Just in case you're not one of the folks who checks the "What are you blogging about today" thread, I thought I would repost the article I posted on the store site yesterday:
The Truth About Unicorns
This past May, DC comics announced that they were ending all of their superhero universe comics in August and relaunching the entire line in September.
At the time of the announcement, there was a dearth of information. Rumors and speculation ran rampant up and down the tubes and pipes of teh internets. One of the few pieces of actual information that emerged right away was that DC was attempting to reach out to the male 18-34 demographic.
A number of blogs, websites, opinion columns, Facebook pages and who knows what else jumped on this as one more sign that the major publishers were deliberately ignoring the female half (50.7% in the USA actually) of the species. There were a few articles about the rise in number of female attendees at conventions around the same time. There was a lot of discussion about both topics, both online and off about it, but my favorite moment was on Twitter when Gail Simone referred to female comics readers as mythological creatures, specifically a unicorn.
Two things pertinent to this article followed from that tweet. The first was a bunch of female* comics fans, including several local customers, started tweeting that they were also unicorns. These self-proclaimed unicorns weren’t just tweeting that they were unicorns, and that they’re not mythological at all but real, but also about some of the comics they loved, and how they got into comics to begin with. Several women posted really nice things about the comics shops they shop in, including one tweet about mine. (#HumbleBrag!)
The other thing that happened was that I had a realization. I’m in my store most of the hours that it is open. I’ve seen and talked to almost every customer who has ever come into the store. I have seen clearly that there is no shortage of female comics readers (or gamers, for that matter) at my store. Part of that I attribute to purposefully designing a store that is a welcoming environment for everyone to shop in, including the “civilians” who get dragged inside while their friends or relatives are shopping. Mostly though, I believe it’s because there’s no shortage of female comics readers and gamers, at all.
While thinking about this, I asked myself why it was then that there is this perception that there are so few female comics fans? I knew for a fact from talking to other store owners around the country that my store was not the only one in the world that had a significant amount of female customers! The realization I had was that the biggest problem wasn’t really about the lack of female customers, but rather the lack of knowledge about female customers. There are very few actual public studies that have been done on the demographics of comics readers, and the information that has been released has been less than perfect. One report earlier this year said that 25% of the comics reading market was over 65. (This by the way, may be why DC is targeting the 18-34 male demo; They’re more concerned with the age of the demographic than the gender!)
Lots of women (and some girls) shop in my store. Their visit frequencies vary as much as the male customers. Some come in every week like clockwork, some once a month, some twice a week, etc. The problem I discerned was that they were just not as aware of each other as much as male fans were. After all, when I was a teenage boy in the 80’s, if you read comics, you were a nerd, and you were going to get picked on. So if you had any sense at all, you hid your hobby from schoolmates, and only discussed it with close friends. How much more did female fans of the art form have to hide their love of comics? After hearing some stories from customers, I suspect they hid it a lot more than I did.
So, if the problem is that not only are the publishers unaware of their female customers but the awareness female comics readers have of each other is minimal, then what is the solution? To me, the obvious solution was to create some kind of event that brought female comics readers (and gamers) together. I’d thought of holding some kind of “Ladies Night” at the store almost immediately but it wasn’t until Gail Simone tweeted, “HA! I'm talking with three great female artists. It's a unicorn party!” that I had a name for the event. I responded with “Oh my. @GailSimone has given me a terrific idea for an in-store event. A Unicorn Party.” and a female friend of mine who had been following the exchange immediately encouraged me to make sure this thing actually happens.
What my incredibly long-winded article leads me to is an announcement! I am proud to announce that Thursday September 22, 2011 will be Secret Headquarters first-ever Unicorn Party. It will commence at 7:00 PM and run until at least 10:00 PM. There will be drinks, food, t-shirts, strange activities, a drawing, and other things still in the works that I will announce when they are finalized. The party is to celebrate the women who make comics, the women characters in comics, and most importantly, the women and girls that read comics.
Unicorns are real. They're everywhere. Come celebrate with us!
* I am aware of course of the old saw that on the internet Men are Men, Women are Men, and little girls are FBI agents, but for the sake of argument, I am going to assume that both Gail Simone and the other women tweeting about it are in fact, actual women.(Images blatantly copied from the internet from ign.com, unicornlady.net, and unicorn-pictures.com)
Replies
http://livingbetweenwednesdays.com/?p=3128
Jeff of Earth-J said: