Manga, a Japanese style of comic featuring huge-eyed characters and often including elements of fantasy, has spawned a female-oriented subset, shoujo manga, some of which outsells regular manga.
silly newsweek.
'regular' manga? are we assuming that if something is 'for boys' it's 'regular' and if something is 'for girls', it's somehow not regular manga? We don't say that male orientated mystery novels sometimes outsell 'regular' books such as romance novels and chicklit. Really, maybe it's subtle sexism, but it's pretty annoying.

Thanks to Nana vol 8, we learn an important lesson. Only losers don't use condoms. Of course, I love Nana O's classic shoujo realization about Nana Hachi- you may be whiny, a crybaby, etc, but when you smile, I love you the best. I love Nana Hachi too. She's always getting into scrapes, but they make me laugh and cry. I'm not saying I don't like a strong female character- a real one, not just an excuse for boobs and guns/knives/superpowers- but a flawed character can be just as appealing as well.

In the side notes for Skip Beat 5, the author talks about how it's such a negative manga- but that's the charm of it! I also like the gung ho- glass mask-esqe "look at our acting skillz" bits too. But the negative bits of the characters are my favorite. They are so much more interesting than positive characters.

female manga readers

I was reading the manga blog and saw this post and I agree a million percent. You go to the manga shelf, flip through something, grab the first volume- and you're there. It's easy, quick and fun. The new love and rockets volumes have the right idea- they are all by one group of artists, have a story that flows and makes sense as you read it- you don't have to debate what happened,etc. What they need to gain more appeal is numbers. I know what is first by prior experience, but others do not.

I think that we shouldn't ignore long running comics such as dykes to watch out for or storyminute when discussing women and comics.

Bought Skip Beat 5 and Nana 8. Was annoyed that there wasn't any Ouran Host Club at my Barnes and Nobles. I'm not expecting a minor[but good] series like Tramps Like Us- Ouran is fairly popular, you know! And they still don't have the latest Fruits Baskets- they only have up to 16! wtf? Stock more, please!