I can already hear the debate raging about weather or not the images or particular examples in this article are acceptable or defensible or not. I think it's totally fine for the comics that this one shop has are there. Artistic freedom! Great! What's not super is that it's really the only kind. It's like netflix with only action movies.
This article should feature a bunch of blank photos representing the comics that don't exist. Those are the problem. It's ok to have super sexed-up comics in the store, but it's really sad that's all they have.
Japanese manga is fully of sexy, weird, objectifying stuff that most people really wouldn't want their kids to see, but go to a bookstore in Japan and you'll also see bookcase after bookcase of manga totally appropriate for all ages with young girls pressing their nose into them. Stories about teenage girls getting picked on at school or trying to meet the right guy or saying stupid things in class. Stories about girls who are in bands and office workers and every possible thing.
I think the comic industry, video games, tech, and geek culture in general are all going through growing pains as they find adoption in a larger market. We need more articles like this helping people realize what a "normal" comic shop could look like. The comics we have today would still be in there, there would just be more variety and the market for comics would be healthier.
>This article should feature a bunch of blank photos representing the comics that don't exist. Those are the problem. It's ok to have super sexed-up comics in the store, but it's really sad that's all they have.
It's a vicious cycle. Comic book stores sell products that appeal to adolescent men, because their customers are adolescent men, because comic book stores sell products that appeal to adolescent men.
You can easily find English-language translations of the kind of Manga you describe, or of Franco-Belgian comics, but most American comic book stores won't make any effort to stock them, because they don't expect to sell them.
Here in Europe the comics market is more diverse, but that's as much an accident of history as anything else. For "normal" comic shops to exist, you need both a tradition of "normal" comics and a market for them, neither of which really exists in the US. You had Stan Lee and Siegel & Shuster, we had Hergé, Franquin and Peyo, and from there we diverged.
Amazon and online retail are actually a huge sociological problem in this context. If you can just order manga you like, and form bonds w/ online communities of folks w/ similar tastes on tumblr or twitter or wherever, what's the incentive to go to a physical place in your town?
Gaming stores have reinvented themselves as places to play games with others, but it'd be an interesting challenge to reinvent comic shops in that same way.
I know exactly how you feel. For the past year, my main gaming rig has been on another continent and I've been making do with what I could play on a cruddy little netbook running Linux.
It's probably been my best year of gaming ever.
I've been an old west robot prospector.
I've seen a man have sex with a giant goldfish.
I've tried to get a mouse to wear a hat.
I've consoled a grieving child.
After all that was done, I got a small amount of my hardware back and I killed some zombies. That was awesome, too. In fact, it was more awesome than it had been in a long time, since the variety had removed a great deal of the staleness.
It's the same with comics. I want to read a comic about a gay college student coming out to his parents. I want to read a comic about a goat that's also a political prisoner. I want to read a comic about a child learning to cope with the death of a parent. I still want to read a comic about a preternaturally buxom woman throwing a bus, but I want to read other things, too.
The indie game equivalent are web comics. There are really well made and interesting ones out there, although finding them isn't always easy. For some, printed versions are also available.
Great point. Indie games are good for helping you realize how much hard work goes into triple-A games and can really help you appreciate them again with fresh eyes (and totally more affordable on the hardware front! :-)
> I want to read a comic about a goat that's also a political prisoner.
Have you tried reading Sluggy Freelance? I don't think they had a goat who was a political prisoner, but many things of equivalent weirdness have definitely been in Sluggy, like a lop-eared rabbit who's also a mobster who's also a time-traveling space pirate.
>Japanese manga is fully of sexy, weird, objectifying stuff that most people really wouldn't want their kids to see, but go to a bookstore in Japan and you'll also see bookcase after bookcase of manga totally appropriate for all ages with young girls pressing their nose into them. Stories about teenage girls getting picked on at school or trying to meet the right guy or saying stupid things in class. Stories about girls who are in bands and office workers and every possible thing.
I, uh, read a lot of manga intended for teenaged Japanese girls. The ironic thing is, a lot of times even the manga intended for girls is mildly sexualized to please members of the peripheral male demographics, yet the original female audience doesn't run away screaming in response. Guys enjoy "girls comics," and vice versa, and growing up around female anime and manga fans, I never really questioned it. Stories about girls trying to choose between a group of handsome suitors, or stories about guys surrounded by improbably attractive women. Cutesy slice-of-life, or ultra-violence. Ones with boobies and panty shots out the wazoo, or ones with homoerotic undertones... we didn't care, we watched it all together.
Meanwhile, in our more "enlightened" mainstream American culture, people write angry blog posts filled with stupid impact font image macros about how they literally judged an entire medium by its cover, because the female body is offensive or something.
This is such a good post, its shameful the HN political correctness crowd have downvoted it so. I don't think HN is a mature enough forum for this discussion. Its just a reddit-like upvote/downvote gamificiation machine at this point.
I find it amusing that American culture dictates that once you become 18 you are now sexualized and free to partake of whatever media you like, but an hour before your birthday you are an asexual being with no interest in things other than what the political correct types dictate.
A lot of this stuff is aimed for the 14-18 group where puberty kicks in. Yes, there are boobs and bulging crotches! The characters sometimes have sex! I know, its crazy! It almost reflects the hormonal madness of puberty.
The problem is American culture is so damn puritanical that not only have we dismissed this kind of art as victimizing, if not illegal, that we pretend that the status quo of this level of censorship is fine. Puberty will find a way. Kids will date, fuck, get high, etc. Why our art needs to reflect some kind of Judeo-Christian 1950s ideal is beyond me. Heaven forbid kids that age are represented as how they truly are or art they want is aimed at them. Or that, heaven forbid to SJW types, that most people don't have a problem with traditional gender roles. A manga about a girl trying to get a boyfriend shouldn't cause a social catastrophe. Its fine.
I think this kind of thing is a legitimate social panic, the same way people were obsessed with Satanism in the 1980s. We're going to look back at these ultra-politically correct attitudes today and wonder why we were so worried about displaying traditional roles, sexuality, and violence in fiction.
> Meanwhile, in our more "enlightened" mainstream American culture, people write angry blog posts filled with stupid impact font image macros about how they literally judged an entire medium by its cover, because the female body is offensive or something.
It is absolutely offensive when it is posed in an unreal and unnatural way with impossible proportions and impossible looks.
I get that they are comics, but a story about super girl where she has a perfect 36-24-36 with Tripple F boobs that are molded and sculpted and pointed so far north you could almost navigate by them...it...it is a bit ridiculous.
Fun to look at, yes, but they don't offer much other than a fantasy.
I would like to chime in and say that if there is story, any story (or even no story) at all - there is manga about it. And interesting thing is, according to https://www.mangaupdates.com/genres.html - there is more series targeted at girls than boys: shoujo - ~17K, shounen - almost 9K.
Though it's almost reversed for 18-30 age group: josei - ~7K, seinen - ~12K. In sum female oriented works trump male oriented (24 vs 21).
If only Japanese publishers (or it's laws?) were not so narrow minded and hired fans that translate those mangas to fill something like iTunes/Steam library, any human being of any age and sex would have something to read their whole life.
The store I go to has an entire rack/shelf/section for kids. On that rack is MLP, Lego, Minecraft, and a lot of other stuff. Options exist, that store didn't have them available and was probably just hyperfocused on what has traditionally sold, which is a shame because they lose the chance to pick up a new audience. If more stores carried it, the hope is more girls would buy them, and more of those comics would exist, the same way there are 8 parallel running Batman series all with women drawn to to appeal to the instinctual desires of young men.
Side note:
The author also seems to have a perception issues that is very telling in his expectations about comics, and fails to realize there are also a lot more in those comics that are reasons you wouldn't want your seven year old reading them beyond the way women are depicted (which is a point I agree with, I think its ridiculous too, and I don't buy those comics). There are a lot of themes in comics that are made for more mature audiences, the writer just sounds kind of ignorant of the media. He thinks "comics are for kids" for example. No, Archie comics are for kids. Comics haven't "been for kids" since the Comic Authority was still prevalent, he's at least a decade or two out of touch. It's almost entirely geared towards teens and young adults, you know, the ones with disposable income who drop $5 per comic. The lack of options sucks, but like most modern retail industries, the industry is optimized to stock/create and churn out what sells the most. Kids under 10 don't buy nearly as many comics as the 17-50 male who will walk out with 5-30 comics sometimes after pay day.
It's kind of like the parent that complains about the prevalence M rated games because video games are for kids. That medium changed a lot since they were playing Nintendo, or video games first came out and mainly only appealed to kids. Those kids grew up, and they still play video games/read comics, but they spend a lot more on them, but want more sex/violence/darker themes, so the market adapted because they want money. The problem is your comic book shop doesn't even stock the equivalent of a Nintendo games section for the younger audience. He's worried about his daughter, but he probably let his kid walk out with comics that are on the level of GTA, just because it was "Batman".
What you say is like a nice idea, but you have to remember that this is a business. These kinds of comics line the shelves, because they're the ones that sell. Of course, it could very well be that if we had more comics that were more moderate they would sell also, but nobody's willing to take the risk. On top of that, you also require an author that is interested in that - you can't just suck this stuff out of a pen to make money (although often this does happen, they tend to end up being less interesting though).
If the comic is printed out then somebody has to buy it. If the comics aren't bought enough then it just won't work. It doesn't matter whether our ideal society would have us have more moderate comics or not, because it seems that in reality that's not the case. Of course, you can always prove me wrong (and the comic industry) by creating your own comic that does adhere to the criteria you enjoy. You would probably be rather successful if people truly wanted it, because it seems like there is no competition for them. But it seems unlikely.
This is definitely a self-fulfilling prophecy. Many other nations have a wider audience for comics, but in the US we've followed your advice so long that all the audiences that aren't adolescent males have been pushed away. Which leads to where we are: comic book companies chasing after a tiny fraction of their potential audience, because they can't make comics for anyone else, because not enough others are hbothering to look for comics anymore. They'd have to rebuild other audiences from scratch, having burned through them all.
I've been in comic stores that are going hard for the 16-year-old male demographic, and I've been in comic stores that are very friendly. (The latter even has adult stuff, but it's up high or in the back.)
A very good rule is to look in the window from the outside. If you can look in the window, that's a good sign.
Half baked idea for broadening the U.S. comics market.
There is some familiarity with manga in the U.S. I've seen tankobon format translations in Barnes and Noble and public libraries. But there's not the same association with super heroes for books in that format.
So create new works of English language sequential art, but publish them in tankobon format. You could market them to whatever market segment you like, without the superheroes-for-adolescent-males stereotype. You could connect with the existing manga fans first (many of whom already want to prove "Comic books aren't just for teenage boys!"), then broaden out from there.
The titles already exist. The excellent clerk at my local comic store made me a long list of american and international series for my daughter to check out and I've been very impressed. Most of them have to be ordered though, and none are prominently displayed.
So it isn't so much that the titles aren't being created, but I think you're right that the demand will affect what is visible on store shelves.
As the parent mentioned, if you go to Japan, you'll see a thriving market for manga that appeals to girls of varying age groups. So, this would lead one to believe that the demand exists now, it's just completely untapped here. (Ignoring possible cultural differences.) Do you know how you create a large comic book market for older girls / women? Get them hooked when they're young on age-appropriate material, treat them well, and you'll create that market.
Consider 'normal' books. Kids (including girls) have a wide variety of age-appropriate books in a large amount of genres to choose from. I don't understand how there could be a demand for these books, and not those same books with added pictures in them.
That's the problem with these dialogues. Often left-leaning types see them as justification for censorship and shaming when the real issue is market penetration and audience.
I can walk my son through the girly section of 'toys r us' and see nothing but men represented as effeminate "prince" types who's only main motivation in life is finding a princess. The tumbler social justice warriors don't care about that, being mostly female, it doesn't affect them and they probably don't even notice. That doesn't mean we need more manly men in that section, it just means that certain audiences want certain things. Gender is an audience. Its weird that we pretend gender doesn't exist and how it affects us and our fiction consuming habits.
>We need more articles like this helping people realize what a "normal" comic shop could look like.
Its probably a little too late for that. The shops are folding due to digital distribution and they've somehow become even more manboy friendly as the hardcore and die-hards dictate demand. This is like saying that there aren't enough gay-friendly adult bookstores in your town. Um, sure, but the gays are just using the web like normal people. Or that the vinyl record store only has hipster stuff and not the new Kanye. Normal people are using itunes and google play.
If anything, the retail experience for things that can be gotten online easier is going to be skewed to a weird demographic. The great thing is that online and digital distribution lowers the barrier to entry and even with these low barriers, feminist comics are low on the demand side. Turns out a lot of girls just don't give a shit what activists tell them to do, which I think is wonderful. Girls can buy the girliest visual novel on steam then load up the most macho FPS game afterwards. Let them choose. Hand wringing and guilt trips are totally optional.
That's the problem with these dialogues. Often right-leaning types see them as ways to avoid having to take any responsibility or action for anything by claiming the real issues are things that are the neutral mechanics of an impersonal market.
> It's ok to have super sexed-up comics in the store, but it's really sad that's all they have.
I've never been to a comics store where that's all they have. Heck, even the comics selection in non-comics stores that carry some comics usually isn't limited to just that.
Its probably the majority of what they have, because the people that buy it are the ones who will by more comics if more of what they want to buy is available, so its the most profitable segment of the market to serve with comics.
> Japanese manga is fully of sexy, weird, objectifying stuff that most people really wouldn't want their kids to see, but go to a bookstore in Japan and you'll also see bookcase after bookcase of manga totally appropriate for all ages with young girls pressing their nose into them. Stories about teenage girls getting picked on at school or trying to meet the right guy or saying stupid things in class. Stories about girls who are in bands and office workers and every possible thing.
I think the big difference here is that the US cultures differs in that it has a very big "picture books are for children who are still learning to read or male adolescents" thing which skews the market for comic books, Japanese culture is different.
> I think the comic industry, video games, tech, and geek culture in general are all going through growing pains as they find adoption in a larger market.
In some cases, I think that's true. In some cases, though, I don't think its so much that the industries are really finding adoption in a larger market, its that people with ideological axes to grind who aren't part of the market are coming to those industries and beating on them for not even trying to find a broader market but instead doing what they've done for a long time to focus on a market that is well-proven.
"""I've never been to a comics store where that's all they have"""
I've been to plenty of comics stores that only have Marvel and DC, which are the super sexed-up comics being complained about. (Sometimes they'll have an "indie" section in the back with a few Dark Horse and Image trades).
Yes, that what I thought too - manga is the answer, at least for some time. They have lots of different stuff for all ages, except of course there is also a huge amount of similar mainstream "adult" stuff.
Why shouldn't they be allowed to just sell the things their customers actually buy?
If somebody has a vision for a better comic shop, why not create one, instead of calling for rules and regulations?
I suppose you could even apply to YC with the idea of launching a better comic book chain.
Edit: since HN prevents me from commenting atm - sure, write more articles about it. But writing articles about there being a market for x doesn't make it true. Buying better comics would make it true. What if some poor soul reads the articles, pours their savings into a fancy comic shop and then goes bankrupt because nobody is buying? Also, I suspect a lot of comic creators scratch their own itch - they make comics they want, not comics that other people want.
2) they can, and I'm also free to make commentary about it
3) they can, and nowhere did I mention rules or regulations
4) You're right, I could.
The only suggestion I made was that people should write more articles pointing out that there's a lot of potential for more types of comics. The medium is underused. I get the feeling you're replying to what others have said more than what I said.
I've never understood Americans' obsession with superhero comics. When I was a kid I was reading Asterix[1], Gaston Lagaffe[2], Spirou et Fantasio[3], Lucky Luke[4], Prince Valiant[5], The Phantom[6] and similar stuff. Of course, I've read Superman, Batman and Spiderman also but at least I've had a choice. I can't understand why they don't exist in US, why are the only comic books Americans know superhero comics?
Read up on the history of the Comics Code Authority[1]; I suspect that after the Comics Code was introduced, the remaining comic publishers were over-eager to prove their products were the exact opposite of the content prohibited by the Code, setting the thematic pendulum forever swinging toward and away from that content, instead of exploring broader themes.
Yes, this exactly. The CCA grew out of a widespread moral panic about comic book content, and its effects on youth. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seduction_of_the_Innocent. Basically, after this, the once thriving comics industry in the USA was reduced to just superheroes as all other genres like romance, horror, detectives (there's a reason Batman was published in detective comics), science fiction, were considered too "dangerous." It's quite unfortunate.
There's other reasons of course as well - notably the rise of the collectors market, but the USA today is still overwhelmingly dominated by superheroes in the comics market.
Many of the non-superhero comic books in the U.S. end up being adult themed for various reasons. Even many notable French artists are only known here for their work in magazines like Heavy Metal.
One I grew up with (that I probably shouldn't have had as a child) was the Conan the Barbarian comics. Definitely not a superhero title, and definitely skewed towards the adult demographic.
Asterix has tried to penetrate the U.S. market several times, but the style says "newspaper comic strip" to Americans and that's where it got stuck.
Prince Valiant is also an American comic, shown mostly in newspapers.
Spirou et Fantasio looks excellent, I don't think there's ever been a concerted effort to translate the title into English.
Same with Gaston.
I personally think there's a deep well of wonderful French comics that have yet to really make it into the American market: Valérian and Laureline, Blueberry, Arzach, etc. Where the artwork and writing are wonderful. But then again, I think Arzach and other Moebius works ended up here under the Heavy Metal books, which are widely known among late-teen early adult readers.
I don't know about any previous attempts but Cinebook are working on Spirou et Fantasio in English - they're still ongoing but they're not in the original order (the 7 so far are 5 80s Tome & Janry titles followed by two Franquin 50s titles) so who knows how many they plan to do. http://www.cinebook.co.uk/index.php?cPath=182
It's a British English translation but I think any UK/US differences will be fairly small compared to the cultural differences from the original source era. I have books 2 and 5 and to be honest the racial stereotypes in book #2, from 1987, are more troubling than anything I remember in book #5, from 1952!
> Even many notable French artists are only known here for their work in magazines like Heavy Metal.
It's not the artist, it's the environment. Moebius did amazing and innovative comics for the French and Belgian markets. Guess what he did once arrived in the US: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Giraud#Marvel_Comics
Whoa, whoa, whoa. America has non-superhero comics, of course - the Sandman series, Y: The Last Man, Preacher, The Walking Dead, American Vampire, etc.
...but Marvel Comics is superheros. Marvel is owned by Disney, and Disney has a huge marketing budget. DC Comics is superheros...owned by Warner Brothers.
EDIT: yeah...none of those that I mentioned are remotely for kids. Hmmm.
Allow me to add Elfquest, Cerebus the Aardvark, TMNT, Love and Rockets, and R. Crumb! Not sure if all of those are American or not, but a few of the non-superhero books I (as an American) grew up with.
Of course none of them was ever that widely known (apart from TMNT after it stopped being a comic), so the original point about the US and superheroes certainly remains.
From the Wikipedia page on the "Golden Age" of comics.
"Although the creation of the superhero was the Golden Age's most significant contribution to pop culture, many genres appeared on the newsstands, including humor, Western, romance, and jungle stories. The Steranko History of Comics 2 notes that it was the non-superhero characters of Dell Comics — most notably the licensed Walt Disney animated character comics — that outsold all the supermen of the day. Dell Comics, featuring such licensed movie and literary properties as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Roy Rogers, and Tarzan, boasted circulations of over two million copies a month, and Donald Duck writer-artist Carl Barks is considered one of the era's major talents."
There are also Wikipedia pages for Western and Romance comics.
So there used to be other kinds of comics in the U.S. As mentioned elsewhere in this discussion, the Comics Code Authority seems to have marked the end of non-superhero comics.
I'm from the UK and loved my occasional childhood holidays in France or Portugal for a chance to buy Lucky Luke and Pink Panther comics. For some reason Asterix and Tintin were popular in the UK but other Franco-Belgian comics didn't take off. There were a few 70s prints of Lucky Luke and I have one translated 1970s Iznogoud but they went out of print quickly until Cinebook [0] started selling new translations about a decade ago, and the characters are much less well-known here than on the continent.
I think Gaston is still unavailable in English - I'm not such a fan of Spirou and Fantasio but I recently bought Cinebook's "The Marsupliami Thieves" as it was the only Franquin book available in English, sadly.
By the way, a recent HN thread on internationalization mentioned how few really well localized film translations there are and gave Shrek and Frozen as examples of good ones. The English translations of Asterix were brilliant and full of English-specific puns, presumably replacing original French puns (I have read some of them in French but my French is not really good enough for wordplay).
(edit: Although obviously the UK has its own tradition of kids-including-girls-friendly comics: Beano, Dandy, and many others. And for a modern equivalent I like the Phoenix comic [1]. But comic book shops here are mostly also very full of superhero comics and adult manga and not young-girl-friendly.)
I think Gaston is still unavailable in English - I'm not such a fan of Spirou and Fantasio but I recently bought Cinebook's "The Marsupliami Thieves" as it was the only Franquin book available in English, sadly.
Like you, I enjoy Gaston significantly more than Spirou; he also has a more adult work called Idées noires (Dark Thoughts), which is filled with great (and often disturbing) dark humor. It's probably not translated to English either, alas.
Similar comics existed (and exist) growing up in the U.S., but they are less prominent in comic book stores, and more prominent in traditional book stores or the Sunday paper. E.g., Calvin and Hobbes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_and_Hobbes).
We got those in addition to those. E.g. Calvin and Hobbes had a monthly magazine in Norway until a decade after Watterson stopped drawing (publishing reruns after they'd run dry of original material) alongside guest series. On top of that comes the collected editions.
Some US newspaper strip artists end up earning more from Scandinavia (aggregate potential market of about 25 million) than the US because of this.
> "I've never understood Americans' obsession with superhero comics. When I was a kid I was reading Asterix[1], Gaston Lagaffe[2], Spirou et Fantasio[3], Lucky Luke[4], Prince Valiant[5], The Phantom[6]"
It is a culture thing. Growing up in latinamerica in the 80's and 90's meant that I have access to four of the comics you mention and the ones coming from USA. Asterix's stories for instance were cool but I still preferred reading Superman, and I guess that's because in my original country we were closer to USA's culture than French culture.
As far as I can tell, many of the would-be non-superhero comic creators and readers skipped past print and moved to web comics. There's a huge variety in that space.
Asterix isn't a superhero - he's just a normal guy till he has his potion. I guess you could argue Obelix is, since it had a permanent effect on him. Neither of them dress up (any more that the rest of the characters).
Grew up in South America. I read Disney comics. I found and tried to get into Marvel comics when I got older, but couldn't get into them. Too much stuff needing me to read other series ("hey if you want to know how The Hulk got here and saved IronMan from this peril, read xxx chapter y") to know what happened.
Mafalda seems exactly what you are looking for. Perfect for smart little girls.
Calvin and Hobbes, Marsupilami, The Smurfs, Superlopez, Asterix, Gaston, Spirou, Lucky luke, Zipi y Zape, Rompetechos, Mortadelo y Filemón, El botones sacarino, Tintin...
For those who honestly believe that women will never want to read comics - look into webcomics. A huge proportion of the reader base for a good, PG-13(-ish) webcomic will likely be female, and there's a number of webcomics that are targeted towards women. A number of these comics will eventually be printed and sold, usually via the Internet, sometimes at conventions.
I went to the Thoughtbubble Comic Convention last year in the UK, and returned with a hefty bag full of comics that do not exaggerate sexual characteristics (or, in fact, mention sex at all in most cases), focusing on good art and a compelling storyline. Some of these are webcomics, some were designed to be sold as graphic novels and serial comics.
The comic book store is a remarkably poor selection of what's out there, and I think they might've got themselves into a recursive image problem - they stock primarily comics for a certain audience, so only that audience go there, so any change is not welcomed.
Oh wow! I remember being introduced to that, and thought it was really cute, but stopped reading it due to real life things. I'll have to bookmark and catch up again.
Having recently been on a comics binge after 20+ years of reading very few US comics and only slightly more European comics, and definitively not being very sensitive to this issue, I must admit it's still very much more noticeable today. The number of "lets make sure her ass shows" "shots" is much higher than I remember. Occasionally you even have characters comment on it. I'd think that if this was as prevalent when I was in my teens, I'd have much more vivid memories of it.
Most of the characters that were clearly targeted at children when I grew up are now clearly targeted at adults or at least teenagers. E.g. compare X-Men, Spiderman or Avengers from the last 10 years with the 1980's. The dialogue and over-exposition and extensive abuse of soliloquies alone in the 80's Marvel was something I didn't even remember from when reading it as a kid, but which makes a lot of them unreadable to me except for the nostalgia today (compare with Alan Moore's legendary Swamp Thing run which has kept fantastically), but the drawings were also lot less "realistic" and so I at least don't remember the same amount of overly sexualized images.
But at the same time, as some of the commenters on the article points out, there are also a number of titles with characters that fit better for younger readers, and some of them with female leads, and generally more diverse such as the new Ms Marvel (which is a teenage muslim girl of pakistani descent) as Marvel in particular seems to want to capture a wider audience.
I could be wrong, but weren't X-Men, Spiderman and the like always in the trash department of comics? From a European perspective it always seemed so. Sure they have a lot of fans, but they are not really representative of quality comics. (and by trash I mean silly stereotypes and exaggerations are basically implied).
The entire US superhero genre, with some notable exceptions, were in the "trash department of comics". You are right they are not representative of quality comics, but they were and are representative of a large segment of what sells.
Though especially in Europe there's a wider segment of non-superhero comics that sells well (and often outsells Marvel/DC titles by a wide margin), and that is not nearly as sexualised - see my comment elsewhere. But these are very poorly represented in most comic stores in English speaking countries.
The high brow stuff, even in Europe, sold - and sells - in far smaller quantities.
My daughter is seven, and she comes with me to the comic book shop several times a month. She has 2-3 comics a week on her pull list -- Scooby Doo, Scooby Doo Team-Up, Adventure Time, Regular Show, Tiny Titans (until it goes back on hiatus again), My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic. We just got into an arguement the other day -- I am NOT buying two copies of Unbeatable Squirrel-Girl a month, she can just borrow mine. Get yourself a copy of the Diamond catalog (it's right there in the store, or you can normally find the solicits on the publisher's websites -- look for Boom and IDW especially, in addition to the Big Two), find stuff your daughter might like, and tell the store to order it for you. Or go to a different comic book store, if they won't. I've been going to the same comic book shop for years now, even though there's five shops closer (I drive by at least one comic book shop on the way to my regular shop), because they'll order what I want, and they even let me know when there's things they think she might want to read.
I might tend to disagree with the author's final conclusion, that his daughter is too young to understand (at least about sexism and double standards, if not sex). Talking about this subject with your daughter when she brings it up is absolutely appropriate. There is lots of societal pressure on very young girls to fit a specific mold. It starts with very mundane differences... like short/long hair.
Two weeks ago, for example, my daughter and I had a play date with a friend and his son. As we're leaving the basketball court, and putting on our winter jackets, my daughter says to him: "that's a cool jacket". To which the son replies: "this is a BOY jacket". My daughter laughed and said: "that's silly".
I had a similar 'revelation' with violence in video games. I knew a lot of games were violent, but it wasn't until I found my 2 year old son watching me murder human after human with a crossbow in Tomb Raider that I 'got it'. It has ruined AAA video games for me.
I solved the problem by buying a Wii U. I'm not sure why that's better. I have killed hundreds of pikmin, squashed hundreds of goomba and worst of all, used the blue shell in anger. It's still incredibly violent, but I'm not willfully enjoying a murder simulator.
I could be wrong but it seems you have issues with the idea of games for adults and games for kids. The fact that a game is unsuitable for your child to play, or even watch you play, prevents you from enjoying certain games seems just wrong. Did you stop watching movies rated PG-13 or higher as well?
And why is it wrong for young children to understand the concept of life and death? I mean, an overly gory game is one thing but I don't think my ten year old slaughtering opponents by the dozens in Minecraft is going to cause her to grow up with psychopathic urges.
You missed his point. Once he saw what he was doing from his child's perspective, he was uncomfortable with it. Note that this is distinct from being uncomfortable with his child seeing what he is doing.
I had a similar reaction after not playing many games during grad school, which was 2003 - 2010. After graduating, I picked up a PS3. Some games it wasn't too much of an issue (such as Mass Effect), but in others, it was startling (such as Bioshock Infinite).
Why killing needs to be presented as a game? You want to teach children about life and death? Get then to a slaughterhouse. No? Why not? It's just teaching them about life and death...
Uhg this. Recently decided to pick up some of my old favorites (Quake Live, Counter-Strike) and didn't realize fully what I was doing until my two daughters, ages 6 and 8 were peering over my shoulder watching me throw grenades, shoot rockets and snipe opponents (complete with blood effects).
Honestly, I don't think they even blinked, as they are exposed to a lot of media these days, but it certainly gave me pause, and started my quest for more appropriate games (for them).
To contrast this, I have several nephews of varying ages and they would do backflips at the chance to play one of these extremely violent games. Not sure what that means, or says but a man with daughters lives a different life than a man with sons. Not that my daughters don't enjoy shooting rockets and blowing up bad guys, but it doesn't have that same "power" over them as it does with young boys (which I've witnessed first hand as a boy myself and uncle)
Reminds me of my 2-3 year old watching me and getting to play GTA 5. I am sensitive to exposing him to that kind of violence, and boy is it a challenge to play that game without inciting violence or even cussing while driving around. An entire play session would be me driving out of the city as carefully as possible, then heading to some of the more abandoned parts of the map. Finding a tractor or giant dump truck and letting him drive it around, to which he absolutely loved. No ai characters were killed in these play sessions and very few were incited to yell at me...
There are recent AAA games around that attempt to get away from the kill-kill-kill dynamic. A good example is Dishonoured - there's a bonus for completing missions without killing anyone, and the entire game can be completed non-violently.
Maybe it's me but I cannot figure out what point the post is making. What exactly does the author 'get' now? How does the sexualisation of comic book characters relate to how women experience the tech industry? I'm not saying there isn't a link, but the author doesn't explain it from his point of view.
I have to admit I am a little discouraged by the way the author handles his interactions with his daughter. To explain something to your child as being for "older people" and to dismiss her questions with "Daddy's thinking, don't worry about it" seems to parallel the way adult women are treated by men. It's not my place to criticise how a parent behaves with their children but in an article that talks about the problems of empathy and understanding another's point of view it still seems that the author doesn't quite 'get it'.
It sounds like what he "gets" is how hard it is to notice a lot of the sexualization when you don't get to see it from their side.
It's easy to e.g. dismiss the way female superheroes (and villains) are being dismissed with references to how the men are also in tight outfits (as you can find examples of in this thread). It's harder to dismiss the difference between your son having no problems finding something he likes vs. your daughter being put off by the depictions of women in the same series.
This essay is part of a larger body of narratives about men not understanding sexism, or at least not really internalizing how pervasive it is, until it directly effects their wife/girlfriend/daughter.
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This article should feature a bunch of blank photos representing the comics that don't exist. Those are the problem. It's ok to have super sexed-up comics in the store, but it's really sad that's all they have.
Japanese manga is fully of sexy, weird, objectifying stuff that most people really wouldn't want their kids to see, but go to a bookstore in Japan and you'll also see bookcase after bookcase of manga totally appropriate for all ages with young girls pressing their nose into them. Stories about teenage girls getting picked on at school or trying to meet the right guy or saying stupid things in class. Stories about girls who are in bands and office workers and every possible thing.
I think the comic industry, video games, tech, and geek culture in general are all going through growing pains as they find adoption in a larger market. We need more articles like this helping people realize what a "normal" comic shop could look like. The comics we have today would still be in there, there would just be more variety and the market for comics would be healthier.
It's actually a better scenario for everyone.
It's a vicious cycle. Comic book stores sell products that appeal to adolescent men, because their customers are adolescent men, because comic book stores sell products that appeal to adolescent men.
You can easily find English-language translations of the kind of Manga you describe, or of Franco-Belgian comics, but most American comic book stores won't make any effort to stock them, because they don't expect to sell them.
Here in Europe the comics market is more diverse, but that's as much an accident of history as anything else. For "normal" comic shops to exist, you need both a tradition of "normal" comics and a market for them, neither of which really exists in the US. You had Stan Lee and Siegel & Shuster, we had Hergé, Franquin and Peyo, and from there we diverged.
Gaming stores have reinvented themselves as places to play games with others, but it'd be an interesting challenge to reinvent comic shops in that same way.
It's probably been my best year of gaming ever.
I've been an old west robot prospector.
I've seen a man have sex with a giant goldfish.
I've tried to get a mouse to wear a hat.
I've consoled a grieving child.
After all that was done, I got a small amount of my hardware back and I killed some zombies. That was awesome, too. In fact, it was more awesome than it had been in a long time, since the variety had removed a great deal of the staleness.
It's the same with comics. I want to read a comic about a gay college student coming out to his parents. I want to read a comic about a goat that's also a political prisoner. I want to read a comic about a child learning to cope with the death of a parent. I still want to read a comic about a preternaturally buxom woman throwing a bus, but I want to read other things, too.
edit: and I just realised the author invented the Bechdel test, which is appropriate.
...What game is that?
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Have you tried reading Sluggy Freelance? I don't think they had a goat who was a political prisoner, but many things of equivalent weirdness have definitely been in Sluggy, like a lop-eared rabbit who's also a mobster who's also a time-traveling space pirate.
I, uh, read a lot of manga intended for teenaged Japanese girls. The ironic thing is, a lot of times even the manga intended for girls is mildly sexualized to please members of the peripheral male demographics, yet the original female audience doesn't run away screaming in response. Guys enjoy "girls comics," and vice versa, and growing up around female anime and manga fans, I never really questioned it. Stories about girls trying to choose between a group of handsome suitors, or stories about guys surrounded by improbably attractive women. Cutesy slice-of-life, or ultra-violence. Ones with boobies and panty shots out the wazoo, or ones with homoerotic undertones... we didn't care, we watched it all together.
Meanwhile, in our more "enlightened" mainstream American culture, people write angry blog posts filled with stupid impact font image macros about how they literally judged an entire medium by its cover, because the female body is offensive or something.
I find it amusing that American culture dictates that once you become 18 you are now sexualized and free to partake of whatever media you like, but an hour before your birthday you are an asexual being with no interest in things other than what the political correct types dictate.
A lot of this stuff is aimed for the 14-18 group where puberty kicks in. Yes, there are boobs and bulging crotches! The characters sometimes have sex! I know, its crazy! It almost reflects the hormonal madness of puberty.
The problem is American culture is so damn puritanical that not only have we dismissed this kind of art as victimizing, if not illegal, that we pretend that the status quo of this level of censorship is fine. Puberty will find a way. Kids will date, fuck, get high, etc. Why our art needs to reflect some kind of Judeo-Christian 1950s ideal is beyond me. Heaven forbid kids that age are represented as how they truly are or art they want is aimed at them. Or that, heaven forbid to SJW types, that most people don't have a problem with traditional gender roles. A manga about a girl trying to get a boyfriend shouldn't cause a social catastrophe. Its fine.
I think this kind of thing is a legitimate social panic, the same way people were obsessed with Satanism in the 1980s. We're going to look back at these ultra-politically correct attitudes today and wonder why we were so worried about displaying traditional roles, sexuality, and violence in fiction.
It is absolutely offensive when it is posed in an unreal and unnatural way with impossible proportions and impossible looks.
I get that they are comics, but a story about super girl where she has a perfect 36-24-36 with Tripple F boobs that are molded and sculpted and pointed so far north you could almost navigate by them...it...it is a bit ridiculous.
Fun to look at, yes, but they don't offer much other than a fantasy.
If only Japanese publishers (or it's laws?) were not so narrow minded and hired fans that translate those mangas to fill something like iTunes/Steam library, any human being of any age and sex would have something to read their whole life.
The store I go to has an entire rack/shelf/section for kids. On that rack is MLP, Lego, Minecraft, and a lot of other stuff. Options exist, that store didn't have them available and was probably just hyperfocused on what has traditionally sold, which is a shame because they lose the chance to pick up a new audience. If more stores carried it, the hope is more girls would buy them, and more of those comics would exist, the same way there are 8 parallel running Batman series all with women drawn to to appeal to the instinctual desires of young men.
Side note: The author also seems to have a perception issues that is very telling in his expectations about comics, and fails to realize there are also a lot more in those comics that are reasons you wouldn't want your seven year old reading them beyond the way women are depicted (which is a point I agree with, I think its ridiculous too, and I don't buy those comics). There are a lot of themes in comics that are made for more mature audiences, the writer just sounds kind of ignorant of the media. He thinks "comics are for kids" for example. No, Archie comics are for kids. Comics haven't "been for kids" since the Comic Authority was still prevalent, he's at least a decade or two out of touch. It's almost entirely geared towards teens and young adults, you know, the ones with disposable income who drop $5 per comic. The lack of options sucks, but like most modern retail industries, the industry is optimized to stock/create and churn out what sells the most. Kids under 10 don't buy nearly as many comics as the 17-50 male who will walk out with 5-30 comics sometimes after pay day.
It's kind of like the parent that complains about the prevalence M rated games because video games are for kids. That medium changed a lot since they were playing Nintendo, or video games first came out and mainly only appealed to kids. Those kids grew up, and they still play video games/read comics, but they spend a lot more on them, but want more sex/violence/darker themes, so the market adapted because they want money. The problem is your comic book shop doesn't even stock the equivalent of a Nintendo games section for the younger audience. He's worried about his daughter, but he probably let his kid walk out with comics that are on the level of GTA, just because it was "Batman".
If the comic is printed out then somebody has to buy it. If the comics aren't bought enough then it just won't work. It doesn't matter whether our ideal society would have us have more moderate comics or not, because it seems that in reality that's not the case. Of course, you can always prove me wrong (and the comic industry) by creating your own comic that does adhere to the criteria you enjoy. You would probably be rather successful if people truly wanted it, because it seems like there is no competition for them. But it seems unlikely.
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A very good rule is to look in the window from the outside. If you can look in the window, that's a good sign.
There is some familiarity with manga in the U.S. I've seen tankobon format translations in Barnes and Noble and public libraries. But there's not the same association with super heroes for books in that format.
So create new works of English language sequential art, but publish them in tankobon format. You could market them to whatever market segment you like, without the superheroes-for-adolescent-males stereotype. You could connect with the existing manga fans first (many of whom already want to prove "Comic books aren't just for teenage boys!"), then broaden out from there.
Has anyone already tried this?
If there is not enough demand, then publishers aren't going to create these titles.
So it isn't so much that the titles aren't being created, but I think you're right that the demand will affect what is visible on store shelves.
Consider 'normal' books. Kids (including girls) have a wide variety of age-appropriate books in a large amount of genres to choose from. I don't understand how there could be a demand for these books, and not those same books with added pictures in them.
I can walk my son through the girly section of 'toys r us' and see nothing but men represented as effeminate "prince" types who's only main motivation in life is finding a princess. The tumbler social justice warriors don't care about that, being mostly female, it doesn't affect them and they probably don't even notice. That doesn't mean we need more manly men in that section, it just means that certain audiences want certain things. Gender is an audience. Its weird that we pretend gender doesn't exist and how it affects us and our fiction consuming habits.
>We need more articles like this helping people realize what a "normal" comic shop could look like.
Its probably a little too late for that. The shops are folding due to digital distribution and they've somehow become even more manboy friendly as the hardcore and die-hards dictate demand. This is like saying that there aren't enough gay-friendly adult bookstores in your town. Um, sure, but the gays are just using the web like normal people. Or that the vinyl record store only has hipster stuff and not the new Kanye. Normal people are using itunes and google play.
If anything, the retail experience for things that can be gotten online easier is going to be skewed to a weird demographic. The great thing is that online and digital distribution lowers the barrier to entry and even with these low barriers, feminist comics are low on the demand side. Turns out a lot of girls just don't give a shit what activists tell them to do, which I think is wonderful. Girls can buy the girliest visual novel on steam then load up the most macho FPS game afterwards. Let them choose. Hand wringing and guilt trips are totally optional.
There, fixed.
Yes they do! People are constantly talking about the stupid gendering of toys that don't need to be gendered.
well, there are some exceptions, like Ms. Marvel (http://marvel.com/characters/1017577/ms_marvel_kamala_khan/f...) or latest run of She-Hulk (http://marvel.com/comics/issue/49122/she-hulk_2014_8)
I've never been to a comics store where that's all they have. Heck, even the comics selection in non-comics stores that carry some comics usually isn't limited to just that.
Its probably the majority of what they have, because the people that buy it are the ones who will by more comics if more of what they want to buy is available, so its the most profitable segment of the market to serve with comics.
> Japanese manga is fully of sexy, weird, objectifying stuff that most people really wouldn't want their kids to see, but go to a bookstore in Japan and you'll also see bookcase after bookcase of manga totally appropriate for all ages with young girls pressing their nose into them. Stories about teenage girls getting picked on at school or trying to meet the right guy or saying stupid things in class. Stories about girls who are in bands and office workers and every possible thing.
I think the big difference here is that the US cultures differs in that it has a very big "picture books are for children who are still learning to read or male adolescents" thing which skews the market for comic books, Japanese culture is different.
> I think the comic industry, video games, tech, and geek culture in general are all going through growing pains as they find adoption in a larger market.
In some cases, I think that's true. In some cases, though, I don't think its so much that the industries are really finding adoption in a larger market, its that people with ideological axes to grind who aren't part of the market are coming to those industries and beating on them for not even trying to find a broader market but instead doing what they've done for a long time to focus on a market that is well-proven.
I've been to plenty of comics stores that only have Marvel and DC, which are the super sexed-up comics being complained about. (Sometimes they'll have an "indie" section in the back with a few Dark Horse and Image trades).
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Why shouldn't they be allowed to just sell the things their customers actually buy?
If somebody has a vision for a better comic shop, why not create one, instead of calling for rules and regulations?
I suppose you could even apply to YC with the idea of launching a better comic book chain.
Edit: since HN prevents me from commenting atm - sure, write more articles about it. But writing articles about there being a market for x doesn't make it true. Buying better comics would make it true. What if some poor soul reads the articles, pours their savings into a fancy comic shop and then goes bankrupt because nobody is buying? Also, I suspect a lot of comic creators scratch their own itch - they make comics they want, not comics that other people want.
2) they can, and I'm also free to make commentary about it
3) they can, and nowhere did I mention rules or regulations
4) You're right, I could.
The only suggestion I made was that people should write more articles pointing out that there's a lot of potential for more types of comics. The medium is underused. I get the feeling you're replying to what others have said more than what I said.
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterix
[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaston_%28comics%29
[3]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirou_et_Fantasio
[4]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_Luke
[5]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Valiant
[6]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phantom
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comics_Code_Authority
There's other reasons of course as well - notably the rise of the collectors market, but the USA today is still overwhelmingly dominated by superheroes in the comics market.
One I grew up with (that I probably shouldn't have had as a child) was the Conan the Barbarian comics. Definitely not a superhero title, and definitely skewed towards the adult demographic.
Asterix has tried to penetrate the U.S. market several times, but the style says "newspaper comic strip" to Americans and that's where it got stuck.
Prince Valiant is also an American comic, shown mostly in newspapers.
Spirou et Fantasio looks excellent, I don't think there's ever been a concerted effort to translate the title into English.
Same with Gaston.
I personally think there's a deep well of wonderful French comics that have yet to really make it into the American market: Valérian and Laureline, Blueberry, Arzach, etc. Where the artwork and writing are wonderful. But then again, I think Arzach and other Moebius works ended up here under the Heavy Metal books, which are widely known among late-teen early adult readers.
It's a British English translation but I think any UK/US differences will be fairly small compared to the cultural differences from the original source era. I have books 2 and 5 and to be honest the racial stereotypes in book #2, from 1987, are more troubling than anything I remember in book #5, from 1952!
It's not the artist, it's the environment. Moebius did amazing and innovative comics for the French and Belgian markets. Guess what he did once arrived in the US: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Giraud#Marvel_Comics
...but Marvel Comics is superheros. Marvel is owned by Disney, and Disney has a huge marketing budget. DC Comics is superheros...owned by Warner Brothers.
EDIT: yeah...none of those that I mentioned are remotely for kids. Hmmm.
Of course none of them was ever that widely known (apart from TMNT after it stopped being a comic), so the original point about the US and superheroes certainly remains.
I imagine it's partly due to the legacy of the CCA [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comics_Code_Authority].
Also I think everyone in Sweden has heard of Goliat. [2]
[1] http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valhall_%28tecknad_serie%29
[2] http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliat_%28tecknad_serie%29
"Although the creation of the superhero was the Golden Age's most significant contribution to pop culture, many genres appeared on the newsstands, including humor, Western, romance, and jungle stories. The Steranko History of Comics 2 notes that it was the non-superhero characters of Dell Comics — most notably the licensed Walt Disney animated character comics — that outsold all the supermen of the day. Dell Comics, featuring such licensed movie and literary properties as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Roy Rogers, and Tarzan, boasted circulations of over two million copies a month, and Donald Duck writer-artist Carl Barks is considered one of the era's major talents."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Age_of_Comic_Books
There are also Wikipedia pages for Western and Romance comics.
So there used to be other kinds of comics in the U.S. As mentioned elsewhere in this discussion, the Comics Code Authority seems to have marked the end of non-superhero comics.
Later I spent a huge amount of time on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9onard_(comics)
I think Gaston is still unavailable in English - I'm not such a fan of Spirou and Fantasio but I recently bought Cinebook's "The Marsupliami Thieves" as it was the only Franquin book available in English, sadly.
By the way, a recent HN thread on internationalization mentioned how few really well localized film translations there are and gave Shrek and Frozen as examples of good ones. The English translations of Asterix were brilliant and full of English-specific puns, presumably replacing original French puns (I have read some of them in French but my French is not really good enough for wordplay).
(edit: Although obviously the UK has its own tradition of kids-including-girls-friendly comics: Beano, Dandy, and many others. And for a modern equivalent I like the Phoenix comic [1]. But comic book shops here are mostly also very full of superhero comics and adult manga and not young-girl-friendly.)
[0] http://www.cinebook.co.uk [1] http://www.thephoenixcomic.co.uk/
Like you, I enjoy Gaston significantly more than Spirou; he also has a more adult work called Idées noires (Dark Thoughts), which is filled with great (and often disturbing) dark humor. It's probably not translated to English either, alas.
Some US newspaper strip artists end up earning more from Scandinavia (aggregate potential market of about 25 million) than the US because of this.
It is a culture thing. Growing up in latinamerica in the 80's and 90's meant that I have access to four of the comics you mention and the ones coming from USA. Asterix's stories for instance were cool but I still preferred reading Superman, and I guess that's because in my original country we were closer to USA's culture than French culture.
How is Asterix not a superhero, though?
Calvin and Hobbes, Marsupilami, The Smurfs, Superlopez, Asterix, Gaston, Spirou, Lucky luke, Zipi y Zape, Rompetechos, Mortadelo y Filemón, El botones sacarino, Tintin...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commando_%28comics%29
I went to the Thoughtbubble Comic Convention last year in the UK, and returned with a hefty bag full of comics that do not exaggerate sexual characteristics (or, in fact, mention sex at all in most cases), focusing on good art and a compelling storyline. Some of these are webcomics, some were designed to be sold as graphic novels and serial comics.
The comic book store is a remarkably poor selection of what's out there, and I think they might've got themselves into a recursive image problem - they stock primarily comics for a certain audience, so only that audience go there, so any change is not welcomed.
Most of the characters that were clearly targeted at children when I grew up are now clearly targeted at adults or at least teenagers. E.g. compare X-Men, Spiderman or Avengers from the last 10 years with the 1980's. The dialogue and over-exposition and extensive abuse of soliloquies alone in the 80's Marvel was something I didn't even remember from when reading it as a kid, but which makes a lot of them unreadable to me except for the nostalgia today (compare with Alan Moore's legendary Swamp Thing run which has kept fantastically), but the drawings were also lot less "realistic" and so I at least don't remember the same amount of overly sexualized images.
But at the same time, as some of the commenters on the article points out, there are also a number of titles with characters that fit better for younger readers, and some of them with female leads, and generally more diverse such as the new Ms Marvel (which is a teenage muslim girl of pakistani descent) as Marvel in particular seems to want to capture a wider audience.
Though especially in Europe there's a wider segment of non-superhero comics that sells well (and often outsells Marvel/DC titles by a wide margin), and that is not nearly as sexualised - see my comment elsewhere. But these are very poorly represented in most comic stores in English speaking countries.
The high brow stuff, even in Europe, sold - and sells - in far smaller quantities.
Two weeks ago, for example, my daughter and I had a play date with a friend and his son. As we're leaving the basketball court, and putting on our winter jackets, my daughter says to him: "that's a cool jacket". To which the son replies: "this is a BOY jacket". My daughter laughed and said: "that's silly".
Anyway, speaking of Comics, PaperCutz has some very nice ones that my 5 year old daughter loves: http://papercutz.com/comics/monster
As another suggestion, Orc Girl[1] is nice, though somewhat dark.
[1] http://readchallenger.com/comic/orc-girl/
I solved the problem by buying a Wii U. I'm not sure why that's better. I have killed hundreds of pikmin, squashed hundreds of goomba and worst of all, used the blue shell in anger. It's still incredibly violent, but I'm not willfully enjoying a murder simulator.
And why is it wrong for young children to understand the concept of life and death? I mean, an overly gory game is one thing but I don't think my ten year old slaughtering opponents by the dozens in Minecraft is going to cause her to grow up with psychopathic urges.
I had a similar reaction after not playing many games during grad school, which was 2003 - 2010. After graduating, I picked up a PS3. Some games it wasn't too much of an issue (such as Mass Effect), but in others, it was startling (such as Bioshock Infinite).
Honestly, I don't think they even blinked, as they are exposed to a lot of media these days, but it certainly gave me pause, and started my quest for more appropriate games (for them).
To contrast this, I have several nephews of varying ages and they would do backflips at the chance to play one of these extremely violent games. Not sure what that means, or says but a man with daughters lives a different life than a man with sons. Not that my daughters don't enjoy shooting rockets and blowing up bad guys, but it doesn't have that same "power" over them as it does with young boys (which I've witnessed first hand as a boy myself and uncle)
I have to admit I am a little discouraged by the way the author handles his interactions with his daughter. To explain something to your child as being for "older people" and to dismiss her questions with "Daddy's thinking, don't worry about it" seems to parallel the way adult women are treated by men. It's not my place to criticise how a parent behaves with their children but in an article that talks about the problems of empathy and understanding another's point of view it still seems that the author doesn't quite 'get it'.
It's easy to e.g. dismiss the way female superheroes (and villains) are being dismissed with references to how the men are also in tight outfits (as you can find examples of in this thread). It's harder to dismiss the difference between your son having no problems finding something he likes vs. your daughter being put off by the depictions of women in the same series.