The lit blogosphere picked up the story of the new DC graphic novel line for girls (Minx) and the inclusion of the marvelous Cecil Castellucci as author of the line's first book. Most bloggers have mentioned it in passing - in the kid lit sphere it has garnered a bit more notice (the line is for YAs after all - and Cecil is a YA author), but still, everyone thinks it sounds fine and worthy of note, but not deep analysis.

But over on the comics sphere - well, there's a million different ways in which the Minx announcement has gotten people talking.

JoAnna Draper Carlson was quoted in the NYT article that made the announcement and went into a little more detail on her concerns for the line at her popular site, Comics Worth Reading. The response was pretty big (46 comments so far) with some folks thinking Minx was a stupid name, Alloy Marketing wasn't the wisest choice in the world for PR, there should be more female writers involved (something Carlson is also concerned about) and wondering why a female comic book writer didn't write the first book, rather than a YA author with no comic writing experience. Carlson blogged about the whole deal again after it started catching on fire across the internet, and again folks don't believe DC's sincerity, or that it will be a hit or that it is even really necessary. Jessa echoed this point at Bookslut when she wrote "DC Comics has evidently forgotten that teenage girls love Sandman, not stupid bullshit Nancy Drew rip offs."

So yeah - folks have opinions.

The forum at Newsarama is as out of control as usual - and lots of commenters over there. Again the main sticking point is too many men writing for teen girls. (For non comic readers the fact that so many men dominate the industry is an old problem and it is brought up a lot - but little has been done to change things.)

I come at this whole deal from a very different place. First, I've reviewed both of Cecil's books and I like her writing and I like her. So I'm rooting for her from the get-go. But as I've written here before, I'm a huge comics fan - huge. I get a box every month from my comic shop in Florida and read about 20 titles or so regularly. I also buy graphic novels and I've reviewed stuff from Oni Press and Illusive Arts and other smaller pubs at Bookslut and Eclectica. (My Bookslut Cool Reads in December are all comics.)

Comics are words and I'm all about the words, so yeah, I'm a fan.

I've read plenty of YA novels with female protags written by men and I think guys can do just fine with this. I also think who cares about the Minx name - a bit lame, but no biggee. What jazzes me is that the line is happening at all. The more that can be done to get teen girls buying comics means more adult female fans and that is great - really great. Because while everyone can say teen girls are in the comic shops and don't need a line, they are in denial if they think the numbers aren't wildly disparate between male and female readers. I asked Rick who owns and operates Famous Faces, my shop about his female customers. He has about 500 regular monthly customers in his store (these are folks who buy multiple titles and have them pulled by the staff as they arrive - I'm one of them). Only about 100 are women and of that number only about 20 are teenager girls.

Twenty girls buying comics in a huge suburban area in Central Florida where there is no other shop. At all.

I don't think girls have a clue that comics are out there or how incredibly diverse the lines are these days. It's not all superheroes (if that's not your thing) and the people who work in the shops are great - honestly. (If you live in Fairbanks, AK I can direct you to a great shop there too.) Manga sells to female readers - but only so much and manga...well, I'm not a big fan so I don't even know what to say about it. But well thought out comics and graphic novels (which are much longer in length - like a novel in comic form) are all over the place in the industry and the more teen girls who read them, the more powerful the female buying power will be and then...well maybe then the cup size on some of those superheroines will come back down to realistic size.

A girl can dream, right?

I say go Cecil - go write you blasted heart out. And everybody else, well, let's just wait and support the line when it appears. Let's see if it's well written and fun and appealing. Let's give it a chance before we talk the thing to death.

Cecil's cool. Let her write and show you just how cool she is.