Anyone who’s ever been to a playground knows that preschool kids love superheroes. Look in a major toy store, clothing store, or Halloween costume catalog and you’ll see that 3 year old boys all want to be Spiderman, Superman, Batman… But the superhero movies in the theaters aren’t for three year olds. And the comic books aren’t for three year olds. And still they want the costumes, the action figures, the t-shirts, the licensed bicycles and scooters, the backpacks and light-up sneakers. They don’t get the stories, they get the products. So by the time these three year olds are in elementary school, superheroes have faded a little. Oh sure, there are some kids who still really dig Batman, but even if they’re ready for the action movies, that’s once a year with a Happy Meal tie-in, and the comic books are still well out of reach. They’re just not written for a second grade reading level. Girls have already noticed that aside from the occasional pink and sparkly Wonder Woman t-shirt, superheroes aren’t for girls. So by and large these grade school kids are moving towards Phineas and Ferb and Adventure Time. You know, things that are about people their own age being imaginative and leading ridiculous and exciting lives. Superheroes are for toddlers.
Comic publishers talk a lot about wanting to reach younger audiences and reach female audiences. But they already have these kids sucked in before they can walk… and then they lose them. Because superheroes mostly live in comic books. And superhero comics aren’t for little kids.
Except for Alt Baltazar and Franco’s Tiny Titans. I haven’t yet broken the news to my children, but the next issue of Tiny Titans, released March 21, will be the last. Luckily, everyone tells me, the same creative team will be back with the Superman Family Adventures! Luckily, everyone tells me, Superman Family Adventures will be just as much fun as Tiny Titans, but with Superman fighting bad guys!
But, and I’m not just talking as a pacifist hippie mom here, the lack of fighting was one of the things that made Tiny Titans so perfect. I have a nine year old daughter and a five year old son. We’ve been reading Tiny Titans for a couple of years now, and we’ve bought every issue. At least twice. And all of the story books. My son’s been reading on his own since he was three, and it’s not hyperbole when I tell you he taught himself to read so he could devour Tiny Titans in bed with a flashlight.
Now, I am enough of a pacifist hippie mom to say that the lack of CRASH! BANG! and superviolence appealed to me (and appealing to me should be pretty important to the publishers since I’m the one footing the bill) but it’s also true that the slower pace and lack of gigantic explosive scenes made the comics readable for my preschooler. He’s leafed through some other comic books, including many which target young readers, and though he (of course) was excited to see all the ass-kicking going on, he just flipped through them and tossed them aside. He never returned to them. When there’s too much going on, a smaller kid can’t find a place on the page to begin to focus. And if a smaller kid can’t focus, the smaller kid gives up. Tiny Titans is easy to follow, with a clean, uncluttered design reminiscent of classic comic strips. My son has destroyed some issues of Tiny Titans from reading them over and over and over again. And so I buy multiple copies. (Publishers, take note.)
To small children, the appeal of superheroes is not the fighting, but the fantastic. Preschoolers put on capes and masks and “fly” down sliding boards. Jungle gyms are the imaginary webs on which they swing to and fro. They crawl around turning into animals and robots. These kids are are running around the playground engaging in precisely the kind of dramatic play that educators hold up as important first stages in early literacy. And what they’re play-acting is not the fighting, but the superpowers. Secret identities, costumes, legends, history… and Tiny Titans gives young readers all of this. Though not so much that you’re lost if you’re hearing it for the first time. I’m not a longtime comic book reader and I know next to nothing about anyone’s backstory. I could sense the insider jokes and comments, but they didn’t make the books any less interesting to me, or to my kids. In fact, we often ended up going online and looking up more about the superheroes because of some intriguing reference. We badgered comic geek friends to fill us in. My kids and I started to gather all of these little shreds of comic book folklore and now we’re hooked. All three of us.
My daughter is someone who is very particular in her tastes, and always has been. She can’t stand princesses but can’t resist cute. She gets bored quickly by any story that doesn’t involve girls. And she loathes violence or anyone being the slightest bit mean. As a Tiny Titans reader she has decided that superheroes are amazing. She soaks in the characters the way she learns about mythology at school. She spends hours asking me to look specific backstory facts up for her on the internet. She tried to memorize all of the Green Lanterns. She is always looking for more female superheroes and laments that out of the 138 superhero action figures we own, only 23 are female. And believe me, I have bought every female I could find.
The female Tiny Titans are not quite as numerous as the male ones, but of the 41 Titans listed on Art Baltazar’s site, 17 of them are girls. That’s pretty damned close. Close enough to count as equal. The school scenes in the Titans’ comics resonate with my third grader, and as a Phineas and Ferb fan – like most of her peers, she is a kid interested in watching kids with awesome imaginations and abilities — the treehouse and meetings and plots and plans appeal to her.
The thing is, we need more books like Tiny Titans. I’m sure that the Superman Family Adventures will be fine, and it’s likely that my five year old son will approve, if it’s at his reading level. But I’m pretty sure my nine year old daughter will lose interest. It’s not just the promised fighting of the bad guys, either. A look at the cover of Superman Family Adventures #1 shows a giant muscled Superman holding a tiny Lois aloft. Sure, there’s Supergirl flying around (partially obscured by Superman’s beefy leg), but the cover absolutely says “This is a comic book about a big dude saving the day!” It may be more than that, eventually, but from the starting gate it does not say “this is about boys and girls being awesome together” it says “this is about an extraordinary man flying around with an ordinary woman holding onto him for dear life.” Lois doesn’t look powerful. Lois looks worried. And Lois certainly does not look like Superman’s equal.
I’m sure my son will look at it and say “Aw Yeah!” (one of his favorite expressions, thanks to the Titans) but damn it, doesn’t he already get enough of big strong men saving tiny women everywhere he looks? Gender stereotyping doesn’t just affect girls, you know. Yes, we need to validate the self esteem of young girls by offering them interesting female characters, but it’s every bit as important to show young boys that female characters are strong and interesting, too. I don’t know, maybe that’s even more important.
And Superman Family Adventures isn’t about kids. Kids like reading about kids. Supergirl and Superboy are minuscule compared to Superman on this cover, and they are clearly not the focus of the story. Kids want to imagine themselves NOW in the story, not themselves someday.
Without Tiny Titans, we are left without a superhero comic that highlights all that is most appealing to younger audiences — secret identities, costumes, superpowers, and mythology — not just ass-kicking. We are also left with another comic with a man in the lead role, that once again, fails to attract young female readers. And we’re left without a comic book for kids that is about kids.
Tiny Titans ends with issue #50, on sale this month. Five paperback collections are currently available (Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3, Vol. 4, Vol. 5), and back issues are available from Art Balthazar’s website. Art often includes bonuses, like posters or hand-drawn character sketches.
All the above panels are taken from issues of Tiny Titans, the photo is copyright 2012 Marnie Ann Joyce.
Great post!
I, too, am lamenting the end of Tiny Titans. My 6 year old girl and I love them and read them a lot. I love it for a lot of the same reasons that you mention and I love the humor, too. Corny, but just the right corniness for a dad AND a daughter to love and laugh at together.
Don’t judge Superman Family by the cover though! I have a LOT of faith in Baltazar and Franco to deliver the goods for us.
Thanks for the post!
Anything that gets a family laughing together is the best thing ever.
As a woman and an expectant Mom, I completely agree with your overarching point that it’s equally as important to provide strong female characters for young girls. But I disagree with you that Lois Lane isn’t one of them.
I don’t think Lois Lane needs to be stunningly beautiful or physically powerful to be Superman’s equal. The reason I have always loved her as a character is because she is NOT those things. As a little girl, I loved Lois because she didn’t have to be the most beautiful woman in the world and she didn’t have to wear a skimpy costume or have superpowers. She was a hero because she cared about her job and she was the best at her job—even above the men.
I agree with you that too often writers fail to write men and women as equals. I agree with you that too often writers fall back on these gender stereotypes.
But I think it can be equally as damaging for us to downplay the importance of women who are “normal” in their appearance and their physicality.
One of the reasons I identified with Lois Lane as a little girl was because I ::was: small and I was not physically powerful. What I WAS was good in school. I had a brain. I made up my mind as early as 3rd grade that I was going to have a succcessful career and that I was going to do whatever I had to do to be at the top of my class to get there. To me, Lois Lane was an example of a female character that didn’t need to have superpowers to help save the world. She did it through her job. That really spoke to me as a kid. I still remember now how I felt as an 11 year old watching Lois Lane on television and thinking it was really awesome that she didn’t have to have a costume in order to “save the world.”
My personal hope for the Superman Family Book? I hope to see Lois solving mysteries and doing her part as a REPORTER. She’s the ultimate career gal and I think that’s fun and wonderful for children to see. I think it’s wonderful for little girls to know that you don’t have to be stunningly beautiful or physically powerful to have self-worth. Some of us physically can’t do those things but we have other wonderful skills that we can use in this world.
Also, as a woman, it always really spoke to me that Superman—this hero that the world revered—fell in love with an aggresive career woman as opposed to the most beautiful, physically perfect woman. Because as a kid….that made me feel like…ok…it IS what is on the inside that counts. And don’t hold back as a woman with your brain for fear that it will turn men off because a real man wants you to use it!
I wouldn’t write the Superman Family book off just yet. I think there is a lot of potential for a character like Lois Lane to be a great role model for your daughter. She certainly was for me as a kid and I will absolutely be picking up this book for the kids in my family.
I do agree with you that Tiny Titans was a great book!
Audrey, you make some excellent points about Lois, I had never really given a lot of thought to the fact that Superman chose a working woman. That is something that I find extra exciting and now I’m looking forward to Superman Family Adventures more than ever! I love your perspective on Lois. You’ve piqued my interest and now I want to go learn more. I certainly was in no way trying to say that she’s a lesser character because her not-hugeness and her lack of extraordinary powers. I was specifically talking about the cover of the new Superman Family Adventures comic. If you haven’t seen it, you can find it here. It just doesn’t say “hooray for awesome working women!” to me. I do have very high hopes that Baltazar and Franco will give Lois and Supergirl time and attention equal to that given to Superman and Superboy. I expect that calling it “Family Adventures” is an indicator that the series will not be all Superman, all the time. And it’s true that some Tiny Titans covers focused on a male character and some on a female character, while the inside pages and the storyline gave equal (or nearly equal) time to both male and female characters. But as a first cover, when I show it to my daughter she says, “oh.” And not a lot more. I’m glad that it’s Family Adventures. I’m glad that there are kids in it as central characters. I’m glad that there are as many women as men in the Superfamily. But it’s going to take some selling on my part to offer it to my daughter. And I never, not once, had to sell Tiny Titans to her. It was clear from the start that it spoke to her.
Believe me…I TOTALLY understand what you are saying about the cover.
I would much prefer to see a cover of Superman and Lois Lane standing side by side and hand in hand. Wouldn’t that be much better? Because truly? They are partners. They’ve been partners for a very long time now in the Superman mythos. Though Lois does not have Superpowers…she is more often than not the “hero” of the story in a way that is truly touching.
Superman fans wiser than I am would say that Lois is the “brain” and Superman is the “muscle.”
I love a lot of comics women. I’m a huge fan of Wonder Woman and Batgirl and Batwoman. But I really, really love Lois Lane and always have and the reason I love her is because she is ::extraordinary:: while being an ::ordinary:: woman.
My father and I bonded over Lois Lane through the original Superman Family comics years ago. I’m not sure if you are familiar with them but they were originally published in the late 70’s and 80’s. Now, they weren’t geared towards children per se. They were basically stories about the extended Superman family and in those stories, we saw a married Superman and Lois lane and their married life together.
My Dad got me into Lois, in part, because I was not a physically strong kid. I had a lot of health issues growing up (which thankfully have subsided) but as a little girl…I was a small and physically weak. So my Dad used to talk to me about Lois Lane and show me how she was the best reporter. And he used to point out to me that if I tried really hard in school I could really make a name for myself as a career woman. He used Lois as the example and it became something really special between us when I was a child.
It always really spoke to me that of all the women that Superman could love….he loved Lois. She wasn’t a supermodel. In fact, in the “Man of Steel” book from 1986 we hear Clark say outright that she is NOT the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen but that there is ::something:: about her. He falls in love with her because of her courage and because she never backs down from the truth or what is right. That really spoke to me growing up. Because if SUPERMAN of all men could choose the aggressive career woman…Wow. You know? What a message. I literally remember being like 10 years old and really processing that as a kid. Isn’t it funny how things like that stick with you?
But trust me…I totally get your complaint about the cover. It would have been a better cover if all the characters were treated as equals.
I would have liked to have seen Lois with her notebook chasing down a story on the cover. You know?
I probably should clarify that I personally don’t have a problem with the cover. I thought all the characters looked pretty cute. But I do understand wanting to see the women drawn much bigger and more prominantly. I hope we see that in the future!
Yeah, absolutely. I love Baltazar and Franco’s writing and art and I’m excited for the new series. This isn’t about trashing something I haven’t even read yet for not being another thing entirely. It’s about celebrating Tiny Titans for the so many things it got right, and mourning the passing.
I’m surprised and pleased to read that Tiny Titans did good stuff for your kids. I’d picked up a few on the basis of recommendations and the art, but soon quit in disgust. The kid-joke interstitials were fine, the low-threat stories were the reason I was there, but it seemed to me the actual plots and characters were hewn from purest in-joke. It’s never established, let alone reestablished, that Flash goes fast, say; you have to come in knowing that. Worse, they only actually use their abilities every three or four stories. Instead, the story is a verbal condensation of the multi-title Crisis on Infinite Earths corporate event from ten years before the birth of any intended reader, or the romance subplot from Teen Titans. We referenced a thing that thirty-year-old core customers might recognize, that’s the joke, ha ha!
There was one story I saw that fired on all cylinders and showed what I had hoped for. Starfire can’t hang around because she has to go home and clean her room. Bummer! But her friends offer to help her out. Nice! So they all fly there in her spaceship. Whoosh! Then they use their superpowers to make cleaning up fun. Awesome! But when they get back to Earth, it turns out they went too fast and rewound time, so now she has to go clean the room again. Whoops! A perfect little story. Maybe I just got unlucky and there were more like that.
I’m not deep into comics myself, but here’s stuff I know.
It’s hard to get superheroes without “anyone being the slightest bit mean”, of course. Takio doesn’t qualify on that count; a couple of people in it are mean. But otherwise the two main characters are girls and superheroes, and it’s written for “all ages”, i.e. maybe 7-8 and up. Warren Ellis essentially did it for his daughters, and it’s a bunch of telekinetic fun with a firm grounding in a stable family.
Princeless isn’t superhero and, unfortunately, does involve a princess. But! She’s a princess who gets sick of princess crap and strikes out to change the system and rescue her siblings. I worry that some of the dialogue and premise is a little political for younger audiences – a bit aimed at adult attitudes that kids, with hard work and luck, may not have learned – but the story flows, the art’s great, the characters are well-defined and there are other jokes.
I can’t give a personal recommendation on the recent Power Pack miniseries because I haven’t gotten around to picking it up yet, but that’s just lack of time and organization rather than interest.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Pack#All_ages_miniseries)
It looks excellent, and seems to be ex-actly what you’re after: a team of four superhero sibling kids, lighter tone in the recent series, with the usual stop-your-heart gorgeous art from team Gurihiru. (e.g. http://gurihiru.blogspot.com/2009/01/wolverine-and-power-pack-3-and-2.html)
Avatar: The Last Airbender isn’t superhero per se and a few years older, but it’s fantasy action and just generally excellent. If she likes the show or you’d like to introduce it, the first comic, “The Promise”, maintains the same tone and depth perfectly.
Finally, full disclosure, I found this post via Atomic Robo penciler Scott Wegener’s Twitter. I can’t and won’t recommend Atomic Robo on your criteria. It’s “all-ages” but that encompasses some violence including lethal danger and death, some people are mean, the characters are usually adults, some eras are weak in female representation and Robo’s arguably the only superhero. Anyway. Despite the overall series’ miss I hope your daughter might enjoy this light Free Comic Book Day story, wherein ten-year-old Emma Armstrong wrassles a crazy velociraptor to get her science fair project back.
http://www.nuklearpower.com/2011/08/29/free-comic-book-day-2011/
Oh crap, I knew I forgot something. Also, Gladstone’s School for World Conquerors. It’s the closest thing to Tiny Titans But With Actual Characters I’ve seen. Superhero schoolkids. Male lead, yeah, but lots of female characters with equal screen time and script focus. I also especially noticed the huge number of throwaway characters in the background; what’s that person doing? What can they do? What would that be like? Unfortunately it does skew towards the fighty-fighty for no reason, and the Skull Brothers are gun-themed (without ever actually hurting anybody, yay cartoons) as well as freakin’ spooky.
Quite coincidentally, we posted this earlier this week, and in it, I give Gladstone’s a pretty bang-up review: http://www.depthoffieldmagazine.com/2012/03/19/image-comics-in-review-peter-panzerfaust-no-place-like-home-gladstones-school-for-world-conquerors-alpha-girl-lil-depressed-boy-last-of-the-greats/
Also, so far as slightly older-skewing “all-ages” books go, I’d check out James Robinson and Paul Smith’s late lamented Leave It To Chance series. And thanks for the comments and suggestions!