Every Day is Kids Day! by Martha Thomases
One of the things I learned at this year’s MoCCA Arts Festival (aside from the fact that New York firefighters remain the world’s most awesome) is that independent, alternative cartoonists embrace the children’s market. This was evident not only in the major publishing launch of Francoise Mouly’s TOON Books, but also the work of a lot of young people with their self-published titles.
This may seem like a stupidly obvious thing to say from anyone who has watched the market for children’s books, graphic novels, and other kinds of mass media. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to apply to most comic book stores.
When I worked at DC, the typical story about comics had the headline, “Biff! Bam! Pow! Comics Aren’t Just for Kids Anymore!” My boss explained to me, in great detail, why there was no need to make comics that children under 12 would enjoy. The success of Vertigo – Sandman in particular – meant there was a profitable market for comics among college-educated, affluent adults, especially to advertisers.
This was true, as far as it went. Good books can be good marketing. Sandman continues to make a lot of money for DC, even though there haven’t been new stories for several years. I have no doubt that many people for whom Sandman was their first comic went on to read lots of other comics by lots of other writers, artists and publishers.
Making comics for kids will do that, too. And they’ll be your customers for a longer time.
However, talking about age ranges is a marketing subject. It bothers me that books and movies have suggestions for what age child would like them. I understand that people buy gifts for children they don’t know very well, and that there are vocabulary words that people think are either too racy, too violent or too difficult for children to understand. However, most of these decisions are made by parents, and parents should know their individual children as just that – individuals.
As a woman of a certain age, there are some subjects that interest me because they concern my specifics, that I am both a woman and of a certain age. Therefore, I’m likely to want to read about menopause, Social Security, and maybe Bob Dylan. None of these subjects dominate best-seller lists of any kind. Nor do they encompass everything I want to read about, or see on the screen.
Children are similarly varied. Some like to read about dinosaurs, others like to read fairy tales, and still others like both, put together in a dinosaur-fairy parfait. Some kids read at age three, and others take a few grades to find their rhythm. There are no one-size fits all stories, just like there are no one-size fits all kids.
The 1970s and 1980s were exciting times to be a comics fan. There were all kinds of innovative stories, from underground comics to the mainstream newsstand books. There were stories about drugs and racism and the war, stories told sequentially and randomly. None of them had suggested ages. If you didn’t get something, you’d put it down, and see if it made more sense the next time.
The best children’s literature is not just for children. An adult reading The Wind in The Willows, or The Railway Children, Mary Poppins or Peter Pan will find many of the same rewards of reading so-called adult literature. In the same way, there are many books written for adults, like Huckleberry Finn or The Catcher in the Rye, that appeal to humans who can’t legally drive. In comics, James Robinson’s and Paul Smith’s Leave It To Chance was my idea of a terrific all-ages book, and most kids I know enjoy Stardust, no matter that it says it’s suggested for mature audiences.
What kids don’t like is angst-ridden, super-hero adventures with over-sexualized characters and random violence. This isn’t to say those stories are no good, but that they tend to assume the reader has had certain experiences that children don’t have, and that the reader is familiar with a body of work (the films of Sam Peckinpah, maybe, or the books of James Ellroy) that most children haven’t seen. What adults don’t like is cutesy books with lots of repetition, because they have enough repetition in their lives and don’t need more when they read. Which isn’t to say that comics can’t be good, but they don’t tend to reach a broad market.
We need to treat each reader as an individual, and find the right books for every possible comic. That’s what will grow our market and our art form.
Martha Thomases, ComicMix Media Goddess, wrote this column to honor the memory of Jane Thomases. She really loved kids.
Martha,In watching all the news about coverage about the passing of Tim Russert the one thing all his contemporaries kept mentioning that one of the driving forces behind his success was his ability to channel his 'inner child'.I guess I can stop feeling guilty about buying all those cartoons on DVD and haunting the Target clearance endcaps in the toy department, huh?Kissnoise.
Paradoxically, the Wertham era forced the comics industry to swear that they were both an exclusively children's medium and a medium suitable for children. It's no surprise the nation played along with the gag. Also no surprise that for a while the medium wasn't fit for child or grownup. It took subversives like Harvey Kurtzman (the Annie Fanny years), Stan Lee and R. Crumb to redeem things for adults. We have yet to find the comics creators who can capture the imaginations of this generation of younger people like Harry Potter or even Goosebumps.Fred Rogers might remind us that it will be people inside of comics who make the changes happen not outside demographic specialists, condescending to one and all.
"We have yet to find the comics creators who can capture the imaginations of this generation of younger people like Harry Potter or even Goosebumps."I think "Bone," by Jeff Smith, has a good shot at being the comics equivalent of "Harry Potter," a work of high quality that bridges generational gaps and draws a lot of new readers. The fact that it is being reprinted (beautifully and in color) by Scholastic Books says something.Now, with "Bone" optioned by Warner Bros. for a movie, the probability of the comic becoming a huge cultural phenomenon is even greater.
Hi, Russ. Though I'm immune to Bone's charms so far (my loss) it would be a good candidate for this role. You're right, a hit movie could cross it over in a big way.
I was recently introduced to an interesting resource through my daughters' school. Every year the girls take reading exams and from those they are given "Lexile" ratings. This is a score that shows roughly their proficiency at reading and comprehending text. The idea is that books can be Lexile graded as well, so you can encourage your kids to read books that are at or slightly above their reading level.. The ratings are not based on content, what individual words or subjects are "appropriate" for certain ages; they are based on the difficulty of words and the complexity of structure.Here's a site that describes Lexile rating better than I do and can help find books based on lexile rating.http://www.lexile.com/findabook/default.aspxFor comparison, Neil Gaman's "Stardust" has a 970L score. "Coraline" is 740L. And "Wolves in the Walls" is 500L. Gaiman has made a conscious effort to write books across a WIDE range of reading levels.There are arguments against Lexile scores and Lexile based reading programs, especially when the scores are used to limit what a child can read. The thinking is, let a child discover what they want to read. Let them breeze through tons of books that are very easy or struggle with a book that challenging.I tried to find a site that would give lexile ratings to comic books. I couldn't find one. But, I found a nice site called ComicsInTheClassRoom.net. The site provides reviews of comics, trying to give relative grade levels of reading and suggestions as to how they might be used in the class. It also provides resources to teachers who might want to use comics in their class.Here is an article they published where grade 1 and 2 students got interview Eisner Award Noninee, Alexa Kitchen.http://comicsintheclassroom.net/oo2007_july11_dra…Another great resource: http://graphicclassroom.blogspot.com/
Martha,I wish I could have been to the MoCCA Arts Festival this year! I do a syndicated kids strip titled Slylock Fox and Comics for Kids. Even though less and less kids (and adults) are reading newspapers, I have managed to build a client list of over 400 newspapers. The strip has a loyal and vocal following, and has been around long enough for me to hear stories from adults of how Slylock Fox and Comics for Kids got them started as newspaper readers. Many people told me in the beginning (21 years ago) there would not be a large enough readership for a strip targeted to kids. I'm glad I didn't listen. Cartoonist Jay Stephens and I are developing a strip featuring kids that will launch in newspapers early next year. So I'm still not listening! <a href="http://www.kidcartoonists.com” target=”_blank”>www.kidcartoonists.com