All of which are examples of a problem with not only the wider culture in general but also comic books, which still struggle with breaking out of this imagined sole audience of straight white male dudes. That may have been the principal readership of comics in the early days and they certainly appear to dominate conventions, shops and message boards to this day, but all sorts of people read comic books. Why wouldn't they? They're awesome. Despite some of the previous examples, this year has actually seen publishers finally reaching out for those different audiences. The new spate of Bat books over at DC have been pitched towards hip women (Batgirl) and the young adult novel crowd (Gotham Academy), whilst Marvel have been courting a similarly diverse readership with the new Muslim Ms Marvel and the promise of an upcoming Spider-Woman series. Sure, it's being written by Dennis Hopeless and drawn by Greg Land, but it's a Spider-Book being headlined by a woman! Pretty cool. Considering the publisher has been pretty nakedly going after the female audience, choosing Milo Manara to draw a variant cover of the series is spectacularly wrong-headed. The Italian erotica artist has worked for Marvel before, but his absolutely awful (and super sexist) Spider-Woman painting was one of the biggest mistakes of the year, and one of the biggest controversies. The level of outcry online and elsewhere saw them pulling the cover altogether.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
