As a children's librarian, I see new comics fans born every day. Increasingly, these fans are female and what they're reading is manga . To anyone who's been paying attention, this isn't news. Stereotypically, boys are drawn to stories that are funny and have lots of action, while girls are attracted to character-driven stories that offer windows into other worlds, or that reflect back a vision of themselves. If Japanese comics are indeed, all about character development, then manga is offering girls what American comics do not: a character-driven story, drawn in a cinematic style, that offers a world view different from what they're used to reading. Plus, statistically, girls read more than boys. & It's not surprising then to see ICv2 reporting that shojo (for young girls) manga is dominating the manga market as of Spring, 2008.
NOTE: Viz Media will host a Shojo Beat Panel Saturday at 3:30 pm in Room 10.
