various, Friends of Lulu

So apparently girls can read comics. If this sentence absolutely blows your mind, or if it fills you with such delight that you are now doubled over with mirth, you will probably want to read this anthology. Anyone else can skim.

Because comic after comic here, feature tedious gender stereotypes trotted out to be either celebrated (boys like x) or “subverted” (girls can like x, too!). The didacticism involved is tedious, but much worse is the way that some of these cartoonists are so amazed at their own fandom. “That’s right, gang. I’m the comic geek, not my boyfriend.” This is a direct quote. They sound like Harlan Ellison, shaking his head at the craziness that even someone with his refined taste could like (gasp! choke!) comic books.

This is not to say the entire anthology can be dismissed. Any book with Debbie Huey and Raina Telgemeier in it is going to be at least worth a look (even if Telgemeier just provides the frontispiece), and with something like fifty different comics stories you’re bound to find some favorites (mine are Julia Wertz’s and Anneke van Steijn’s contributions). Just be prepared to be annoyed on the way to finding them.

Friends of Lulu, the publisher of this anthology, is an organization that has its heart in the right place, but has perhaps been misguided from the start. In the end, grass-roots activism didn’t get girls to read comics, manga did. All over America, at this very moment, female would-be comics artists are doodling in their sketchbooks and dreaming about being the next Rumiko Takahashi or Masami Tsuda; and they’re not thinking about how strange and special it is that they read comics.

(Confidential to Burton & Cummins: R5-D4 is a Star Wars droid; R4-D4 is some kind of youtube video.)