Comics are a girl’s best friend

Girls like princesses and ponies - but what about knocking out super-villains and saving the city?

Earlier this year, 25-year-old Erika Blanco stepped into what’s been considered a boy’s world when she became Brownsville’s first female comic shop owner, renaming the former New Vision comics after her favorite super-heroine.

Rogue Comics on Jefferson Street offers a variety of comics, collectable figures, T-shirts, books and cards, but Blanco is disappointed she doesn’t see more women in her store.

“I see girls reading and flipping through them, and girls may read their boyfriends’ comics, but I’ve yet to get many as customers,” she said, defending comic books as an art form. “They see it as something childish.”

There’s a lot about the medium non-comic book readers haven’t experienced, she explained.

“Comics are mainly a way just to escape from the real world,” Blanco said. “They’re universal. Granted it has more boy figures than girls, but the stories themselves are more universal.”

Florida-based webcomic creator Starline Xiomara Hodge said comic books could be enjoyed by anyone.

“I think as long as the comic books write characters that are individuals and not stereotypes, you can appeal to anyone,” she said. “The problems the American comic book industry has today with attracting a female audience has a lot to do with people not writing the characters as individual people, and instead they write them as just the ‘girl.’ It makes them the one that’s ‘different’ instead of a real character, a person.”

Hodge updates www.CandiComics.com several times a week, chronicling the laughs and drama of art major Candi and her friends. The coming of age tale is set in a mostly realistic world (aside from the occasional flying ferret), with a manga-inspired art style. Manga is the Japanese word for comics.

While the Japanese-style art can be popular among female readers, Hodge has an even mix of men and women as readers. She said every reader is different, and shouldn’t be limited by gender.

“Female readers aren’t some strange creatures that you ‘figure out’ to cater to,” she said. “The comics just have to be good, interesting stories. If the comic book industry treats female readers as an oddity, we notice, and we don’t like feeling that way. So we wouldn’t buy a book that makes us feel so.”

Hodge has enjoyed comics of all kinds since she was little.

“My mom would bring me the comics from the newspaper and I would try to draw them as practice,” she said. “As a teenager though, I became very interested in anime, with Sailor Moon being the first show to really catch my interest.”

The rising popularity of Japanese anime provided an eye-opener for many young girls over the past decade.

Angie Vera, who buys manga collections regularly at bookstores in Brownsville, said she prefers the exaggerated child-like style known as chibi.

“I liked how nice it looked and how cute the characters were,” the 26-year-old said. “It’s cute and it can relate to anything.”

Comics offer stories far more varied than the teen drama and romance stories girls are supposed to like, she explained.

“The storylines are something different from regular girl books,” Vera said.

Blanco agreed, having enjoyed comics as a child only to rediscover them as an adult.

“I started reading comics when I was younger, reading Archie,” she said. “I was a child of the 80’s. I grew up watching X-Men and Spider-Man (years later she got back into comics and became a big reader).”

Although she stopped reading in high school, she gave comics another shot in college and now reads dozens of books a month.

Many readers are drawn into comic books through their film and television counterparts.

“During the time of the Crow and Spawn (movies) a friend of mine told me they were comics,” explained Jessica Martinez, 30.

Once she saw the original comics, Martinez fell in love.

“The art, the story, the passion,” she said. “When you read it you feel like they understand you.”

Traditionally, cartoony drawings and emotional drama are associated with female-friendly comics, but Martinez prefers the over-the-top, sex-and-violence style of Jim Balent’s Tarot comics.

“Men tend to exaggerate women’s forms, but as a female, sometimes you visualize yourself that way or fantasize yourself like that,” she explained.

Just as male audiences associate themselves with the suave James Bond or gruff Wolverine, Martinez said some women like to put themselves in the stiletto-heeled shoes of super-heroines.

“These women have the power to be sexy, but powerful,” she said. “A girl can be voluptuous and still go medieval on you.”

With Martinez’ husband ready to publish his first comic book, the Brownsville-based hero Opossum, and Martinez herself a big collector, the couple’s daughter has grown up surrounded by comic books.

“I like Batman, Superman, Transformers,” said Angelina Hernandez, 7.

From her perspective, comic books are for girls, even if boys can like them too.

“Mommy has a lot of comic books in her room,” Hernandez said, adding she likes looking at the pictures, not reading the stories.

Even if she relies on her parents to read most stories to her, Hernandez said she could see herself as a super-hero.

“Yes, if I’m Spider-Girl,” she explained. “Cause they save the world.”

Blanco said female super-heroes are a good way for girls to get into reading comics. Younger girls can expand their reading skills and women can escape the stresses of the real world with fantasy.

Wonder Woman, the most famous female super-hero, comes highly recommended by Blanco.

“She’s just such a strong character and she’s dealing with more realistic things,” she explained.

Hodge said girls not interested in costumes and super-powers might try more down-to-earth comics, like Blue Monday, by Chynna Clugston from Oni Press. That comic, published periodically as limited mini-series, focuses on the trials and tribulations of proto-emo teens in the 1980’s.

Whatever their interests, Blanco suggests more women give comic books a chance.

“Just try something new and you’ll always have something to look forward to every month when the next story comes out,” she said. “Even if they are talking about stories in space or something else, it’s something different.”