Picture it. The other night, captaintwinings and I are sitting side by side, reading a book. She's already read ahead to the end, but I'm catching up. So, I'm reading along. Everything's fine. It's a little annoying...

And then, without warning, my hand makes a tight fist and I draw back. I don't even register the fact I've done this until I'm fully coiled to strike.

Now, look, I've thrown a few books in my time. The Devil Wears Prada, Twilight, a couple of incredibly bad romance novels and a single Star Trek: The Original Series novel when I was having a bad day and got fucking fed up with reading that the Enterprise A's doors open with a "Shoosh" sound, when we all know good and well that they go "Sssshhluck", and I acknowledge that this was a very silly reason to throw a book but I was having an incredibly shitty day and was in no mood to take another crack in the teeth from a book that I HOPED would make me happy, but I have never, to the best of my recollection, gotten so angry that I tried to punch a book.

Hell, I've only ever punched a person once, in first grade, in self defense, I'm still really sorry I broke his nose, sorrysorrysorry Jacob, Bitty!Barda didn't know her own strength.

But this book made me so incredibly, irrationally, totally furious and insulted me so thoroughly that I actually had the near uncontrollable instinct to punch it, as though it had a face to punch.



This book, From Girls to Grrrlz: The History of Girl Comics from Teens to Zines is supposed to be a positive look at comics from a girl's perspective, with the supportive tone of "Comics are NOT just for boys, girls can like them too!"

This is what it's supposed to be trying to say.

I've spoken before about how hard it is to be the girl in the comic shop. About how I've had to fight for a place in fandom, to be accepted as a superhero fan because nobody believes that girls who read capes and tights exist. Girls who read indies and manga? Everyone KNOWS they exist, acknowledges that they exist, wait on them when they enter a comic shop, but girls like me who read superhero titles get the same kind of startled, terrified, puzzled or sometimes (often) hostile looks that people usually reserve for space aliens. If anything, this book should have made me feel vindicated. I mean, that was certainly its intention. It repeatedly states in the actual text that comics are NOT just for boys and that girls have every right to read comics too...

Except, its tone quite clearly says "Girls have every right to read romance comics, indie comics and manga."

Wow.

Okay, so not only do the boys in the Boy's Club who are asshats make me feel like I have no right to be there, but the feminists--remember the point of feminism? Equal treatment, the right to do whatever makes you happy regardless of your gender, all that good stuff?--who are supposed to be on my side are telling me in no uncertain terms that I have no right to be there either.

Apparently, I'm allowed to play in the sandbox, but only in one very specific designated corner, which has been painted pink for my convenience.

Thanks, guys. Thanks for continually making me feel like I don't have a right to exist wherever and however the fuck I want to. I appreciate it. Doesn't make me feel like an Invisible Girl at all.

But hey, don't take my word for it. I decided to take notes of actual quotes from this delightfully little angry making thing, so that I could take my aggression out here on LJ. I know that nobody will care, most likely, but if I don't rant, my head may well explode.

And hey, hey, know what? The angry-making starts in the introduction, so much so that I decided to replicate it here, complete and unabridged. Yes, this book really hits the ground running! And the fun continues immediately following on page one!

All emphasis in the following quotes is mine. All anger is also quite gleefully mine.

I'll never forget the day I discovered the world of Love and Rockets, produced by Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez. My boyfriend (now husband) Mark and I stopped by the local comic book store so he could pick up the latest issues of Weirdo and Neat Stuff. I wasn't planning on buying any comic books. I wasn't into comics, hadn't been since sixth grade, when I'd been an avid reader of Archie and Little Lotta. Once I outgrew those comics, I was confronted by the realization that, besides those few titles that cater to very young girls, comics were actually a guy's medium. I loved Betty and Veronica, but as a teenager I wanted something a bit more dimensional, something I wouldn't find in these guy-laden shops filled with titles such as X-Men and Spiderman. Usually I declined to accompany Mark when he went for his comic fix.

So there I was, politely waiting on the sidelines inside the shop, self-consciously glancing around at nothing in particular, when suddenly a grimacing punk girl with blue and black choppy hair and a yellow scarf around her neck beckoned to me from the far side of the room. She was "Errata Stigmata," a cartoon on the cover of Love and Rockets No. 11. What was this? As I flipped through the fictional pages of grrrl rock muscicians, a female champion wrestler, and young women with realistic post-adolescent lives, I realized there was more to comic life than violent one-dimensional superhero stories or dumping Reggie for Archie at the Choklit Shop. What a surprising delight it was to feast my eyes on characters I could relate to, characters who were drawn as spunky as the girls in Archie (in an updated, eighties, goth-punk style), but were engaged in much deeper, truer-to-life situations (the cover said "Recommended for Mature Readers"). I became instantly hooked on L&R, and desperately wondered: Were there other engaging comix about women? If so, how long has this type of graphic novel been around? Is there a subculture of female comic readers that I don't know about?

Finally, in Girls to Grrrlz, these questions are answered by girly grrrl Trina Robbins, and I can't think of a more qualified woman for the job. To write a book like Girls to Grrrls, one needs to have a well-rounded appreciation for both the girls of comics (Katy Keene, Little Dot, Josie and the Pussycats, Betty and Veronica, etc.) and the grrrlz of comix (Bitchy Bitch, Hothead, Little Goth Girl, Maggie and Hopy, etc.) Trina is a veteran of each.

Trina was a riot grrrl before the term was coined. Like the grrlz of the nineties who banded together to mark their territory in the male-dominated punk scene, Trina defied the exclusive boys' club of the comic-book world back in the sixties when she headed the first all-women comic book called It Ain't Me, Babe. She then went on to cofound the Wimmen's Comix Collective, which put out the femme anthology Wimmen's Comix for over ten years. Trina linked arms with her sisters and caused a riot in the underground comic scene. Never before had there been comics about women who explored issues such as homosexuality, orgasms and abortion!

But Trina, like most women, isn’t all grrrl. Everyone needs balance in their lives and she shows us her softer, girlier side through her writing for and illustrations of characters such as Barbie, the Little Mermaid, Wonder Woman and Betty Boop. Trina once told me in an interview, “It’s total bullshit to say that girls don’t read comics. Girls read comics when there are comics for girls to read.” For anyone who doesn’t believe this, as well as anyone with a general appreciation for comics, Girls to Grrrlz is an entertaining, nostalgic, as well as eye-opening account of girl characters and their effect on--as well as how they’ve been affected by--the comic-book world. And Trina, being a part of this history, is the perfect person to tell the story.

--Carla Sinclair, Author of Net Chick

---

*deep breath*

Okay, class, who can tell me what’s wrong with this introduction? Let's examine.

1.) Girl enters comic shop with boyfriend. Is surrounded by hundreds, most likely THOUSANDS of books (with words!) but does not pick any of them up because ew, superheroes are boy books...but what's this interesting indie comic over here with the Archie-esque cover?

No, seriously, look at it:



2.) X-Men and Spiderman (that's right, guys, Spider-Man became Spiderman while we weren't looking, well done editor!) are 'violent and one dimensional'. If this story we’re being told takes place in 1984, when the above issue of Love and Rockets was new on stands, that means that, among countless other storylines:

The Death of Gwen Stacy is one dimensional.
The Phoenix Saga is one dimensional.
God Loves, Man Kills is one dimensional.

…

*slow clap* Way to reduce a whole stack of the most influential stories in superhero fiction--stories whose echoes are felt in other genres to this day--to nothing because you’re a girl and ew, violence. Gold star.

2b.) Oh, and really? Superhero stories and the Archie comics are comparable? Well, if you say so. The storytelling complexity and quality is totally the same.

3.)"To write a book like Girls to Grrrls, one needs to have a well-rounded appreciation for both the girls of comics (Katy Keene, Little Dot, Josie and the Pussycats, Betty and Veronica, etc.) and the grrrlz of comix (Bitchy Bitch, Hothead, Little Goth Girl, Maggie and Hopy, etc.)"

Well Rounded: 1. All-around. Many sided.

2. Comprehensively developed and well-balanced in a range or variety of aspects: a well-rounded scholar; a well-rounded curriculum.

An appreciation for girly girls and angry grrrlz sure is many sided! Two sides out of several dozen sure is well balanced!

4.) “…shows us her softer, girlier side through her writing for and illustrations of characters such as Barbie, the Little Mermaid, Wonder Woman and Betty Boop.”

Do I even have to comment on why this is a bad sentence? Well, in the interests of clarity, allow me to translate what it says.

WONDER WOMAN is the same kind of softer, girlier character that BARBIE is.

Are. You. Fucking. SERIOUS?



Wonder Woman could snap Barbie IN HALF. Hell, probably just using her mind.

5.) “Girls read comics when there are comics for girls to read.”

Okay. Maybe she means ‘when there are comics’, not ‘when there are girl specific comics’. That’s not so bad. I suppose I could dismiss it as poorly worded…or at least, I could have before finishing this God awful piece of buffalo biscuit.

MOVING ON TO OUR NEXT INFURIATING QUOTE, WHICH IS ALL THE WAY ON…the very first page of the actual book (but labeled Pg. 7):

Walk into any comic-book store. A giant cutout of a superhero stands in the window, muscles bulging improbably, a grimace on his lantern-jawed face. Inside, the store is jam packed with young males, some not so young. You’ll have to look hard to find a girl. The boys are reading and buying comic books with covers that feature costumed and caped guys similar to the one in the window, or even more improbably breasted women attired in little besides thong bikinis and spike-heeled, thigh-high boots. If you’re of the female persuasion, odds are you take on look at the scene before you, shrug, and decide you’d really rather read a novel.

What did we learn from this passage, class?

Boys=Pathetic Arrested Adolescent Losers Who Read Picture Books With Boobies.

Girls=Mature Adults Who Read “Real” Books.

Also, please take note of the book's clear dislike of disgustingly unrealistic physical ideals when it comes to the female figure. It's going to come up in a minute.

What follows after this is a pretty dull recap of the creation of Archie comics and the ensuing popularity of ‘teen’ comics (with girls, primarily), with a little anti-superhero sentiment added here and there for spice. Such choice statements as:

“Comic books, inundated with caped and costumed superheroes, served as entertainment for boys.” and “Why does every book have to be Superman?”

...somewhere out there in internet land, is a favorite image of mine. It's a photo from the 1940's of a line of little boys and a little girl, all sitting together reading comics. I can't find it now, but as I recall, the little girl is NOT reading Archie. In lieu of said photo, have this one:



See put-upon mommy holding little girl's STACK of comics. See put-upon mommy's little girl's stack of comics with WILD WEST comic, NOT Archie at the forefront.

Additionally, the recap is accompanied by a BUNCH of factual errors, like:

Archie’s success was a case of the right teenager at the right time. Superhero comics, which dominated the market during the war, had been steadily losing their audience. Perhaps the returning GIs, who had made up a large part of the comic-reading market, were now more interested in buying homes on the GI Bill and raising families, or perhaps the general public was tired of violence after almost five years of war. (Pg. 9)

I love the oh-so-logical reasons for why superhero sales started to fall. “Grownups don’t read comic books, grownups have families and mortgages and ulcers” or “The public was obviously tired of violence, never mind that the next big trends in comics were violent true crime and violent horror stories.”

Hey, here’s a theory,: the best selling comics of the era? Captain America and his DOZENS of patriotic, WWII-themed knock-offs--second only to Superman and Captain Marvel.



Come to think of it, the sales of Superman and Captain Marvel didn’t drop nearly as sharply after the war, hrrrm.

Could it be that maybe in a world without a Third Reich, where we were no longer terrified en masse of a small contingent of genocidal maniacs leading a massive army to TRY TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD, we no longer needed to read the adventures of The Man Who Punched Hitler with such urgency?

But, I don’t suppose that fits into the book’s worldview nearly as well as “Grownups don‘t read comics“ and “Violent comics are bad“, so let’s just misrepresent the facts to make things fit neatly with its underlying philosophy. Handy lying by omission is handy!

But hey, what do I expect from a book that couldn’t even be bothered to spell Bettie Paige’s name right (pg. 15)? I mean, she’s only Bettie Paige. It’s not like she had anything to do with bringing the concept of girl-on-girl and general kink acceptance (NSFW) to the forefront of America’s consciousness, paving the way for a more open minded attitude toward sexuality in our country. Oh, nooo.

Okay, self, it’s a perfectly reasonable excuse to be irritated, but it’s off topic. Moving on!



This is page 17. Now, students, taking into account that this book was written by a female-friendly author, what’s wrong here?

“Katy Keene and her chunky friend Bertha from 1955.”

On page 16, Bertha is described as ‘pleasingly plump’. Okay, fine, that’s kind of positive in comparison to, oh, say, ‘fatty fat fat fat fat‘--



--but chunky? CHUNKY?

Considering that this is coming from someone who’s ALREADY scolded comics for holding their female characters to a standard of the unrealistic ideal (remember the improbably proportioned women in superhero comics that we must all HATEHATEHATE?) I find it hilariously hypocritical to call a character who might be topping out at a VERY realistic size 8 “chunky”. This is ESPECIALLY hysterical because this book was written WELL after size-positive terms like “full figured” and “plus sized” became available--the kinds of terms that DON’T make the average sized girls who might read this book feel like killing themselves. She might have been called "chunky" in the 1940's, it might have even been acceptable for her to be called "chunky" according to society at the time, but this book was written in 1999, from a feminist perspective, way after the average woman in America was established to be a size 12.

Good for you and your “all-female-friendly” attitude, Girls to Grrrlz! I’m so glad you don’t have any unrealistic expectations like those icky superhero comic books do.

Forging ahead!

We get our first (and only) glimpse of a female superhero in Girls to Grrrlz on page 23, a comic by the name of “Miss America”.

Oh, but wait!

Timely’s teen line started in 1944 with Miss America. Originally a comic book starring a teenage super heroine of the same name, by its second issue Miss America had become a girls’ magazine featuring fiction, fashion and beauty tips, chatty articles about pop stars, and comics.

…

Let me see if I can break this down, because I‘m trying to understand the logic here. Instead of focusing on ANY of the better known female superheroes of the era who carried their own ongoing comic titles, the ONE female superhero character the book talks about is a character whose adventures lasted for all of one issue before the comic became TIGER BEAT?

Wonder Woman--the strong, beautiful inside-and-out, compassionate Amazon whose title is still going today? Not mentioned.

The Black Cat--the strong, glamorous starlet stunt woman of the 1940’s turned superhero who lasted for several dozen issues)? Not mentioned.

Miss America, who lasted for ONE WHOLE ISSUE before she started giving dating advice? Mentioned at length.

*choke, sputter, strangle, die*

So, you had ALL THESE COMICS “FOR GIRLS” FROM THE ERA to choose from:





That’s right, Wonder Woman will hit you with a wild boar!







And you went with THIS?



Wait, wait, time out. I can feel my pulse in my eye. I need to calm down.

The next several dozen pages of Girls to Grrrlz are actually pretty interesting and devoid of angry-making things…which lulled me into a false sense of security, I admit. While the book talks at length about characters like Millie the Model, Nellie the Nurse, Sorority Sue and Sherry the Showgirl (because those are far more appropriate role models for girls than any of the superheroines above), it’s also got a lot of interesting little tidbits about the social climate at the time of the publication of such books. The fact that women were expected to return to the kitchen after the men got back from war and some of them had a hard time giving up their newfound freedom in such a fashion, things like that. I won’t lie, that was pretty interesting and informative.

Aside from mistaking the infamous anti-comic book propaganda book Seduction of the Innocent for this other book I’ve never heard of Seduction of the Innocents (pg. 42), it’s pretty factually accurate too.

(Is it petty to nitpick such an easy-to-make mistake? Gee, I dunno. Let’s ask Betty Page.)

There’s some more fanboy-eeew sentiment on that very page, though, which hardens my heart a great deal. Namely that one of the comics cited in Seduction of the Innocent(s) is, quote, “sought after by comics collectors (mostly men), who are willing to pay more than one hundred dollars for a first addition, simply because the girl on the cover has big breasts.”

And before you ask, yes, “addition” was her spelling. Did this book even HAVE an editor?

Furthermore, isn’t it WAY more logical to think that comics collectors seek those issues because of their historical significance rather than the breast size of the female character in them? Especially considering that boobs in comics have gotten BIGGER since then?




Ungh.

After this point, the book moves into the Romance Comics sub-genre (created single--er…double-handedly by those great big girly girls Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, dontchaknow?), which is a slow slog of plot recaps that vary from “I’m in love with him, whatever shall I do?” to “I’m not in love with him, whatever shall I do?” throughout the genre.

And then, page 67:

Because artists tend to draw best what has interested them from childhood, women have rarely excelled in drawing superhero action stories, but the romance genre suited them well. Even the most clichéd stories gave them an opportunity to draw handsome men and beautiful women in fashionable evening gowns.

You heard it here first! Not only can women not READ superheroes, women can’t DRAW superheroes because they’re Just Not Interested and they’d rather draw pretty dresses.

(And don’t get me started on how much I hate it when people muddy their tenses in published books. ARGH. YOUR GRAMMAR OFFENDS ME.)

Another factual misrepresentation (pg. 69):

By the sixties, both Marvel and DC’s love comics had acquired that generic “pop art” look seen today on hundreds of campy t-shirts, cups, greeting cards, and Roy Lichtenstein paintings.

Okay, it’s a common misconception, but there’s really no excuse if you’re going to write an entire portion of a book--claiming to be an expert--about romance comics.

You know why Lichtenstein paintings have that ‘general pop art’ look of romance comics?

BECAUSE ROY LICHTENSTEIN WAS A TRACER.

His oh-so-edgy paintings of the 60’s pop art movement were just replicas of already published comic book panels.



Girls to Grrrlz, you’re allegedly a non-fiction book. CHECK. YOUR. FACTS. OH. MY. GOD. AGHUGH.

The rest of the romance comics section details the spiral into failure that romance comics suffered after the Women’s Lib movement hit full force and has a few prime examples of clueless authors trying to keep their titles afloat with story hooks like “How could I love a member of the establishment?!” (Good job, Stan Lee. Have a cookie.)

It goes up and down between being amusing and being boring, before the final third of the book.

The next chapter, titled “Womyn’s Comix”, is about underground comics and comics written specifically by/for women. Comics that tackle issues like rape, abortion, homosexuality, etc. with a refreshing LGBT-friendly slant (uh, except for the part where the author never mentions anything but the "L" part of that particular bunch of letters--because gay men, bisexuals and the transgendered don't read comics, nor do the asexual or pansexual, etc. etc. et-fucking-c.). That’s fine. That’s great! Hoo-fucking-ray for progress of formerly taboo subjects in fiction. I am all for it, so I won’t criticize much because I’m happy these things exist!

However:

The “Superheroes are not for girls, only indie/romance comics are” tunnel-vision thing continues throughout, along with a couple of…questionable things.

First, there are some more factual errors, but they’re small (Petunia Pig appeared in fewer than half a dozen cartoons and was NEVER married to Porky, thus giving her no reason to rant about how he was oppressing her ‘all those years they were married‘) and they’re direct quotes from some of the underground comics in question, so I can let them go.

But there’s one recap of a (supposedly) admirable comic titled “Abortion Eve” that made my blood boil. The point of the comic didn’t bother me (it was meant to be an informative comic--pamphlet, if you will--on the ins and outs of abortion when the concept was new, which is a good thing! Education is win!) but…

Here’s the author’s summary:

Abortion Eve tells the story of five pregnant Eves who meet at an abortion clinic--Evelyn, the suburban matron; Eva the flower child; Evie, a troubled teenager; Eve, a feisty, savvy black woman and Evita, an equally feisty Hispanic woman. They each have a different reason for wanting an abortion: neither Eve nor Evita can afford to add more children to their family and Evelyn is pregnant with the child of her lover, not her husband, Adam. Poor Eva is simply too much of a space case to be a mother. (Pg. 89)

What’s wrong here? Well, apparently, if you’re any ethnicity other than white, your one defining trait as a human being is ‘feisty’. If you’re not white, you’ve also been breeding like a bunny AND you’re poor. Oh, and you’re automatically uneducated in the ways of proper grammar while speaking (http://www.ep.tc/eve).

Please note that the white women are all well spoken, even the ‘space case’, but neither Eve not Evita can get a sentence out without a serious error in grammar.

This is what we call ‘casual racial stereotyping’, guys. I might not have as much of a problem with it if Girls to Grrrlz acknowledged this factor (the comic WAS from the early 70‘s--Women‘s Lib was just as new as Civil Rights), or didn’t actually pander to the stereotyping (really? You couldn’t think of ANY other way to describe these women other than ‘feisty’?), but as it is, this is pretty fucking irritating.

(I’m losing so much steam, you guys. Spending five hours on a RAGE!post takes it out of me like whoa.)

The rest of the “Womyn’s Comix” chapter is interesting, if not particularly to my tastes artistically, before the final chapter, “Grrrlz Comix”. Again, pretty interesting, SLIGHTLY less angry making, but…wait!

Dame Darcy (Meatcake) and Christine Shields (Blue Hole) might well be the love children of Edward Gorey and Drusilla, the vampire from the television cult favorite Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Their comic books are 100 percent girl but with a dark twist: sugar and spice and arsenic, and antique dolls in bloodstained bonnets.

On the pages of both books, girls in thrift shop dresses (I, for one, strongly suspect they resemble the artists), drift through disturbing, dreamlike Victorian universes. Darcy’s main character is a girl named Richard Dirt, who, with her long blond hair and granny boots, looks like a warped Alice in Wonderland. She and her Siamese-twin girlfriends Hindrance and Perfidia look like little darlings from some fin de sieele photo album, but they guzzle their booze right from the bottle. In Blue Hole, Shields relates the true story of a tragic San Francisco double murder, carried out Romeo and Juliet style. Her heroine, Ruby, also takes her rotgut straight, and in the company of pirates, no less. Yet both comics are so darn cute! Except for the aforementioned Edward Gorey, it would be hard to imagine any man drawing comics like these. (Pg. 123, 124)

Yes, I want to read these comics now that I know they exist, BUT;

Here we are with the ‘artists of a certain gender can only draw one thing’ stereotype. Except this time, it’s lobbed in the opposite direction. Men do not have the ability to do anything remotely cute (*cough* Powerpuff Girls *cough*), or dark (*cough* Sandman *cough*), or gothic (*COUGH* Dracula *COUGH COUGH HACK COUGH*) or all three (*COUGH CHOKE COUGH* The Addams Family *FUCKING COUGH HELLO?!*) but girls can because they’re giiiiiiirls.

Aside from that…’double murder, carried out Romeo and Juliet style’?

…um.

Spoiler alert for Romeo and Juliet: it was a double suicide.

You were close, though.

(Also: Buffy? Cult? In 1999? Ahahahahahahahahahahahaha *gasp* HAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Thirteen year old me is laughing at you so hard right now.)

Pressing on (we’re almost to the end now! Aren’t you relieved? I know I am!!)

Hey, wanna see the quote that made me want to punch a book?

Not much is out there for kids these days in the way of comics. The unsinkable Archie stands alone, Pep, the comic that started it all back in 1941, was finally cancelled in 1989, but the Archie line is still going strong. In the 1990’s, a character was added to Archie’s crowd of pals and gals--Cheryl Blossom, a redhead who’s twice as rich and three times as bitchy as Veronica--and in 1997, Sabrina the Teenage Witch became the latest in a long string of hit television series based on Archie characters. Archie’s only competition during the entire 1990’s was Barbie comics, published by Marvel from 1990 through 1995. Currently, if little girls want to read a comic, their only choice in the Archie group. (Pg. 135)

I took a lot from Girls to Grrrlz. I did. You saw! I didn’t even write up all the truly tiny, petty things that bothered me (I wrote up a few, but not NEARLY all of them) but this? This was the last. Fucking. STRAW. This is what made me pull back, fist at the ready, after all the abuse I’d already taken.

I started reading comics in the nineties. I was a little girl in the nineties. And you know what? There were TONS of comics that weren’t Archie or Barbie that were PERFECTLY suitable for children. Among them, that I actually remember seeing in the comic bin at the local library: Adventures in the DC Universe, The Superman Adventures and the Batman: The Animated Series comics (which included The Batman Adventures, The Batman and Robin Adventures, Batman Gotham Adventures and Batman Adventures--one title, relaunched and relaunched, spanning eight years of the decade). There were also Star Trek, Looney Tunes, Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain and Disney comics that I remember distinctly.

My first comic book? Catwoman. Certainly not specified as an all ages title, thanks to its too complicated for a five year old storylines (and crossovers, dear lord the nineties made Catwoman‘s title a dumping ground for Batverse spanning crossovers), but not gratuitously violent, smutty smut sex smut, either.

But, apparently, because I’m female, I had absolutely no business reading anything other than Barbie and Archie.

“Why don’t you try reading Archie instead? I think you’d like it.”

That’s what the librarian told me, that’s what my mom tried to tell me, that’s what everyone tried to tell me.

Well, guess what? I read Archie. I found it insipid. At the age of EIGHT I found it insipid, shallow and not-very-funny-at-all.

I wanted to read about superheroes. I wanted to read--not about petty personal dramas and love triangles--but about people doing Good, oftentimes for the sake of Good. Batman was already my favorite hero, because he was an ordinary man who, despite his lack of superpowers and his NUMEROUS psychological flaws/damages, dedicated his life to protecting the innocent because he never wanted any other child to suffer the way he had. Batman was my personal Patron Saint of Children, never about vengeance, but about protection and safety.

How dare you? How fucking DARE you tell me that Betty and Veronica and BARBIE are better role models for me because I‘m a girl? Because I’m a girl, it’s my job to be obsessed with clothes and boys and shoes and make-up and puppies and being a ballerina-astronaut-prom-queen-princess-pediatrician and going to parties, rather than being somebody’s HERO? Rather than standing up for what’s right BECAUSE it’s right?

FUCK! YOU!

Superman is not for boys. Superman is for EVERYBODY.

Wonder Woman is not for boys. Wonder Woman is for EVERYBODY.

Batman is not for boys. Batman is for EVERYBODY.

These characters and THOUSANDS of others who wear tights represent ideals, ethics, good triumphing over evil and being a good person--not to get something in return--but just for the sake of the concept that Being Nice is Nice. Comic book superheroes are us as we wish we were: the best versions of ourselves reflected back to us, our best aspects magnified, something to emulate and strive for, as people, not as genders or races or orientations. I can love what Batman stands for, despite not being a man. I can love the new Blue Beetle, despite not being Hispanic. I can love Oracle despite not being in a wheelchair. I can love J’onn J’onnz despite not being a Martian!

BECAUSE IT IS THEIR INSIDES THAT I ADMIRE, NOT THEIR OUTSIDES, YOU FUCKING TWITFACED IDIOT BOOK.

But thank you. Thank you so much for telling me outright that I’m not allowed to identify with, understand or enjoy a character unless they’re just leik me zomgggggwtfbbqlol!

Oh, and they must also be gorgeous, capitalistic and boy-crazed. But only until I’m old enough to get in touch with feminist theory, then I have to start liking disaffected angry grrrlz whose stories are almost always about how depressing and infuriating their lives are under the crushing weight of patriarchal society/heteronormative oppression--which may be true, but isn't necessarily the ONLY thing I want to read about.

You have no idea how tempted I am to just buy up a shitload of copies of this book for cheap and just light them all on fire.

There are a couple of other quotes I thought I‘d like to get in, but…I think I don‘t have the energy to keep going with this much fury in my blood. It's been seven hours and I haven't moved from this chair since I started writing. So, I will leave you with the last of the quotes--the final line of the book (pg 142):

It doesn’t have to be a girl comic to be a good comic.

Right. Except for all the times you’ve just told me it does.

The worst part? This same author wrote another book, The Great Female Superheroes, which could be GREAT for all I know. (Though I somehow doubt it, considering what we've seen thus far.)

Yeah, guess which of these books about comics is out of print while the other is readily available? If you guessed the powder pink pseudo-feminist bullshit angry-making one, you're right!

So, Girls to Grrrlz, I'd just like to thank you again for making me feel like the ONLY girl who's actually made her way into the clubhouse to play with the boys as an equal, not put up gauzy curtains and talk about my feelings. Because, you know, I don't get enough of that from most of the boys as it is.

In other news: Just to err on the side of caution I seriously considered making this post friends-only, because in my critique of this #&@%@*# book, I've directly quoted a fair bit from it. But, according to fair use laws, quotation in a critical review of the text is NOT copyright infringement. And frankly, such a critical review NEEDS to be out where it can be seen and linked to, if anyone feels inclined to do so.