here’s what Marvel’s got for women led titles:
- Fearless Defenders
- Journey into Mystery
- Red She-Hulk
- Captain Marvel
Fearless Defenders has Misty Knight, Valkyrie, and Dani Moonstar, with more to come, and Journey into Mystery has Sif as the lead
these are the books you want to support, or at the very least, give a shot, if you want Marvel to eventually give a shot at other women you might have in your mind as worthy of a title
having 4 books featuring women in the lead is UNUSUAL AS SHIT for Marvel, okay? before Captain Marvel came out, there was a big dead space between her and X-23. they don’t do this kind of thing often. there’s always tons of pressure on DC to put out women in the lead, AND they have more well known women to choose from to boot. katana, a kind of b, c lister from Batman and the Outsiders days, has been in Birds of Prey, is gonna be in JLA, AND is gonna have her own book.
you want Marvel to try something like that, you gotta show the support. otherwise? it’s back to nothing but being on team books or part of the supporting cast, likely an Avengers group or an X-Men group. Marvel isn’t big on taking risks, they cancel FAST. they sometimes cancel books before they even come OUT if they don’t get enough pre-orders, and ‘Fearless Defenders’ doesn’t have the kind of brand strength that X-Men or Avengers does.
you want women in cape comics, go for the best of what’s available, and send letters, tweets, emails to Marvel when they do something you don’t like, or to show support for something you do like. DC has the pressure on them, Marvel doesn’t, in this regard.
i would kill for a Storm book. i really would. or god forbid, a Sue Storm mini. but if these don’t do alright, it’s back to nothing but Avengers, X-Men, and Spider-Man.
“It's hardly an industry secret that issue #1s are a magnet for attention, but it's not until issue #5, 6 or 7 that you know where a series is going to level off in sales. Typically, there's a drop between the first and second issue, but you can see an uptick by issue #3 or 4 if the series catches heat.”
—Axel Alonso, editor-in-chief @ Marvel (source)
For the people who want Marvel to keep producing non sausagefest, non all-the-white-dudes books: this is why only buying the first or second issues isn’t supporting a new book. This is why it’s often too late for a book if you wait for the trade paperback to come out, when popularity is calculated on units shifted per issue.
This is also why if a new book double ships, you need to buy the second issue in the month. Don’t put it off so you can buy that shiny new Avengers, Iron Man or [Insert White Dude Title Here] book that’s unlikely to be cancelled.
Comics are expensive, yes, and often people don’t have a lot of money to spend on them. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be intelligent about your comic buying.
What’s more important? Supporting books lead by the characters you want to see so Marvel sees their value and keeps producing them, or keeping up with that storyline in a book about dudes that’ll never get cancelled, and you can easily pick up next month?
