Girl Comics is an attempt from Marvel to show that they totally have women creators and characters there! Don’t believe them, well they managed to scrounge together a couple dozen stories written by them. They also put together little bios for a few of them. Honestly, the whole thing is just sad.
I knew what this book was going into it. I knew it was not likely to be good. These kinds of pandering projects never are. I guess I just wanted to see how bad it actually is.
There were a couple things to like about it. I liked that the authors and artists were seemingly given free range to write any characters and storylines they desired. This gave the book a few unexpected stories. However, most of the stories were extremely short. Like 2 pages short. Which doesn’t add up to a lot of substance.
Also, for some reason, many of the creators wrote Wolverine stories. I’m not sure why that was the character they all chose but it happened. It could be worse, Wolverine actually does have some positive feminist history, but it just seemed strange to me in a book called Girl Comics.
Outside of a couple of okay stories there were a few very offensive ones. Including one involving Goddess Venus trying to get a job at a fashion magazine. SIGH! Okay, I’ve honestly never seen Venus used in a way that didn’t bring feminism back 100 years. Marvel, please put her to rest.
The profiles of female creators at Marvel needed to go back all the way through the company’s history in order to fill out the required page limit of these issues. It’s heartbreaking that they couldn’t come up with more than a couple women throughout their longevity worth featuring in this book.
I sincerely hope that Marvel has done better since this book was written. Unfortunately, this book was written in 2010, only 10 freaking years ago, so it could be assumed that not actually that much has changed.
I’d also love to see diversity in creators and content speak for itself. I’d love to see a time when we don’t need a book called Girl Comics to showcase the couple examples they have. It’d be a much stronger statement to just have representation for women to begin with.
It’s the same problem with any minority. How offensive would it be to put out a book called “Black Comics” or “Gay Comics”? But we let them get away with Girl Comics? Not even Women Comics. Girl. The very title is diminutive.
2020 is almost complete and the most I can hope is that Kelly Thompson stays employed and continues to be the young female voice of comics. But I would love it if I had many more choices.
2/5 feminism can do betters 🤹♀️🤹♀️
For female representation in comics that is actually well written and creative check out The Unbelievable Gwenpool
Please consider using the following amazon affiliate link to purchase this book, it’s at no extra cost to you and would really help me out, thanks!
Buy it here: Girl Comics (Women of Marvel (Unnumbered))
