denise-puchol

Comic Book Readers

orkin 1947

fat-pikachu-mas

what’s this?

Little girls read comics from the very beginning of their incarnation??

fangirling-daily

“Girl reading comic book in newsstand” by Teenie Harris (c. 1940-1945) © 2006 Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

breelandwalker

That sound you hear is thousands of wangsting sexist fanboys shrieking in horror.

Suck it.

signifierofmalepower

My mom read and collected Golden/Silver Age comics. She had the #1 issues of Superman, Bat Man, Wonder Woman, etc. My grandmother threw them out, and every time my mom talks about it, which isn’t often, she still gets upset.

agentagnes

My parents bought me lots of comics as a kid because I looooved them.  I suppose it helped that my dad likes comics also; I read through his Thorgal collection way before it was age appropriate.  My cousins had stacks and stacks of Duck Comics, Moomintroll comics, Kajko i Kokosz, Tytus Romek i Atomek, Kleks, Asterix and Obelix, and my parents bought me many of the same titles.  The European comics industry was (is?) quite different from the American one.  Some titles were for adults, many were for kids, but there was no perception that they were for boys only.  When I hear “comics industry”, it frequently takes me a moment to remember, oh, right, here that is still usually a euphemism for the superhero stuff put out by the Big 2.  How sad.