Male Characters Draw in more Views

[keii4ii]

Do you see the difference? Battlefield Earth bombed because it was a badly created film. Catwoman bombed because it had a black woman as it's hero. There's a disconnect there that's staggering once you see it, but I digress...

[Kamikaze]

EXAAAAAACTLY! Well put @keii4ii! Excellent use of use of an XKCD comic! !0 points to [insert Hogwarts house]!

[jacintawibowo]

Oh yes Hunger Games! That's important too. If it weren't for the popularity of that movie, we might not have had the female lead in Legend of Korra.

Nimona is also a popular webcomic with a lady-lead and written by a lady. It's getting its own film adaption and had several reprints and awards. The author also worked on Lumberjanes too, which is written by women about and is about several girls. That's also a very successful series.

[jacintawibowo]

Yes, I see people bringing up the Catwoman film all the time as an excuse not to have a female lead. I think you bring up a really good point on the sheer number of white male leads/creators/artists being represented compared to females and PoC.
I'd also like to bring up George Herriman of Krazy Kat comics. He was of mixed race (I believe he was part black). He went through extensive measures in hiding his ethnicity. He wore a hat to cover up his curly hair and asked photographers to take pictures of him from the front to avoid profile shots (his PoC features were clearer from there). He had to hide his identity so that the public could accept his work.
We know a lot of girls had to hide their names to get their work published, too.
So for the few PoC people and women at the time that did work had to hide themselves.

[Kamikaze]

He had to hide his identity so that the public could accept his work.We know a lot of girls had to hide their names to get their work published, too

Sadly, the idea of hiding your identity as a woman or PoC isn't something of the past. It's still WIDELY encouraged in many areas, but especially publishing. By having as 'male whitebread' name you can manage, you have a better chance of getting published. This is why so many women and PoC authors use their initials and last name on their books. Even Mary Shelley who gave birth to the entire genre of Science Fiction published her first runs of Frankenstein under a male name.

[Luie]

Being a male protagonist is about being a protagonist. Being a female protagonist is about being a female protagonist. I've noticed a lot of comics, shows, movies, etc. have this stunning ability to make the decision to have "A female protagonist, for ratio/gender equality." stunningly obvious. Some aspect of the story, at some point, focuses on the fact that just because she's a girl doesn't mean she still can't do blah blah blah, or just because she's a girl doesn't mean she'll take blah blah blah from the men around her. It's never subtle, and it's really hard to make it so that message doesn't exist at all. There are a million aspects to it, including the terribly boring personalities and hot points. HAWT INDEPENDENT OOOOOOU. I think all the terribad has been so overdone that people just assume that a female protagonist equals poor/ stereotypical writing. But I will say that I have a major appreciation for comics where the protagonist is female and no aspect of the comic is specifically about how much of a not-man she is compared to the men.

[jacintawibowo]

Sadly, the idea of hiding your identity as a woman or PoC isn't something of the past.

Unfortunately so =( My own professor had to hide her name because of the whole "girls only make stuff for girls" notion. J.K Rowling's Harry Potter books were targeted at boys so she used her initials as well. I've noticed people online treat me differently when they don't know about my last name >__>
We're seeing it happen a bit less in recent times but it still has a pervasive place in people's preconceptions.

[jmhenry]

Being a male protagonist is about being a protagonist. Being a female protagonist is about being a female protagonist.

This pretty much sums up the problem with most stories with female leads, writers don't just treat them the same as their male counterparts. Is that because they're 'evil' or "men no not how write women,dur"? No, it's because they worry more about writing the least offensive female character they can out of fear of the backlash it might cause. So they strat writing them using the same "Strong, independent, nearly flawless, and always shows up/tries hard to prove self to the guys" template.

A good example of that is what happened with Joss Whedon for the way he wrote Black Canary some months ago. Bombarded with insults and threats to the point of forcing him off of social media over the whole romance subplot with Bruce Banner and the idea that she would've wanted to settle down.(Note: Joss Whedon is someone who's normally known for writing great female characters)

What does that communicate to writers?:
-Traditionally feminine traits are bad. Axe those.
-Giving female characters any depth in personality outside of "Strong, independent, punch-face girl" is bad. Avoid it.

The reason you don't see this this with male protagonists isn't because they "like them better" it's because noone really cares about offending male audiences. They can write a story where the main character starts out(or always is) an amoral, drunken wastrel and make that character male. Sadly if any writer tried to do the same with a female character, the response is "what're you trying to say about women??" and it's back to the template for that idea.

[thorbjornlyk]

Being a male protagonist is about being a protagonist. Being a female protagonist is about being a female protagonist. I've noticed a lot of comics, shows, movies, etc. have this stunning ability to make the decision to have "A female protagonist, for ratio/gender equality."

I read a fantastic satire about that resently, A Day In the Life of an Empowered Female Heroine.

That's not exactly a fair assumption of you're average consumer is it? More often than not, the truth of a situation can be found in the answer that makes the fewest assumptions, it's more likely that Catwoman was panned as a bad film.... because it was.

Did you read the post? They said that peeple use Catwoman as an example of why movies with female leads cannot sell, while in fact the movie was just horrible, whereas with Battlefield Earth people said it was a bad movie withou ever bringing out the fact that the main was a white male.

[jmhenry]

@thorbjornlyk It's early and all I read was the quote so. k.

[scythe]

Hmmm....

Now, granted I'm just going off the thumbnails here, but I count:

• 13 girl only thumbs (43.5%)
• 5 boy only thumbs (16.5%)
• 5 boy + girl thumbs (16.5%)
• 7 "other" thumbs (23.5%)

That's not exactly an 'obviously visible' slant towards male protagonists among the top comics, is it?

I think what you're saying would have held water 20 years ago, heck, maybe even 10 years ago. But we have to remember that all these new stories with female protagonists aren't going to be able to compete with the likes of classic Marvel/DC/Cartoon franchises straight away. Even the older stories, like Wonder Woman and the like were always historically niche. Having just as many girls read comics as boys is a pretty new thing. These things take time to build momentum.

Bella Swan and Katniss Everdeen can't be expected to compete with Spider-Man and the Avengers from the get go, but just the fact that they're showing up on the leaderboard tells us there's a strong demand.

Overall though, my opinion is that having a female protagonist in 2015 will not hurt your view count, and may even help it.

Now, that isn't to say there aren't still problems unique to writing female characters, and by that, what I mean it's an absolute minefield.

Case in point:

^ One of these images is fine, but one is apparently horribly sexist, and needed to be pulled, because ... reasons.

[purrlpankras]

Welll Two Faced has a male main character. He doesnt look very male tho, He has long hair and is about 14.
He just acts like the typical teenager, so any gender could relate to him? I guess.

I have also most a female following (as im aware) and they all seem to hate one of the girl characters already. lol
I haven't introduced all the characters yet but there are some powerful girls later on in the story, I hope they will like them.

[starlightcityentert]

my series has dual protagonists, one male, the other female and I make sure that in all of my graphics I highlight both of them individually and together, but for the current story arc I changed my banner to feature the female protagonist and the female antagonist...I haven't gotten a bad reaction at all, I get new subs every week, a good number of weekly views and from reader comments they think she is pretty bad ass actually

Regarding writing female characters, especially my lead, I don't approach trying to write her as a "female protagonist", but as a person with her own quirks, goals, ambitions, personal demons, and strengths/weaknesses. I don't necessarily think too hard about it outside of that, she sort of writes herself. Her gender is secondary to who she is. That's how I view the writing approach I guess. Also, having a mom. a sister, and many other great women in my life, it kind of makes it easier to not think too hard about writing women in a way that would be "unrealistic" or "offensive" since they all inspire bits and pieces of my characters (as does most of my real life experiences/interactions/relationships with people).

[Zanreo]

Do you see the difference? Battlefield Earth bombed because it was a badly created film. Catwoman bombed because it had a black woman as it's hero. There's a disconnect there that's staggering once you see it, but I digress...

Ugh, yeah,,, if a movie/comic/game/ect with a female/POC/ect lead does badly, it's not because it was terrible (or barely got any marketing so people din't know about it, or released at the same time at some huge release getting all the attention), no, it's obviously because people don't want movies/comics/games with these leads, and this is used as an example "proving" just that, without looking at any other possible factors. If it has a white male lead and does badly? Well, in that case it was just a bad movie/comic/game.

This pretty much sums up the problem with most stories with female leads, writers don't just treat them the same as their male counterparts. Is that because they're 'evil' or "men no not how write women,dur"? No, it's because they worry more about writing the least offensive female character they can out of fear of the backlash it might cause. So they strat writing them using the same "Strong, independent, nearly flawless, and always shows up/tries hard to prove self to the guys" template.

A good example of that is what happened with Joss Whedon for the way he wrote Black Canary some months ago. Bombarded with insults and threats to the point of forcing him off of social media over the whole romance subplot with Bruce Banner and the idea that she would've wanted to settle down.(Note: Joss Whedon is someone who's normally known for writing great female characters)

What does that communicate to writers?:-Traditionally feminine traits are bad. Axe those.-Giving female characters any depth in personality outside of "Strong, independent, punch-face girl" is bad. Avoid it.

The reason you don't see this this with male protagonists isn't because they "like them better" it's because noone really cares about offending male audiences. They can write a story where the main character starts out(or always is) an amoral, drunken wastrel and make that character male. Sadly if any writer tried to do the same with a female character, the response is "what're you trying to say about women??" and it's back to the template for that idea.

The thing here is that if you only have one (significant) female character among a cast of many varied male character, she might feel like the "representation" for women as a whole in this series, the "token" woman. Of course female characters can have flaws! But if the one significant woman in your series is very "stereotypical"... then eh.
A way to avoid this would be having several female characters, with different personalities and traits, strengths and flaws. Say, one female character has a bunch of personaliy traits and flaws that are "stereotypically feminine", but there's another female character without the same traits but with different flaws and traits - and then there's yet another one that's completly different from both of them again? Then it's going to feel much less jarring.

As for me, I only try to write my characters as "good and interesting characters" regardless of their gender.

[Caelestie]

Well you can say that you don't think money is important to you but not everybody is in this situation when making art. Especially if you are doing it as your job. So please don't make it seem like I am making everybody a bad guy for saying this. I do understand that you come from a place were you just really like males characters and just want to draw them and I am not taking away from that. If you don't have much of an interested in representation it is your choice. But It isn't going to be challenging people views on that. though you can challenge them in other ways.

[jmhenry]

As for me, I only try to write my characters as "good and interesting characters" regardless of their gender.

Same here, and I honestly wish that was the one thing on every writer's mind. Or at least top priority.

[keii4ii]

Of course it's different for everyone! That's what I was trying to say, so we're actually in agreement here.

[nobody]

@Kamikaze I would give your comment a hundred likes if I could <3 Which reminds me...I've fallen completely behind on your comic lately...When things get more quiet I'll have some binge reading to do!

@Zanreo Totally agree about what you said about having several female characters with different personalities and traits to avoid making "the one woman" the stereotypical representation for women. Just look at Mad Max Fury Road. Several women with very different personalities, and none of them come off as "this is what women are like", they just come off as individuals.

In general though, I'm way more willing to give lack of representation a pass when it comes to webcomics/indie comics, because it's often made by one person, and that person MUST love their story in order to bother working on it. You're most likely not getting paid, so the only real payoff comes from doing what you love, and then you've got to tell the story you want to tell. The real problem is the big companies - mainstream media should do a better job at including a wider variety of creators and stories. But we're seeing improvements, and the new Thor, Batgirl and MS Marvel are doing extremely well now, so it seems comic readers are more than ready for these improvements.

[nobody]

^ One of these images is fine, but one is apparently horribly sexist, and needed to be pulled, because ... reasons.

The reason being that Marvel is trying to target the female demographic more, and epically failed at that when they put Spider Woman in a pose where she looks like she's waiting to get f**ked from behind, whereas Spider Man looks like he's actually crawling like a spider. I don't know what made them think it was a good idea to hire Milo Manara for that job, considering the kind of work he's done before. This is actually a prime example of why more women are needed in the big companies...in general, women are more likely to understand why the Spider Woman cover is sexist, hence a woman creator would more likely make something that doesn't alienate female readers...

I mean...look at that....what were they thinking!? Milo Manara is known for making pornographic stuff, and that's it's own genre, and that's fine! But to hire him for the Spider Woman cover....I mean...there MUST have been several people seeing that cover before they decided to print it...did no one at any point stop and think "Hey...maybe we should draw her more like we draw Spider Man? We have tons of reference pictures!" ....Like the one to the left for instance. Instead of having Spider Woman on her knees, with her butt in the air, they should've gone with the Spider Man pose...his whole body seems almost glued to the ground, there's nothing sexual there. It's so bizarre, because the Spider Man image demonstrates how easily they could've avoided that whole discussion. Draw her like you'd draw Spider Man. Simple as that. Superheroes often do acrobatic stuff because...cool fighting scenes...and yeah, sometimes that might result in weird positions that can sometimes come off as sexualised. But this wasn't a random frame from the comic, this was the cover. That's how they sell their comic, that's the most important way for them to tell their potential readers what to expect to see more of inside. This just sends all the wrong signals, which the uproar is proof of. Unhappy buyers means less money, so they had to do a better job.

For the record - I don't hate Milo Manara, he's very talented, just the wrong pick for this cover. He did a wonderful job in Neil Gaiman's Endless Nights, where he illustrated the story about Lust...he was the perfect fit for that one, so if anyone's interested in seeing Milo Manara's skills utilised in the best thinkable way, definitely check that story out, the illustrations are gorgeous, and the sexual undertones (or even overtones) fit the story and the characters.

EDIT: I feel like I should add that the Spider Woman cover wasn't just about the Spider Woman cover. It was also about how this was yet another example of how female characters are often portrayed in a more sexualised way than male characters. So while it seems like a big uproar about one specific cover, I think it was more about how this was yet another example, and people are getting fed up with it, therefore some cases get a lot of attention. If this type of portrayal of female characters was a rarity, one such cover wouldn't matter. It's the bigger picture that makes what seems like a minor thing like this turn into big discussions.

[scythe]

Ummm, no. They're the same pose. Whatever else you're reading into it is in your, and self-evidently a lot of other people's, head. I mean, how can she be waiting to get fucked from behind when she's climbing up the the edge of a building?

The long and short of it is she's crawling on a rooftop... like a spider.

Your comment outlines perfectly why some creators are less willing to take on female characters. Namely there's a significant percentage of the population who will find misogyny in any portrayal where a woman is presented in less than a positive light, and objectification where any woman could potentially be perceived as being sexy. Creators need to be 'careful', and 'mindful', and not have them act or pose in ways they'd never think twice about doing with a male character. And make sure they're not too sexy, or have big breasts, or skin tight clothing ... because that's just sexist pandering to 'the male gaze'... or something.

I'm sorry, if there's going to be a female Spider-Man, and why not, people need to steady themselves for copious amounts of butts in the air, leg spreading and gratuitous crotch shots. It just comes with the territory.