Girl Reaches Out To DC Comics For More Female Heroes, DC Reaches Out To Twitter For Free Publicity

Recently, an 11-year-old superheroine named Rowan made an effort to right a great injustice in the world. Rowan, who is a young comic reader, took it upon herself to write to comics powerhouse DC, home of Batman, Superman, and (not that you’d know it from their recent TV and movie line-up) Wonder Woman. Rowan’s question for DC: Where are all the girls?

Rowan’s letter was full of valid concerns. Why did the toy line-up she got for her birthday have only two female characters compared to ten male ones? Why did the catalog depictions of those two girls have pink-and-purple backgrounds? Why isn’t there an action figure of Hawkgirl or Catwoman? What happened to all the ladies of the awesome targeted-at-Rowan’s-age-group Young Justice cartoon? And seriously, where is that Wonder Woman movie?! From Rowan:

Dear DC comics,

My name is Rowan and I am 11 years old. I love superheroes and have been reading comics and watching superhero cartoons and movies since I was very young. I’m a girl, and I’m upset because there aren’t very many girl superheroes or movies and comics from DC.
For my birthday, I got some of your Justice League Chibisâ„¢. I noticed in the little pamphlet that there are only 2 girl Chibis, and 10 boys. Also, the background for the girl figures was all pink and purple.
I remember watching Justice League cartoons when I was really young with my dad. There are Superman and Batman movies, but not a Wonder Woman one. You have a Flash TV show, but not a Wonder Woman one. Marvel Comics made a movie about a talking tree and raccoon awesome, but you haven’t made a movie with Wonder Woman.

I would really like a Hawkgirl or Catwoman or the girls of the Young Justice TV show action figures please. I love your comics, but I would love them a whole lot more, if there were more girls.
I asked a lot of the people I know whether they watched movies or read books or comics where girls were the main characters, they all said yes.
Please do something about this. Girls read comics too and they care.

Sincerely, Rowan.

DC didn’t acknowledge Rowan’s letter with a reply of their own or an email, but they did shout-out to her on Twitter, so everyone could see How Much They Care about female heroes. Their response? Hurry up and wait:

Screen Shot 2015-02-04 at 6.16.03 AM Screen Shot 2015-02-04 at 6.16.21 AM

“Girl power! Sometime! Eventually! Probably!”

Meanwhile, just a few tweets later, the company posted this thrilling news about new animated projects with accompanying toy line-ups:

batman unlimited dc comicsCount ’em up: that’s five dudes and exactly zero lady-people. The other project, not depicted in the Tweet, is a new version of the Justice League line-up, which has six guys and one token, albeit Wonder-ful, Woman. 8% women? Yeah, that ‘girl power’ is almost palpable.

A blog post written by a family friend says that Rowan is happy her letter got a response from DC, but frankly, I think DC can do more. I can invoke a litany of female heroes from their stable: besides Wondy, there’s Vixen, Batwoman, the Question, Power Girl, Starfire, Zatanna, Huntress, Black Canary … They exist. They are awesome. They are just critically undersold.

Good luck finding an action figure of your favorite major female comics character on a wall stocked with 97 versions of Batman plus a bunch of his dudely comrades-in-arms. Good luck finding a t-shirt with a superheroine other than Wonder Woman on it. And good luck having a young girl feel welcome in the DC Comics universe these days when she’s greeted by images of her favorite cartoon heroines as depicted in the images you’ll find in this thread.

It’s nice that DC pays lip service to the idea that girls read comics. Girls comprise a huge audience that voraciously slurp up whatever cartoons the company deigns to throw their way … and then whose comics-and-toys money goes unspent because DC couldn’t be bothered to capitalize on cootie-laced Girl Dollars. They can rah-rah ‘girl power’ until they’re blue in the face. But until they start actually treating girls and women as more than stepping stones on their way to feminist street cred, I’m not interested.

DC’s main comics rival, Marvel, isn’t much better in terms of movies and merchandise (poor Black Widow), but I wish I could send Rowan some back issues of the brand new Ms. Marvel and the first two issues of The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, which really are some serious girl-power fun. Now if I could just get my hands on a Squirrel Girl action figure … I guess I won’t hold my breath.

(Images: Twitter)

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