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A recent discussion on the Comic Scholars mailing list has been hitting on the over-abundance of superhero comics and how that drove away so many females from enjoying the medium. It's something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, in reality. The (mostly) male editors who ran the comic industry back in the day believed girls didn't read comics, so there was no reason to produce "girlie" books like romance comics and such. Well, girls were reading those "girlie" books -- they were just ignoring the war, Western and superhero books that were flooding the market. And part of the issue, too, was that most publishers focused on one or two genres. So just because National wasn't selling a great deal to girls didn't mean Gold Key wasn't!

Interestingly, much of the same issue holds today. Marvel and DC aren't publishing much for girls, so many people in the industry don't recognize the female portion of the market, whereas your Toykopop type publishers are.

Just a quick thought. Those who do not understand the past are doomed to repeat it.

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