Farewell to Minx
October 1st, 2008 | Published in Graphic Novels, News | 2 Comments
The big news in the comics world last week–sorry, I’m a little behind on my RSS feeds–was the demise of Minx, DC’s imprint aimed at teen girls. Many wonderful comics bloggers have written thoughtfully on this situation, so here are some links:
Over at Precocious Curmudgeon, David Welsh wrote in Half measures:
My strongest impression of the Minx books I’ve read (all of the books in the first wave and some of the subsequent ones) is that they felt incomplete, that they were at least two rigorous edits away from being a finished piece of entertainment. Whether DC was assuming lower standards among the books’ target demographic or not, I have no idea, but all of the marketing in the world really shouldn’t excuse generally mediocre product.
And Heidi MacDonald has a series of great posts on the news over at The Beat:
My own take? Well, like a lot of manga readers, I had some doubts about Minx from the start. To me, DC’s attempt to make inroads into the teen graphic novel market showed no respect for teen readers: they seemed to assume that teen girls were only reading shojo manga because DC hadn’t yet deigned to write comics aimed at them. The name of the imprint itself also didn’t help, with all its problematic connotation, nor did predominance of male creators. Finally, I was incredibly disappointed by the one title from the Minx line that I actually read: Re-Gifters by Carey, Liew, and Hempel. After that, I pretty much gave up on the imprint in disgust, since that graphic novel’s flaws reflected poorly on both the creators and the publishers.
I’d be interested in hearing what the librarians among my blog readers think about the end of Minx. Will your teen patrons miss its titles?
October 1st, 2008 at 11:54 am (#)
i don’t think so. my predecessor didn’t buy any minx titles, and the only one i bought since i got here is “the plain janes” (because i really do like that one.) it’s got medium circs but the teens who come to my graphic novel book club didn’t care for it. i got one copy of ‘janes in love’ as well but haven’t read it yet.
October 1st, 2008 at 8:40 pm (#)
My system owns a smattering of Minx titles, but I haven’t gotten the sense that the teen graphic novel readers actually had any awareness of the imprint as a brand. But as standalone titles, they probably do get a bit lost in the wall of manga.