Gender in Speculative Fiction - Comics

Comics

There was a time when more girls read comics than boys, but these comics were general realist, with a focus on romance and crime stories. However, for most of their existence, comic books audiences have been assumed to be mostly male. The female characters and superheroes were targeted towards this male demographic, rather than towards women readers. Although many female superheroes were created, very few starred in their own series or achieved stand-alone success. It has been debated whether the lack of female readership was due to male writers being uncomfortable with writing about or for women, or whether the comic book industry is male dominated due to the lack of intinsic interest of women in comics.

The first known female superhero is writer-artist Fletcher Hanks's minor character Fantomah, an ageless, ancient Egyptian woman in the modern day who could transform into a skull-faced creature with superpowers to fight evil; she debuted in 1940 in Fiction Houses Jungle Comics.

In the early 1940s the DC line was dominated by superpowered male characters such as the Green Lantern, Batman, and its flagship character, Superman. The first widely recognizable female superhero is Wonder Woman, created by William Moulton Marston for All-American Publications, one of three companies that would merge to form DC Comics. Marston intended the character to be a strong female role-model for girls, with "all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman."