History Of How Girls Saved Comics
How Girls Saved Comics A history comics targeted towards girls from the late 1940’s through the 50’s
Even before the end of World War II, superhero comics were falling out of favor with the American audience. The single issue stories were becoming stale- there are only so many ways Superman can punch the bad guy without boring his fans. More than that, the war was taking its toll on the minds of non-military Americans. After years of international violence shaking up their lives, "people were sick of fighting, even in fantasy." Children struck by this dissatisfaction with superheroes moved on to kids’ humor comics. By the war’s end, comic book sales had collapsed to 30%. Immune to this drop, however, was Pep Comics. What protected Pep from what would be the biggest flop the comics industry had felt so far? Girls. Women and girls have always been a huge chunk of comics’ readers (citation.) Despite this, comics had been targeted towards boys and men. It was the stories of men being celebrated in comics, with women cast as damsels and eye candy. When Pep’s Archie hit the scene in 1941 with Betty then Veronica, girls discovered a narrative they could see themselves in. Archie and its copycats didn’t offer stellar female representation with their boy-crazy, gender conforming …show more content…
leads, but it drew young, female readers in nonetheless. Pep produced a number of superhero comics before their red-headed breadwinner took center stage, including The Shield, The Hangman, and The Comet. When the aforementioned collapse struck the industry, Pep was already covered, having stayed several steps ahead of its competitors. Since 1941, Pep had begun phasing out such super stories in favor of the growing genre of humor, and by 1946 had changed ownership to Archie Publications, Inc. Although there are few concrete surveys regarding readership demographics, it is estimated that girls have made up over 60% of Archie’s readers.
Female readers were usually an afterthought in terms of target audience for comics. Thus began a vicious cycle- comics were written without bothering to appeal to women, so women had no interest in those comics. Contributing to this problem was that the comics industry was such a boy’s club. The National Cartoonists Society was formed in 1946 without a single woman in the organization. In 1949, Hilda Terry, a female cartoonist, sent the society a letter, reading, “We must humbly request that you either alter your title to the National Men Cartoonists Society ... or discontinue whatever rule or practice you have which bars otherwise qualified women cartoonists.” As a result, she was accepted the next year, and made changes that allowed other women to attain membership. Following on the heels of Archie’s success came many other girl orientated comics, first with similar perky teenagers like Patsy Walker, then with working gals. Timely Comics, which later evolved into Marvel Comics, rolled out Millie the Model, Tessie the Typist, and Nelly the Nurse. Many of these comics brought up women’s issues from the day. These topics weren’t necessarily covered well, but they represented ideas that women and girls were interested in. For example, in one Timely Comic’s storyline, Millie’s longtime boyfriend and photographer proposes to her. She eagerly accepts, even on the condition that she give up her career and settle down as a married woman, as was the expectation at the time. She becomes increasingly miserable at this decision, however, and calls off the wedding, effectively prioritizing her career over her love life.
This contrasts with a Patsy Walker story with a similar theme. Upon discovering that boys are paid more than girls, Patsy encourages all of the girls at school to wear pants in protest. One girl, Hedy Wolfe, refuses, and subsequently goes on dates with all of the protesters’ boyfriends. The “pioneers of women's rights” are crushed, and give up their pants so they can win their boyfriends back, wage gap be damned.
On a younger and tougher note is the beloved Lulu. The late 1930’s had Lulu hit the scene as a mischievous yet lovable kid with a spunk found in little boy troublemakers gracing comics at the time. She was created by Marjorie Henderson Buell in 1935, and danced across the page for another fifty years. She was grumpy but loyal, with a clear, although absurd, sense of logic. She fought against boy’s clubs- portrayed literally by “no girls allowed” zones set up by neighborhood boys- and rose above gender roles in what was appropriate for little ladies. She inspired the creation of Friends of Lulu in the 1990’s, a group focused on promoting female readership and celebrating women in comics.
Lulu wasn’t the only one to create a lasting legacy. With the rise of teen humor comics, specifically Archie, came the actual term “teenager.” Comics introduced the word to describe the young people of the day that were no longer children, but were certainly not yet adults. From that day, teenagers have remained adults’ biggest fear. Publishing companies hoped to gain parent approval- and therefore money- by portraying positive teenagers like Patsy and Archie. They never drank or smoke or stood around like hoodlums, unlike America’s actual teens. The wholesomeness of these books are what saved this genre from the rise of censorship, a topic explored later on.
Another example is Kitty Hawke and her All-Girl Crew was originally the lead strip of British publication Girl, starting in 1951. Girl aptly named, as its target audience consisted solely of girls. Kitty Hawke followed the feisty Kitty Hawke, daughter of an airline owner. In order to prove to him that girls can do anything that boys can, she brings together an all-female flight crew to join her on her misadventures. It was replaced by Wendy and Jinx as Girl’s lead strip, then eventually removed altogether. It is thought that Kitty Hawke failed because the story and characters were believed to be “too masculine.” Because it debuted post-WWII, it is also thought that common opinion on a woman’s role in the workplace was to blame for its failure. In accordance with this theory, girls growing up during the war were accustomed to seeing their mothers go to work in the place of men. Post war, these women were sent back to the domestic life, raising daughters that weren’t exposed to working gals. This speculation seems to fall short in light of successful “working women” characters like Millie and her peers. This leads to the conclusion that male publishers reached in the day, that little girls could stomach working women, as long as they were in glamourous, “frivolous,” professions like modelling and acting. As such, one of the stories that replaced Kitty Hawke was about more women working on planes- this time as stewardesses.
Paper dolls were often included in girl-oriented comics of the 1940’s, assisted those stories’ trend of focusing on glamourous working women with careers in acting and modeling, and on teenage fashionistas.. Various titles, especially those featuring stars like Patsy, Millie, Betty, and Veronica, encouraged readers to participate in the creation of their comics by submitting designs for the very outfits that would be sent out with the dolls. The young girls (and sometimes boys) would receive credit for their designs in the books. This is what the early days of fan clubs and interactive media looked like: girls producing content in appreciation of their idols. Paper dolls have been included in women’s and children’s magazines since the 1800’s, but didn’t appear in comics until after the super hero bubble had burst at the end of the war. Publishers pushed paper dolls in many comics, their female readers of all ages taking delight in the ageless trinket.
Comics targeted towards girls also advertised traditionally girly products, such as bags, charms, and, of course, girdles. The heightened importance of dieting and girdles in books targeted at readers as young as ten years old is troubling to a fat, 21st century gal like me. It serves as a reminder that there is hardly a thing offered for female consumption that isn’t insidiously promoting the multibillion dollar industry of girls hating themselves. This, of course, is a topic for a different time and much longer discussion, but is important to keep in mind while visiting female spaces of the past.
Calling All Girls, published by parents publishing press, was a magazine aimed at “girls and subdebs,” what we would now refer to as preteens. Its cover page always boasted “MOVIES, STORIES, FASHIONS, GOOD LOOKS, ETTIQUETTE, GADGETS, THINGS TO DO.” Starting in the late 30’s, it ran until 2004- but for the decade and a half of its existence, it regularly included and celebrated comics within its pages. Alongside fashion tips and DIY crafts were colorful stories of badass women doing badass things. The Queen, war correspondent and anti-fascist Eve Curie, and violinist Carroll Glenn are some of the real world women whose stories were told between advice columns and advertisements for nail polish.
Young girls weren’t the only new audience receiving gender specific content in this period.
Romance novels set to target women, rather than girls. These books were set with more realism than the humor teen books, oft with protags closer to the age of the target audience. These comics often shared similar themes as shown in teen comics like love triangles and jealousy, but portrayed in a more mature way. Joe Simon and Jack Kirby began producing Young Romance during the war in order to break into the previously untapped market of comics targeted towards adults- men and women alike. Romance comics met their end in the late 1950’s when the comic industry’s biggest obstacle reared its ugly
head. In 1954, psychiatrist Fredric Wertham published Seduction of the Innocent, citing comics as the reason behind adolescent deviancy. Concerned parents and authority figures believed him, and called out against themes of violence, crime, sex and horror in comics. To save themselves, most comic companies adopted the self-made Comics Code Authority, which set rules for what was and was not acceptable in their comics. Unlike the more wholesome teen humor titles like Archie, which hardly violated these regulations to begin with, romance comics were crushed by the Comics Code Authority. Among the rules established in the code were guidelines on how women and romance could be portrayed. Female characters were forced to adhere to strict gender roles. Sex and anything that could be construed as sexual was outright banned. They weren’t demonized the way crime and horror comics were, but were still targeted by moral crusaders. This made the stories bland, serving gender roles and patriarchal standards on a silver platter.
Try as they might, these outside sources could not keep women from the medium. Sure, representation is still pathetic in modern titles, and mainstream books still sport impossibly proportioned women on covers, serving to entice and excite men. Yet, we rise. My personal collection of today’s comics feature multidimensional women, some who are fat, queer, mentally ill, and even main characters. Today, I can open a comic and see myself, written by women who want to represent me. It is still a struggle, and we are far from where we need to be in terms of gender equality in the industry, but we are making progress. I cannot overlook the contribution of girl comics from this formative period in the medium’s history. It is in no small part thanks to these titles, characters, and creators that we are standing as we are now.
Even before the end of World War II, superhero comics were falling out of favor with the American audience. The single issue stories were becoming stale- there are only so many ways Superman can punch the bad guy without boring his fans. More than that, the war was taking its toll on the minds of non-military Americans. After years of international violence shaking up their lives, "people were sick of fighting, even in fantasy." Children struck by this dissatisfaction with superheroes moved on to kids’ humor comics. By the war’s end, comic book sales had collapsed to 30%. Immune to this drop, however, was Pep Comics. What protected Pep from what would be the biggest flop the comics industry had felt so far? Girls. Women and girls have always been a huge chunk of comics’ readers (citation.) Despite this, comics had been targeted towards boys and men. It was the stories of men being celebrated in comics, with women cast as damsels and eye candy. When Pep’s Archie hit the scene in 1941 with Betty then Veronica, girls discovered a narrative they could see themselves in. Archie and its copycats didn’t offer stellar female representation with their boy-crazy, gender conforming …show more content…
leads, but it drew young, female readers in nonetheless. Pep produced a number of superhero comics before their red-headed breadwinner took center stage, including The Shield, The Hangman, and The Comet. When the aforementioned collapse struck the industry, Pep was already covered, having stayed several steps ahead of its competitors. Since 1941, Pep had begun phasing out such super stories in favor of the growing genre of humor, and by 1946 had changed ownership to Archie Publications, Inc. Although there are few concrete surveys regarding readership demographics, it is estimated that girls have made up over 60% of Archie’s readers.
Female readers were usually an afterthought in terms of target audience for comics. Thus began a vicious cycle- comics were written without bothering to appeal to women, so women had no interest in those comics. Contributing to this problem was that the comics industry was such a boy’s club. The National Cartoonists Society was formed in 1946 without a single woman in the organization. In 1949, Hilda Terry, a female cartoonist, sent the society a letter, reading, “We must humbly request that you either alter your title to the National Men Cartoonists Society ... or discontinue whatever rule or practice you have which bars otherwise qualified women cartoonists.” As a result, she was accepted the next year, and made changes that allowed other women to attain membership. Following on the heels of Archie’s success came many other girl orientated comics, first with similar perky teenagers like Patsy Walker, then with working gals. Timely Comics, which later evolved into Marvel Comics, rolled out Millie the Model, Tessie the Typist, and Nelly the Nurse. Many of these comics brought up women’s issues from the day. These topics weren’t necessarily covered well, but they represented ideas that women and girls were interested in. For example, in one Timely Comic’s storyline, Millie’s longtime boyfriend and photographer proposes to her. She eagerly accepts, even on the condition that she give up her career and settle down as a married woman, as was the expectation at the time. She becomes increasingly miserable at this decision, however, and calls off the wedding, effectively prioritizing her career over her love life.
This contrasts with a Patsy Walker story with a similar theme. Upon discovering that boys are paid more than girls, Patsy encourages all of the girls at school to wear pants in protest. One girl, Hedy Wolfe, refuses, and subsequently goes on dates with all of the protesters’ boyfriends. The “pioneers of women's rights” are crushed, and give up their pants so they can win their boyfriends back, wage gap be damned.
On a younger and tougher note is the beloved Lulu. The late 1930’s had Lulu hit the scene as a mischievous yet lovable kid with a spunk found in little boy troublemakers gracing comics at the time. She was created by Marjorie Henderson Buell in 1935, and danced across the page for another fifty years. She was grumpy but loyal, with a clear, although absurd, sense of logic. She fought against boy’s clubs- portrayed literally by “no girls allowed” zones set up by neighborhood boys- and rose above gender roles in what was appropriate for little ladies. She inspired the creation of Friends of Lulu in the 1990’s, a group focused on promoting female readership and celebrating women in comics.
Lulu wasn’t the only one to create a lasting legacy. With the rise of teen humor comics, specifically Archie, came the actual term “teenager.” Comics introduced the word to describe the young people of the day that were no longer children, but were certainly not yet adults. From that day, teenagers have remained adults’ biggest fear. Publishing companies hoped to gain parent approval- and therefore money- by portraying positive teenagers like Patsy and Archie. They never drank or smoke or stood around like hoodlums, unlike America’s actual teens. The wholesomeness of these books are what saved this genre from the rise of censorship, a topic explored later on.
Another example is Kitty Hawke and her All-Girl Crew was originally the lead strip of British publication Girl, starting in 1951. Girl aptly named, as its target audience consisted solely of girls. Kitty Hawke followed the feisty Kitty Hawke, daughter of an airline owner. In order to prove to him that girls can do anything that boys can, she brings together an all-female flight crew to join her on her misadventures. It was replaced by Wendy and Jinx as Girl’s lead strip, then eventually removed altogether. It is thought that Kitty Hawke failed because the story and characters were believed to be “too masculine.” Because it debuted post-WWII, it is also thought that common opinion on a woman’s role in the workplace was to blame for its failure. In accordance with this theory, girls growing up during the war were accustomed to seeing their mothers go to work in the place of men. Post war, these women were sent back to the domestic life, raising daughters that weren’t exposed to working gals. This speculation seems to fall short in light of successful “working women” characters like Millie and her peers. This leads to the conclusion that male publishers reached in the day, that little girls could stomach working women, as long as they were in glamourous, “frivolous,” professions like modelling and acting. As such, one of the stories that replaced Kitty Hawke was about more women working on planes- this time as stewardesses.
Paper dolls were often included in girl-oriented comics of the 1940’s, assisted those stories’ trend of focusing on glamourous working women with careers in acting and modeling, and on teenage fashionistas.. Various titles, especially those featuring stars like Patsy, Millie, Betty, and Veronica, encouraged readers to participate in the creation of their comics by submitting designs for the very outfits that would be sent out with the dolls. The young girls (and sometimes boys) would receive credit for their designs in the books. This is what the early days of fan clubs and interactive media looked like: girls producing content in appreciation of their idols. Paper dolls have been included in women’s and children’s magazines since the 1800’s, but didn’t appear in comics until after the super hero bubble had burst at the end of the war. Publishers pushed paper dolls in many comics, their female readers of all ages taking delight in the ageless trinket.
Comics targeted towards girls also advertised traditionally girly products, such as bags, charms, and, of course, girdles. The heightened importance of dieting and girdles in books targeted at readers as young as ten years old is troubling to a fat, 21st century gal like me. It serves as a reminder that there is hardly a thing offered for female consumption that isn’t insidiously promoting the multibillion dollar industry of girls hating themselves. This, of course, is a topic for a different time and much longer discussion, but is important to keep in mind while visiting female spaces of the past.
Calling All Girls, published by parents publishing press, was a magazine aimed at “girls and subdebs,” what we would now refer to as preteens. Its cover page always boasted “MOVIES, STORIES, FASHIONS, GOOD LOOKS, ETTIQUETTE, GADGETS, THINGS TO DO.” Starting in the late 30’s, it ran until 2004- but for the decade and a half of its existence, it regularly included and celebrated comics within its pages. Alongside fashion tips and DIY crafts were colorful stories of badass women doing badass things. The Queen, war correspondent and anti-fascist Eve Curie, and violinist Carroll Glenn are some of the real world women whose stories were told between advice columns and advertisements for nail polish.
Young girls weren’t the only new audience receiving gender specific content in this period.
Romance novels set to target women, rather than girls. These books were set with more realism than the humor teen books, oft with protags closer to the age of the target audience. These comics often shared similar themes as shown in teen comics like love triangles and jealousy, but portrayed in a more mature way. Joe Simon and Jack Kirby began producing Young Romance during the war in order to break into the previously untapped market of comics targeted towards adults- men and women alike. Romance comics met their end in the late 1950’s when the comic industry’s biggest obstacle reared its ugly
head. In 1954, psychiatrist Fredric Wertham published Seduction of the Innocent, citing comics as the reason behind adolescent deviancy. Concerned parents and authority figures believed him, and called out against themes of violence, crime, sex and horror in comics. To save themselves, most comic companies adopted the self-made Comics Code Authority, which set rules for what was and was not acceptable in their comics. Unlike the more wholesome teen humor titles like Archie, which hardly violated these regulations to begin with, romance comics were crushed by the Comics Code Authority. Among the rules established in the code were guidelines on how women and romance could be portrayed. Female characters were forced to adhere to strict gender roles. Sex and anything that could be construed as sexual was outright banned. They weren’t demonized the way crime and horror comics were, but were still targeted by moral crusaders. This made the stories bland, serving gender roles and patriarchal standards on a silver platter.
Try as they might, these outside sources could not keep women from the medium. Sure, representation is still pathetic in modern titles, and mainstream books still sport impossibly proportioned women on covers, serving to entice and excite men. Yet, we rise. My personal collection of today’s comics feature multidimensional women, some who are fat, queer, mentally ill, and even main characters. Today, I can open a comic and see myself, written by women who want to represent me. It is still a struggle, and we are far from where we need to be in terms of gender equality in the industry, but we are making progress. I cannot overlook the contribution of girl comics from this formative period in the medium’s history. It is in no small part thanks to these titles, characters, and creators that we are standing as we are now.