Post by Strafe Prower on Aug 2, 2011 0:13:06 GMT -5
Note: This article wll be focusing mainly on DC and Marvel, but if you would like to discuss other companys as well, be my guest.
After doing some reasearch, I started noticing more and more that female solo titles have a hard time staying around in the comic world. That applies even more to female only teams. I then started thinking about what it takes for a on-going series to stay on the shelves. A question then popped in my head.
"Why can't female comic characters carry titles as well as men?"
I then did further investigation on individual companies and noticed that DC was a lot more successful with female centric titles than Marvel was. How that translates to indy publishers, I'm not positive, but I don't recall many stong female leads there either. Evidence for such a claim?
For starters, you have the obvious character for DC, Wonder Woman. She has carried a title for many years and is a part of the Trinity. She has by far the most solo comics for any one female character. She is in the top 10 characters with the most solo issues, if not top 5.
Once you get past that though, who else has had successful solo/female team titles?
*Catwoman has had 2 solo books with a combined total of 179 issues. The first volume had 96 issues and the second had 83 issues. Note also that she has another upcoming on-going by a writer who has had success with them (Judd Winnick).
*Birds of Prey being a example of a female centered team. it's first on-going made it to 126 issues. The current volume is at 14 issues and the team will be featured in a new ongoing post-reboot.
*Supergirl is another example of success with over 100 issues and 4 solo titles with the longest running one making it to 81 issues.
Note: Other examples of characters/teams with successful/current titles are Batgirl, Powergirl, Harley Quinn, Huntress, Zatanna, Hawkgirl, Manhunter, Gotham City Sirens, and more.
So we can see that DC can sell female titles, but with less success, By far, then titles led by men. Marvel, on the other hand, hasn't been near as successful. Lets look at some of their successful titles.
*Spidergirl is the only Marvel title lead by a female to get a solo title past the 100 issue mark. She is the best selling Marvel girl by far, being only one to get near the 130 solo issues mark.
*She-Hulk is next on the list have been in several of her own solo titles with the longest running title making it to the 60 issue mark. She has barely made it over the 100 solo issues mark.
*Spider-Woman and Ms. Marvel both had a solo title that got to issue 50. Ms. Marvel and Spider-Women also had second on-goings that were short lived.
*Miss America had a title back in the 1940's by Marvel that got to issue 60 as well.
Past that, I can only think of a few Marvel girls to have titles. Dazzler, Elektra, Black Widow, Mystique, X-23, and Emma Frost being the only ones that come to mind with little to no success on all but Dazzler nd Elektra.
Now I re-ask my question. Why can't female comic characters carry titles as well as men? Not only that, but I will now add another question to it. Why is DC more successful in this area of comics?I would love to hear opinions on this subject!
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