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Boobs, butts, and comics.
Deb Aoki has some damn smart things to say about DC's New 52, Catwoman, Starfire, and manga.
The article is long but well-worth a complete readthrough. Among one of the issues that Aoki tackles is the question, "Why are female comic book readers so upset about sexist depictions of Catwoman and Starfire, but never express rage at exponentially more vile manga fare like Tenjo Tenge or High School of the Dead?" The answers are actually pretty simple:
Shorter version: Manga readers (both male and female) who care about not reading crappy depictions of women can easily ignore the existence of titles like High School of the Dead and its ilk, because these titles a) are niche series rather than mainstream/dominant genres of manga - yes, even in Japan, b) are conceived of and marketed from the beginning as male wish-fulfillment fantasies that never try to pass themselves off as "lolz empowering wimmins!", and c) do not include characters that are much-beloved by female (and male) readers from other mediums or several decades' worth of past comic books.
I would also add that when a mainstream manga series gets enough of a fanbase to say that it has honestly produced some iconic badass female characters - like Sakura from Naruto or Rukia from Bleach - then you WILL actually start to see Fanrage On the Internet when those characters are portrayed in a sexist manner within their title series. Because we all care a lot more about female characters who are awesome being portrayed poorly than we do about female characters created to be masturbatory fantasies being portrayed as, well, masturbatory fantasies.
Anyway, that's just one of the issues that the entire article tackles. Aoki also has some very insightful things to say about Tiger & Bunny and Sailor Moon, too. So go, read!
The article is long but well-worth a complete readthrough. Among one of the issues that Aoki tackles is the question, "Why are female comic book readers so upset about sexist depictions of Catwoman and Starfire, but never express rage at exponentially more vile manga fare like Tenjo Tenge or High School of the Dead?" The answers are actually pretty simple:
Maybe it's because I'm not as emotionally invested in who these characters once were or what they represent. I never had memories or expected the characters in TenTen or HSotD to act a certain, more virtuous way. These characters are never concurrently marketed as 'kiddy versions' for younger readers.
As Mikey San from the One Piece at at Time Blog (@OPataTimeBlog) mentioned, "There is no way I am letting my 9 year old bro pick up that Red Hood title. He knows Starfire from the Teen Titans cartoon and really...Yeah. I rather not bust his bubble about her."
In a related note, David Willis, creator of Shortpacked! expressed similar sentiments, albeit in webcomic form in this comic strip.
No-Stances Emperor (@sdshamshel) added: "I think part of it is that DC's characters all have to share a universe, and as a result, a cumulative message. HOTD girls were built from the ground up to be cheesecake and fanservice, and they don't impact the titles around them."
And Omari's Sister (@Omarissister) chimed in: "Because TenTen never claimed to be sexually liberated. You know going into that one that it's a violent skinfest."
Or maybe it's because stories like TenTen and HSotD that cater to male fantasies co-exist with manga content that is written by and for female readers, vs. being the dominant voice/house style of the medium in their country of origin.
Shorter version: Manga readers (both male and female) who care about not reading crappy depictions of women can easily ignore the existence of titles like High School of the Dead and its ilk, because these titles a) are niche series rather than mainstream/dominant genres of manga - yes, even in Japan, b) are conceived of and marketed from the beginning as male wish-fulfillment fantasies that never try to pass themselves off as "lolz empowering wimmins!", and c) do not include characters that are much-beloved by female (and male) readers from other mediums or several decades' worth of past comic books.
I would also add that when a mainstream manga series gets enough of a fanbase to say that it has honestly produced some iconic badass female characters - like Sakura from Naruto or Rukia from Bleach - then you WILL actually start to see Fanrage On the Internet when those characters are portrayed in a sexist manner within their title series. Because we all care a lot more about female characters who are awesome being portrayed poorly than we do about female characters created to be masturbatory fantasies being portrayed as, well, masturbatory fantasies.
Anyway, that's just one of the issues that the entire article tackles. Aoki also has some very insightful things to say about Tiger & Bunny and Sailor Moon, too. So go, read!
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The reason I dropped comics 2-3 years ago was related to this very reason, they dropped the characters/stories/universes that were more mature, in favor of this sort of thing, which just doesn't interest me.
I'd look at indy stuff, but I have other, better, and in some cases cheaper options in the webcomic stuff.
Look up a webcomic called Fusion, it does a pretty good job for a superhero comic.
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Publishers keep saying that, but if you look at the numbers it's just not true.
There's a reason why the re-release of Sailor Moon is clobbering all of DC's titles in terms of sales, despite being three times as expensive as a DC floppy and being a re-print of 20-year-old material to boot.
There's a reason why both teenage and adult women - the two demographics who are most likely to spend their disposable income on book and comics, believe it or not - are most decidedly not buying DC or Marvel's most sexist superhero titles.
It's not a very hard reason to figure out.
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Deb Aoki's articles are usually pretty good. Lots of good conversations on her twitter also.
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Okay, so sex used to sell, and it still does in other areas, but I guess not in comics anymore. (Thank goodness)
Never really read these mangas, mostly 'cause I had no money as a kid and because I could never find them, but man did I love the anime. Sailor Moon was my first anime, so, much nostalgia is to be made of this. I might buy them if they come out in digital format, 'cause I have absolutely no room left in my house for anymore books.
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Though I had to cough a little at
when a mainstream manga series gets enough of a fanbase to say that it has honestly produced some iconic badass female characters - like Sakura from Naruto
because while it's true that Sakura is a well-known character, her fame (or infamy rather) stems more from her lack of badass. Though even so, there were certain eras in the fandom's history when she managed to acquire a sizable female fanbase who'd get pissed whenever her portrayal took a turn for the sexist.
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I think you might be missing the point a bit: of course sex sells, but it only sells to certain demographics, and if done in a particularly sleazy way, it has the potential to alienate other demographics. In the case of this Starfire comic, the "sex" that's supposedly selling is actually "fanservice aimed at straight men" and since straight men make up less than half the population and since this type of fanservice is guaranteed to drive off the other half of the population, in overall terms, no, this sex isn't going to sell terrifically well.
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I know, and that's kind of the point that I was trying to make (but wording poorly). Sakura is set up in such a way that she's supposed to be heroic and badass - and she's most certainly not a fanservice character - but then when the author rarely follows through on that promise of Sakura actually being badass, that's one of the things that fans of Naruto complain about.
It's all about expectations. Given both the general tropes of bestselling Shounen Jump titles and the initial set-up of the story itself, readers come to Naruto expecting awesome female badassery. When that doesn't happen, readers feel justified in pointing out how sexism is influencing the story. The same isn't true for series like Tenjo Tenge because there's no expectation of anything other than straight-up sexism from the get-go, so there are no failed expectations to complain about.
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Okay, gotcha, we're on the same page. And I think you've hit the nail on the head with why Sakura infuriates fans: expectations. If the author had been honest about what an ineffectual fighter she is, then fans probably wouldn't rag on her so much, but instead he went for the Faux Action Girl trope and falsely advertised her as "really awesome and badass, no really!" and set everyone up to be disappointed.
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Speaking of which... I hate how DC did the new Starfire. She's not the ditzy yet badass female that I remember from the cartoon. (I've uh... never read the comics so forgive me if I'm getting things wrong.) I just... can't even with her outfit design.
I mean, I can stand some female characters with skimpy outfits, Shura Kirigakure from Ao no Exorcist comes to mind, but she isn't there JUST for the fan service, she's also there as a mentor for the main character, and as a major ass kicker. (Actually, Shura's pretty much the only woman that I love who wears what she wears, next to Yoko from TTGL. At least she isn't flashing her panties every single minute.)
And yeah, HOTD's DVD sales didn't do very well in Japan (have no idea about America though...), I hear. And I never heard of Tenjo Tange before it was re-released by Viz...
(I may have sounded like a dumbass just now, oops.)
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Fuck yes Tiger & Bunny!
Speaking of which... I hate how DC did the new Starfire. She's not the ditzy yet badass female that I remember from the cartoon. (I've uh... never read the comics so forgive me if I'm getting things wrong.) I just... can't even with her outfit design.
Hate to break it to you but Starfire's outfit has always been incredibly skimpy in the comics. And in the comics, she was never ditzy, and she was always very open about her sexuality. Basically the Starfire in the comics has always been completely different from Starfire in the Teen Titans cartoon. But there's still a huge difference between Starfire's personality pre-reboot (fun-loving, cheerful, unrestrained, and polyamorous) versus post-reboot (emotionless husk who fucks every guy she looks at for no particular reason). And even though Starfire had a skimpy outfit in both incarnations, there's still no excuse for drawing her in some of the poses that she was was depicted in on the pages of Red Hood and the Outlaws.
And yeah, HOTD's DVD sales didn't do very well in Japan (have no idea about America though...)
I don't even know if the series was ever licensed for NA distribution. It's not surprising that it sold poorly in Japan, though, because at least Japan recognizes that misogynistic crap like that is meant to pander to a teeny-tiny niche audience. Thus HSotD was never intended to be popular or "mainstream" in the first place. And nobody who cared about not having vile crap in their entertainment could really be arsed to give a rat's ass about the existence of HSotD, because it was over there in its corner doing its own little thing and not bothering the rest of us.
I think Japanese media like HSotD and Tenjo Tenge are kind of the equivalent of American comic book series like Tarot. We laugh at Tarot's very existence and the small audience of loser fanboys who take it seriously, but nobody actually gets ANGRY about sexism in Tarot the way that they do about sexism in a "regular" DC title that actually features a popular, much-beloved female character. And for good reason.
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But we were talking and honestly, if there's such a demand for this stuff, DC and Marvel should just release non-canon porn comics where you can see Starfire strut and pose, and then have a gangbang with the Titans, or Wonder Woman walks in on Batman and Superman making out and joins them... or whatever... put it in a black bag, make it non-canon, and I WOULD NOT CARE! And then all the artists who clearly would prefer drawing porn to drawing comics,can also make money doing what they obv would rather do, and we can have non-pseudo-porn art and writing for our actual SUPERHERO comics! Then everybody would be happy!
But this is just getting so stupid and ridic -_-;; And it feels like as comics narrows it's target niche audience, and as the writers and artists are ppl from that audience grown up now and doing the writing and drawing for themselves, it's getting worse -_-
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REALLY? HEEEEEEEE. What kind of official source can I link to see this spelled out? I know of several people who would explode in glee to hear this.