If that ends up being true, that sounds pretty awesome to me.

The hopeful part of me would like to think having Disney be in control of things like marketing and branding (two things that the company is very, very good at) will allow Marvel to just make comics and develop properties. It’s probably too much to ask that it will usher in some new era of creativity, but I guess we’ll see.

But In any case to me, after the initial “Wow! That’s huge!” thing wore off, I don’t really think it’s going to change too much for either company. It doesn’t feel like a good thing or a bad thing.

I know that print media has faced plenty of tough times lately (of course, most industries have) and so I can’t blame Viz for doing this. It was a pricey magazine on the newsstands, after all, and it really did not run very many ads. (You could say that yes, it was basically an ad for Viz itself, but you understand my point.)

The Shojo Beat line of manga will continue, so not all hope is lost. Still, the magazine will be missed.

Original tip from The Beat

Paul Gitter, who is the president of consumer products, North America, for Marvel Entertainment Inc., says when doing such things, they have to be “very careful” not to “alienate our core” audience — in other words, boys don’t want a bunch of girls wearing T-shirts with Spider-man on them. Or something.

Vice president of product merchandising at Marvel, Susan Fields, also says “Hulk was a big component for us when it came to being eco-friendly, with T-shirts featuring the character and sayings like ‘go green.’ ” I wish I could make this stuff up.

But overall, I’m really pretty OK with this. I’ve often wished that comic book T-shirts came in girly styles (I am not someone who wears an XXL) and maybe in earlier days, some Marvel lip gloss would’ve been a fun purchase for me.

Still, with Marvel’s other attempts at reaching out to young women (including the recent adaptation of Pride and Prejudice) makes me believe they don’t really know what they’re doing (but since these are licensing deals, the actual product development will probably be in the hands of people who have experience making products for women).

I don’t think this will get women reading comics, though, and I don’t think that’s really the point. After all, plenty of women connect with the character of Wonder Woman but have no interest in picking up comics about her. This is just about taking the cool iconography of comics and selling it to people. But I’m also OK with that.

Image of Marvel lip glosses, taken from WWD.com

I liked Fanboy and Goth Girl quite a bit because I think it’s one of the few books I’ve read that captured my high school experience so accurately. But I do kind of go back and forth about his character of Kyra — he certainly gets some things right, but she did sort of strike me as Lyga’s vision of how he would’ve liked teenage girls to be (I was actually thinking about this today, randomly). I’ll still probably read Goth Girl Rising — after all, I can’t complain too much about teenage girl who’s a Neil Gaiman fan.

Lyga knows comics and knows the soul of suburban teenagers. Worst Day Ever sounds delightful. I’ll be picking this up.

I have two more Toon Books to review, which I should to get to this week (tomorrow, perhaps).

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.

(Unless there is some sort of miracle, I doubt very seriously I will make it to Alternative Press Expo this year. I’ve even considered the “well, I could fly out there for a day …” scenario, but the money it would cost me is fairly ridiculous. Maybe next year …)

I haven’t read any of the news from the New York Comic Con yet. I will probably do that tomorrow. The major reports from friends seems to be that it was crowded. If life doesn’t get away from everyone, I may have some better first-hand reports to share.

With any luck, I’ll make it to the MoCCA Art Festival and Big Apple Con in June.

I know it will lose to Ratatouille, though.

More thoughts on Persepolis — both the book and the movie — are coming (the movie finally opens here this weekend).

Honestly, I kind of stopped reading after “The manga is scripted by Raina Telgemeier and Dave Roman …” because that’s all I need to know. I’m trying to figure out why Anzu seems familiar to me, but nothing in a quick Google search is really sticking out at me.

(Seriously, though, an X-Men manga focused on Kitty Pryde written by Telgemeier and Roman? Are they studying my brain while I sleep or something?)