Really interesting Youtube Video that discusses increasing importance / prominence of women in the comic book world as consumers in terms of purchasing etc

AdrenalineShots 2017-08-06 10:25:39 UTC #1

Whilst this article focuses on the retail world (he talks about lighting, music etc. and generally the environment for buying comics rather than the comics themselves) it would be really interesting to get others' take on the impact that this has / or will have on the content of comics themselves...

As a writer I'm of the opinion that you should focus primarily on characters as characters and not as a gender... what I mean by that is, if you look at something like the sci-fi / fantasy adventure classic The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the main characters are all men and there is only one very briefly appearing female character (Gladys,
Malone's love interest) but you end up not thinking about that when reading as the characterisation is so rich, diverse and memorable (compare Professor Challenger to Professor Summerlee then to Lord John Roxton, they're all incredibly distinct and well drawn, if you pardon the pun!). You could easily switch that around now and reverse the genders
if you updated the story. You forget about gender and focus on the people, and it's always been my view that approach works (at least in the action / adventure type genre that I tend to create in). Bottom line: if your story is interesting and well told with rich characters I'm not sure we as creators really need to think about story content in terms of gender, and should still just focus on telling a good story, which in my experience, usually appeals to most people.
I'm thinking about creating a female protagonist in one of my series and that's certainly going to be my approach.

Just wondered what others views and approaches on this were? Just thought it was a really interesting point and one that might be worthwhile considering, getting some guidance and input on.

All Best

Danny

IdiotWithPencil 2017-08-06 10:54:53 UTC #2

I think that women like comics for the same reason men like comics, they are entertaining

also I like your take on making characters, I always think that gender, race, species, etc. don't make the character and that you should focus on the characters personality and actions more, then what they are, when making them

ps. gonna go and look up business courses

AdrenalineShots 2017-08-06 11:03:26 UTC #3

Thanks mate Yeah, after that video I think I need to enrol in some business courses too haha

Amecha 2017-08-06 11:34:14 UTC #4

I don't focus on gender and race but I don't ignore it entirely. Some people completely disregard race and gender and end up with a cast full of characters of the same race and dominated by one gender and I think this problem comes from people thinking that those things just plain don't matter and that who the character is is more important, disregarding that their race, culture, religion, gender, etc. play sometimes a huge and sometimes a minor role in their lives. These things tend to be heavily considered in fantasy genres that have fantasy races but altogether forgotten otherwise and it is noticeable and says something. Female characters are going to have a relationship with femininity that needs to be considered, maybe they reject it or maybe they embrace it or maybe they don't care much one way or another. That says something about her. There are also non-white characters raised in a primarily white area may be completely rejecting or embracing of their own culture and that says something about them as well.

It also begs the question, if race and gender aren't important at all then why is only the love interest a woman? If it doesn't matter then why do all of the character have to be male? Why couldn't some of them just have been women instead?

AdrenalineShots 2017-08-06 11:54:54 UTC #5

Thanks, some really useful points to take away / think about. Thank You.

IdiotWithPencil 2017-08-06 12:03:41 UTC #6

I get what your saying, an to answer your question, most are woman cause gays where persecuted for years, characters where man cause women where opressed for most of the time of our existence, also isn't most stories dominated by the same race (humans) cause most writers are human?, aren't most love intrest woman cause like 97% of the world are straight people?, and yes gender, race, religion, etc. does matter but not as much as you make it out to be (you're entering stereotype territory), just cause your black in a white majority you have to throw away your culture?, what if your white in a black culture or and asian in a hindu culture, race dosen't make the impact the situation and context makes the impact, female against femeninity? what about males against masculinity or penguins against singing? again situation makes the impact not the gender or specie....

gender, race, religion, these tells us what the character is, what I think, readers want is to know who the character is

emmyengberts 2017-08-06 12:48:26 UTC #7

My problem arises when the "characters as characters and not as a gender" are nearly all straight white men.

In society and also in media, the "basic" setting seems to be a straight white man.
TV shows with men are often seen as "for everyone", but with female main characters become "women's shows".

Harry Potter is seen as fiction for everyone, because it has a male protagonist, but the Hunger Games are seen as "girl books". Firefly is for "everyone", but Buffy is a "girl show". And there are many more examples.

There is this continuing idea that everyone can identify with a character that is a straight white man, this doesn't go when it's a straight white woman (let alone characters who aren't white or straight, or even conform to gender norms).
And, that's problematic.
Because everyone else has been taught from very early on to symphathise and identify with a straight white male character, not because they want it, but because that's all they'll get. But when they try to find characters like themselves doing these same cool things, suddenly they're delegated to the "women's fiction" or "black fiction" or "LGBT fiction" sections, not in the fantasy or the thriller or any of the other genres, but in special sections, because they're "different" from the "standard" type of main characters that those genres inhabit (white, straight and male).

For people who are white, straight and male (or even two out of three), the question of race, sexuality and gender never seems to be much of an "issue", they think that characters should be characters, but that's simple for them, especially when most of the fiction and media around you actually focuses on people who are similar to you.
You're not seen as "different", you're not deligated to a separate 2 or 3 shelves that holds fiction "with people like you", with very limited story options. The rest of the readers? They learn from a young age to identify with people very much not like them because they know that otherwise, they're going to be out of luck in most genres, this is not done by choice, this is done by neccessity.

So no, as someone who is basically the opposite of a straight white man, I don't agree with "characters as characters and not as a gender/race/sexuality" because those are very important parts of my identity and how I experience the world and how the world responds to me.
But, characters like me are generally pushed into their separate shelves because of for example their sexuality, you want to read a kickass lesbian female main character in an epic fantasy series? You're more likely to find her in the "LGBT books" section next to the non-fiction book about the AIDS epidemic in the 80s, than the epic fantasy section with the straight men. And that makes them impossible to find, but also reenforces this "straight white men only" problem on the regular genre shelves, because who is going to look for their next epic fantasy on the LGBT shelves? They're going to look on the epic fantasy shelves, and those books rarely ever show up there.

edited to add
We have a huge problem when it's okay for a male author to only write male characters for his books, and when he's asked about that answers that women are too hard to write. But he writes books with people who are partially lizards, who live in literal different dimensions, who can perform magic and teleport and stuff like that. Complex things that he has to create and come up with. But somehow, writing a female main character, something that exists in this world, a creature that he has lived with his whole life (he has a mother and a wife), that's too hard and complicated?
While some of our favourite male main characters are written by awesome women (Harry Potter by Rowling, Fitz by Robin Hobb and many more), and somehow they are able to write male characters? And that's considered normal?

punkarsenic 2017-08-06 12:53:48 UTC #8

are you a bloke? as a woman, id 100% be thinking abt the place (or lack of places) women have in the story. ACD did some really clever things with his female characters before, but it was still often a sausage party. i can enjoy a sausage party, but im still very aware of the fact that i am an other in this story - an object of desire, or just absent.
terry pratchett - as another example - has a lot of books with a main bloke, and a bunch of other blokes, and a love interest. that love interest is often multifaceted and fleshed out, but its still obvious that the book is written from the perspective of men, for men. i enjoy it, its very good, but im still so aware its not for me.
course, my man pterry noticed he was doing this and blessed us all with monstrous regiment.

i think the "focus on characters as characters and not as gender" idea often comes alongside a subconscious belief that men are the norm. you have chick flicks, but not bro shows - bro shows are just action movies, scifi movies, fantasy movies, movies.
if youre a man, if your life doesnt centre around women, and you just forget gender in your storytelling youre more than likely to end up telling stories that alienate women. a lot of misogyny is in the subtext, and subtext is something we have to think about and control, or else were telling a story we dont want to tell, and were offending people we dont want to offend. it includes the demographics of our stories.
even if your protagonist is a woman, and she has a great female bezzie, and youre male. you need to think about gender. its gonna influence your writing decisions and you need to consider am i alienating women? am i giving a realistic portrayal of women? am i being a misogynist? if you dont think about this, you end up with stuff like ooh sexytimes black widow written for the male gaze and alienating a tonne of women.

gender matters. its the reason the bechdel test exists; without a bare minimum of women in your story, that story revolves around men. the women it does have, they revolve around men. it alienates your female audience. you dont have to care about that, about that large portion of your potential demographic - but if you dont, admit that youre writing a bro show.

Kayke 2017-08-06 14:31:27 UTC #9

When a man is reading a story that only features men, they might not think about how that's odd. But I will tell you that as a girl growing up it definitely bothered me a lot when I realized the stories I was reading had 1 woman for every 10 men. I mean, it's the reason why I hated Lord of the Rings as a kid even thought fantasy was a favorite genre of mine. Sure, the characters had diverse personalities and backgrounds... but since most of the main characters (especially the ones who got to go on cool adventures) were men, I felt like it was not a world where I would want to exist. A world full of magic and strange creatures... but women adventuring was a bridge too far? Don't for a second think that girls reading don't notice that kind of thing.

I think there is still a market for stuff where the "default" for all the characters is straight-white-male... but there is so much media available today that I think that people who feel excluded from that work would be less likely to engage with it than they might have been in previous years. Now that people have more chances to see media where they're represented, they're going to come to expect that and aren't going to settle for stories with homogenous characters the way they had been when that was all that was available.

To tie it into the video... there's a comic shop in my town that is dark and cramped, only stocks dark and gritty comics (nothing like the comics I read or create), only has male staff and I get weird looks when I go in there... and guess what? I don't go in there anymore. I go to a comic shop that's further away but is well-lit, welcoming, has women on staff (and men on staff who don't treat women shoppers like an alien species), has a special section for kids comics, a special section for indie comics, and even host community events. I'm sure there are people who still go to the comic shop in my town, but I wonder how many of those shoppers are women/children especially in a world where people can just order comics from home or read online.

indagold 2017-08-06 15:16:08 UTC #10

Writing for me is just imagining a story and characters and in my mind if the characters happen to be a certain race/gender/sexuality it just happens. It doesn't affect the story or change the story, the plot and personality of the characters come first.

I think it's very petty and shallow people put so much emphasis on gender/race/etc when in reality looking at it from a writers or artists standpoint, it's just one trait. In the end what demographic the characters are shouldn't matter from a storytelling perspective. I feel people who say they can't relate to a character because they aren't exactly like them are very insecure about their beliefs and how they view the world. I've related to characters who were completely unlike me, don't look like me or don't fit into anything I represent because that's the mark of good writing, where story and characters can transcend boundaries, where you can put yourself in someone else's shoes.

ratique 2017-08-06 15:31:49 UTC #11

The guy in the video is not wrong. Most comic book shops in the US are not really run like businesses, aren't forward thinking and are run often by a certain type of comic book fan. But, especially in business, emotion and ego should come last.

I am constantly surprised how alien it is to many male comic book readers that women have a real interest in comics. But I suppose if you grow up and you are constantly told that as a comicbook reading nerd you will never find a girlfriend anyway, I would probably think the same.

Coming from Europe my experience is quite different. The comic book market was revived by women when I was in my very early teens. Our formerly tiny comic book store became so over run by mainly young girls that they moved into the center of the city, creating a three story shop, each level targeting another fandom: LARP/DND in the basement, Manga/Anime in the bottom level, American type comics in the top level.

This store has been around for ages now and I always try to stop by when I visit my home. It is a beautiful store and I always want to buy something when I go there. It is always busy (with both male and female customers)

Can you guess my surprise when I first stepped into an American comic shop? To this day I could not find something even remotely as awesome as what I was used to back home - and I live in LA, the capital of entertainment. It's a real shame.

theladiesi 2017-08-06 15:33:00 UTC #12

I think it's a good idea for comic creators to familiarize themselves with business. I'm actually a business major even though my passion is in more creative works. There are unfortunately a lot of artists who think the starving artist is just how it is for creative types.

It is really easy to just get caught up in the business side of things though and end up losing creative integrity trying to chase the money. People trying to follow current trends rather than weave good lasting stories that become classics. Like in the 90s when everything was EXTREME!!! They become dated and largely forgotten except for maybe Deadpool.

Thank you for talking about the importance of character over the skin deep features. It's extremely important to remember that character and story come first in writing. Otherwise you get stale and shallow one dimensional token characters that are only defined by what they are instead of who they are.

As a woman it's sad to see characters that people say I'm suppose to identify with just because they are also women. Often times writers will forget to write the character and just focus on what they think is representation. You can easily tell these characters aren't fleshed out and are really just there to sell me a product rather than appeal to my humanity. It's important to ask, "is this a stereotype or is this a well thought out and rounded character."

It's true that things like race, gender, religion, etc are a part of all of our identities, but it's not all that encompasses our unique being. If a character is defined by what they are, instead of who they are, then it's poorly written. No one is just one thing, we are all complex and that's what really matters in the end.

ratique 2017-08-06 15:45:07 UTC #13

Ok, I have to post again just to comment on this.

Character and good character writing are important. Nobody claims otherwise. Women can relate to male characters just as well as men can relate to female characters.

But as a woman I take note when a medium has 90% male characters and the 10% that are female are shallow love interests or villains. I have seen it before. It is boring. It is bad writing, even if everything else is well done. It makes me start wondering how the author sees women, what kind of experience he had in his life with them, that makes him avoid writing about them.

Are there certain stories that make sense to have only male characters? Yes. If you have an historical retelling of a modern war, I don't expect many women to show up. If your story plays in an all boys school, I also don't need many women.

But guess what, almost everywhere else there will be a higher ratio of women around. If an author can't bring that across in their story, they need to go back to the drawing board.

theladiesi 2017-08-06 15:49:53 UTC #14

I persoanlly disagree that this is the norm. It's true that we have different experiences so it's possible that you see these properties as gendered but these fandoms (Hunger Games, Buffy, etc) have a large male audience. Just look at Rooster Teeth's RWBY. It has many male fans who deeply love the characters and story despite their gender. I've seen it first hand at conventions and even in my daily life.

At my college it isn't uncommon to see a large group of male students talking about these fandoms. RWBY in particular. My Little Pony is also a good example of this. Often when I go to events near me, like the movies or gatherings of fans, there are often more male fans than female like me. I think it's important to recognize everyone's humanity instead of brushing people off as basic and "the norm." I and many other fans really don't see these properties as being for girls. If a story is well written with a competent and interesting main character, they will attract a diverse and loving fan base.

indagold 2017-08-06 15:57:59 UTC #15

Hey I'm a woman too but that has nothing to do with what I wrote and you're basically trying to take what I wrote and skew it for yourself. I'm not talking about ending diversity or any of that hogwash, i'm talking about people shouldn't judge things on race/gender/etc alone

Aspie_Gamer 2017-08-06 16:15:20 UTC #16

Okay...Going to play devil's advocate here.

Most girls and women honestly don't care if their gender isn't adequately represented and hating a series just because it doesn't pander to your whims? Isn't that kind of childish and also a sign of insecurity on your part? Your gender/race/sexual status/disability is not the be all end all of who you are as a person nor should it reflect all of whom a fictional person is either. I related to fictional characters regardless of these traits because their values spoke to me, not because they were just like me. If I don't like a series, its because they tried too hard to pander to a certain crowd and there is definitely something to be said about comics that push an agenda too hard.

i.e There was this comic I found on Tapastic that had an autistic main lead and I figured as autistic person myself, "Cool! Don't get many of those types of comics!", but unfortunately, it ended up being one of those "SJW" stories if you will where the focus wasn't on the character as a person, but how often the main lead kept telling everybody that he (or was it she? Character was also trans now that I think about it.) was autistic which growing up as an autistic person made me roll my eyes simply because of how unrealistic it sounded. , I never casually mentioned that little fact about me to my school peers nor do the people at my current place of employment know that I am on the spectrum because in real life, nobody is going to bend over backwards and accommodate you just because you are a woman/person of color/LGBT/person with mental disorder/etc and I certainly don't want to be coddled because I'm different. I got enough of that crap from girls and a few female teachers when I was in school.

And I know that might sound weird coming from the autistic guy who writes a comic about Asperger's, but the thing is, I knew I would be writing essentially an "SJW" type story if I made Susan Graham from Life of an Aspie out to be this do no wrong paragon of moral virtue or solely this quirky tomboy girl that readers see shades of for the first three chapters of the comic which is why Chapter 4 and 5 (and some of Chapter 1 too, though the guy she physically assaulted there happened sorta after the fact and wasn't made as big a deal of though Susan was told not to lash out like that again.) show more to her personality as an autistic person who as readers saw is surprisingly more human than people will give her credit for and that just because she's a girl with autism doesn't mean she's going to get a free pass when she screws up such as when she physically assaulted a popular girl (who to be fair was being a bitch to both her and a friend, but still, it wasn't right of Susan to pummel her face in either) or when she unknowingly upsets her room mate who has a form of PTSD from bullying. Real life doesn't work like that nor does a grounded comic set in a country that doesn't have the same level of recognition for autism that America does.

Anyway, while I have received comments from people who liked LoaA because they were autistic themselves or had a family member/lover who was on the spectrum, I wouldn't say that its only a comic that people with that sort of background will appreciate nor is it something that only female readers will like even though I initially pitched LoaA as a shoujo-ish web comic (its more like a Josei now imo in regards to a certain scene near the end of Chapter 5 and because of what I have planned for the future.) as I have quite a few male readers who liked what they saw whether because of the writing or because they thought my little red headed girl was cute. One male reader in fact said he liked LoaA because of all the video game references and mentions as he's a hardcore gamer irl.

emmyengberts 2017-08-06 16:16:49 UTC #17

Yes. Fandoms are awesome and cool. But I'm not talking fandoms.

I'm talking, a parent comes into a book store and asks for a book series for their teenage kid to read. Parents of girls are much more likely to get handed either the Hunger Games books or Harry Potter, while parents of boys are much more likely to be handed just Harry Potter. Girls get advised books with both boys and girls as main characters while boys are much more likely to be handed just the books with boy main characters.
It's not even fair, not on either of them. But there is this idea with a lot of people that male main characters are relatable for "everyone" while girl main characters aren't, they're just relatable for girls. It's stupid, stupid as hell.
And yes, it's changing, mainly because of the awesome fandoms. But in publishing, in big publishing and media companies that make our TV series and films? They still think like that, at least, too many of them do.

This does not in any way take away that we need boys and girls and non-binary and everyone else in our stories, that we need well developed and awesome characters. Not cardboard cutouts, not stereotypes, not "token" characters who are nothing more than a prop for the main characters to show how 'inclusive' they are in their friends.

We need as many different female charachers as we have male characters, and just as well written. You don't have to write either a well-developed white-straight-male or a not-as-well-developed other character, you can have well-developed black girls next to your gay guy and your transgender hockey player.
But we do have to challenge this idea that it's either/or. That you can't write a relatable story about a subject just because the main character is a black girl.
Representation and diversity in your fiction (and not a saussagefest of 9 men and 1 token woman) is important, because there are so many more beautiful people in this world, who barely ever see themselves in fiction because white-straigh-male is the "neutral" character and anything else is "added baggage". If you want to only write one type of character, that's okay, that's up to you, but maybe ask yourself why you do it? Why you're only writing one type of character when there are so many cool people out there?

punkarsenic 2017-08-06 16:21:01 UTC #18

says a man, to a woman, like he knows better...

to be a good devils advocate youll need to bring some decent statistics to that point, otherwise youve already been countered by the numbers of women who have stated that we care about this.

ratique 2017-08-06 16:26:39 UTC #19

Before this goes out of hand like the other post yesterday, general warning:

Be friendly, take previous posts as an opportunity to push the discussion further and do not attack each other.

Otherwise I will close this thread.

IdiotWithPencil 2017-08-06 16:39:26 UTC #20

hope it dosen't get to that again, but with these kinds of "controvertial" materials, it gets toxic really easy :C