Well, maybe not where you live

For simplicity's sake, I'm only going to talk about Western comics and Western readers here. The Eastern market has a different picture.

Apparently, girls don't read comics.

Now, you can imagine that this came as a surprise for me. I've been reading comics pretty much since I learned how to read at age six. I started out with Winnie the Pooh and Bamse, went over to Donald Duck and moved on to strips. At thirteen, when I started going to ungdomsskolen (something like Junior High), I realised that my English sucked and, not being used to being bad at something scholarly, decided to rectify this by reading a lot of English. However, novels were a bit much, so I picked comic books - first Elfquest, then Sandman. I was sixteen when I saw the first X-Men movie and began reading superhero comic books. Yeah, I know, late bloomer, but they stopped translating X-Men comics to Norwegian sometime right about when I learned to read, any DC comics they might translate came only once in a blue moon, and I never really got into Spider-Man.

Sometime after I started reading at scans_daily I first encountered the idea that girls don't read comics. It must have been a link somewhere or a discussion of sorts; I don't remember. However, this is apparently so widespread a notion that there are girls (and women) who read comics who feel the need to proclaim that they do so and yes, they are indeed female - as if this is something extraordinary (whereas I'm more "yeah, sure, of course - there are people who're actually suprised by this?"). There are people who refer females to other comics, because they can't possibly want to read superhero comics. There are people who think that superhero comic book readers who are female should just shut up about wanting female characters to be treated the same way as male characters, because they're just a tiny minority and who cares about them anyway?

I'm reminded of how my mother told me about borrowing her brothers' books because there were books for boys and books for girls back then, and the books for boys were infinitely more fun.

I've never encountered this attitude about female readers and (superhero) comics in real life. In fact, I'm having a hard time picturing anyone expressing such attitudes when not on the Internet. That's how alien it is to me. I mean, seriously: at least half of the people who work at Outland (aka my local comics shop) are women and the clientel is fairly equally divided. I think I, personally, know more girls who read comics than boys.

So I keep wondering: is this a continental difference (Europe vs. North America)? Is Scandinavia unique in having a large female comics readership? Or am I just oblivious, and shouldn't be reading comics because I'm a girl?

P.S: Check out When Fangirls Attack.