ABSTRACT
I don’t mean to especially pick on Bukatman, whose essay I otherwise admire. “Secret Identity Politics” is the example closest to hand, but in truth, I’m wearily accustomed to being an invisible woman, my fan presence ignored by the academy and industry alike. It doesn’t help that there is no easy way to determine how many women are currently reading superhero comics; Marvel and DC periodically perform market research surveys but do not reveal the results.1 Estimates that women make up 5 to 10 percent of superhero comics fans are frequently cited in fan discussion, but the research I could fi nd to support those numbers is no more recent than the late 90s, where Jeffrey A. Brown writes:
The most easily recognizable fact about the comic book audience in the 1990s is that it is overwhelmingly male. Bierbaum’s 1987 study of comic book stores indicated that with even the most generous of estimates only 6-10 percent of customers are female. Likewise, none of the over thirty retail store managers I spoke with estimated their clientele to consist of more than 10 percent women. (Brown 2001, 62)
In Comic Book Culture: Fanboys and True Believers, Matthew Pustz is more vague, but equally assured in describing the mid-90s regular customers of comic book store Daydreams as mostly male-“even though Daydreams is more female friendly than most comic book shops” (Pustz 1999, 5). Why do women keep away? Pustz has some theories:
[W]omen are turned off by comic shops’ atmosphere. Female visitors commonly become uncomfortable or feel unwelcome as a result of the gazes of male patrons who are surprised to see women in that setting or by posters that frequently objectify women and/or glorify violence. Other women are simply turned off by the fact that there do not seem to be any comics interesting to female readers. (Pustz 1999, 8)
Pustz’s comments here reveal more than his assessment of comics fandom’s gender bias. They suggest, perhaps unconsciously, that superhero comics are inherently uninteresting to the female reader. It is entirely possible that a woman might especially object to a poster objectifying women but somewhat less clear why one glorifying violence would automatically make her uncomfortable. Glorifi ed violence, however, is central to the power fantasies of the superhero comic, and Pustz’s reference to a lack of comics “interesting to female readers” refers also to the predominantly superheroic content of most comic book stores. It is not, he implies, merely the objectifi - cation of women that is a turnoff for potential female readers; the glorifi ed violence of mainstream comics, and perhaps their very existence, are offputting to women, who are (possibly inherently) uninterested in them.
