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Don… oh screw it, I’ve made this joke too many times.
This is one of the most common questions I get that isn’t “Should I tell her I like her?” or “how do I get this girl to like me?” and it deserves its own entry into the Dr. NerdLove canon. It’s one of the issues where what’s being said isn’t really what’s being asked.
Stick with me for a second here.
Y’see, geeks, as a group, tend towards insecurity and self-loathing. Even with the rise of geek culture, video games cresting as a multi-billion dollar industry, the increasing popular acceptance of graphic novels as a valid medium and nine out of the top ten highest grossing movies in history being geek movies, the collective self-esteem of geeks and nerds remains fairly low.
If it weren’t, I wouldn’t be running this blog, now would I?
Because of these bouts of insecurity, nerd boys have an unfortunate tendency to feel somewhat… defensive, for lack of a better term, of their interests. This manifests in a number odd ways, including a tendency towards an insular tribalism, an “us-vs-them” mentality. If you’ve ever heard a geek refer to non-geeks as “civilians” or “mundanes”, then you know what I’m talking about. There is “our people” and “everyone else”. While they maintain a certain calculated elitism and disdain for the “mundanes”, most of them still yearn for mainstream acceptance.
Which is where the evangelism comes in; what better way to prove that “we” are just as good as “they” are by bringing them into the fold? If “we” can convince “them” to like what we like, doesn’t that mean that in the end, we were right all along? This desperate need for approval is especially strong where girls are concerned. After decades of the popular image of comic fans as basement-dwelling emotionally stunted man-children, nerdboys suffer from anxiety over women discovering that they read Green Lantern or collect action figures. They read stories about celebrity geeks like Nicholas Cage liquidating his comics at the insistence of his then-wife. They watch The 40 Year Old Virgin and see Catherine Keener freak out at Steve Carrell’s collection. They hear the hosts of the Today Show declare that anyone over the age of 20 continuing to play video games is just “weird”. The idea that geek interests make sex dry up and disappear is deeply ingrained in the nerd collective conscience. The nerd is seemingly pulled in two incompatible directions: girls… or comics. Girls… or games. Girl… or geek.
So why not date geek girls? After all, why not stick to people who will not only not judge them for their interests but take part? Well, because geek girls – while not the impossibly rare unicorns that they once were – are still vastly outnumbered by the guys, and are considered hotly contested commodities.
(And yes, that was a very deliberate word-choice, and something I will be addressing in another article…)
So what’s a nerd to do? Well, if they can’t find a geek girl…
Why not create one?
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I wish you’d put pics in your posts. Gets attention more, and makes the average reader want to read . Gives the eye a rest, instead of staring at a wall of text. Good writing!!!!
But when you do start reading, oh boy is it entertaining.
I have been doing an online comic since March and I was hoping that my readership would be college students trying in inspire them into action through people trying to stand up to the system and winning. It was a proto-occupy comic. To my surprise, my readership is 3 to 1 female. I think that’s awesome because one of my goals as a comic creator was always to bring women into comics. I just never thought this would be the project that would do this.
You never know what’s going to be the project that makes you or how it’s going to turn out.
I didn’t think giving love advice to geeks in one episode of a podcast was going to turn into this…
As a girl. I recomend most of the not-super hero titles for girls who are thinking of getting in to da comic. eg. Y the Last man and Fables. for the teen girls I 100% recomend Runaways. basicaly, depending on their personality, a girl will probably enjoy anything that dosen’t 100% objectify their gender. (I am talking about the gravity defying boobs witchblade, jean grey, and almost everyone else seems to obtain when they aquire superpowers… its like chickens with groeth hormones.)
I agree with you about Fables, but only up to the end of the War with the Enemy. After that, it seems to have lost it’s way.
Being a member of the solely-anime-focused brand of geekdom I have a much easier time (and indeed enjoy) turning “normies” (that’s what I call the “civilians” in your article) both male and female into anime-stuff. Girls like the cute stuff and emotionally deep stories and the superhero thing while still existing is not nearly as prevalent in anime/manga as it is in western stuff thus my work is somewhat easier.
The problem is that the underlying reality of the rarity of girls who would respect the medium as much as I do is still exorbitantly high so it really is difficult to find someone who you can hang with, understand each-others language and also be somewhat attracted to.
I’d say if you introduce a woman to comics via Cerebus, you deserve to be dumped on the spot :p
I would recommend everything Ruth has posted including some of the things you’ve posted as well (Nana!)(which is almost as good as Paradise Kiss by the same author). Sweet Tooth, Ouran Host Club, Fruits Basket, Claymore (although that may be a bit gorey)…As a woman, I was able to get 3 other girls to read and keep up with The Walking Dead comics as well; we pass them around at work (with the title covered). I’ve noticed that I personally like GN and manga with a lot of character development.
I’d disagree with you about Sweet Tooth, but that’s more of a “tastes vary” issue than anything else. You *might* want to check out DMZ by Brian Wood too.
What’s wrong with introducing girls to comics with Sandman? That’s what my H.S. boyfriend did, and it worked beautifully. I loved them and was more open to comics in general after reading them. Now I have my own geeky interests, like space opera and epic fantasy novels. You give great advice, though, keep it up
It’s more the graphic novel area, but Love and Rockets and the Palomar comics but Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez are brilliant and thoughtful. Probably not really “comics” necessarily, but if you’ve got a girl who likes a good story (especially one who reads authors like Gabriel Garcia Marquez), it’ll be the easiest sell ever. I found a collection while I was killing time in a library and I’ve been hooked ever since. Just a note — there is more than a little violence and nudity, and no shying away from topics like infidelity, abortion, communism/politics, cross-dressing, homosexuality, domestic abuse, etc.
Love and Rockets is good (although admittedly, it’s never clicked for me) but it’s a hell of a time investment considering that Los Bros Hernandez have been working on it since the early 80s. Palomar – which had a huge collected edition come out relatively recently – may be a slightly better place to start.
What your list is very sorely missing is”Strangers in Paradise” by Terry Moore. That is the “People who don’t like comics” comic, and also quite popular with ladies. Why also missing “Love and Rockets” , “Sandman” ,”Death”, “Hellblazer”, “Swamp Thing” and “The Books of Magic”? Each of those comics are popular, and have established female fan bases.
Evidently you skipped straight to the end of the article since I mentioned both SiP and Sandman specifically as among the same ones that get trotted out over and over again.
Also: Death: The High Cost of Living and The Books of Magic are both out of print, with only limited numbers available at Amazon and other retailers.