Bear Flag Blog

You may already know the answer to this question. If you're a Sequential Tart, you almost certainly do know the answer. But I didn't and it's something I was wondering recently.

Black men definitely read comic books; I would not be at all surprised if the percentage of comic book aficionados who are black was greater than the percentage of the general population who are. A majority of the clientele at my local comic book store in College Park MD were African-American. Comic books have spoken to black kids as well as white since at least the 1970s (if not even earlier).

But women into comic books are uncommon - certainly less as a percentage than their proportion in the general population - and although in my two decades of Con-going comic book geekdom I have spoken with Asian, Hispanic, SE Asian, and all sorts of Caucasian women who are into comic books, my personal experience has not had me talking comics with any black female comic book fans. So I wondered.

Anyhow, the answer is yes. Felicia D. Henderson began writing Teen Titans this summer, and has the following to say:

I am a long time comic book fan. I was a sickly child, which meant lots of time on the Asthma inhaler and lots of time in the house while my brothers and sisters played outside. So I created my own alternate universe and comic books helped me do that. My sisters were reading Archies and I was reading “Batman” and coming up with ways the villains could take out my younger brother. Yes, I was dark even at ten years old.

So it appears to be a hole in my experience, rather than a lack of interest in the medium on their part (at least, no greater than the lack of interest on the part of the female gender as a whole.) So that's good. I like it when people read comics and I like it when comics speak to as many people as possible. Clearly I just need to get out more, go to some conventions outside of San Diego and the SF Bay Area.