On Black Friday, I took my nieces and nephew to my local comic book store to get some Christmas shopping out of the way. I just go straight to the back issue section now. My nieces and nephew got manga and tabletop games. I can remember years back when pretty much all that was sold was comic books, and the new issues took up a lot of space because people were buying them/had subscriptions. Now the new issue section is tiny and most comics that are sold there are from the back issue section (to the point that sometimes they have to put a time limit on that section due to the demand). The increase in women coming to the store happened when they started selling manga which was a wise choice.

I guess every time I go now, it just irritates me because I think of how the comic book industry has been decimated due to rabid feminists, obsession with DEI, and totally ignoring who actually buys comics. I guess you could add that they could've capitalized on the success of the MCU. After the Marvels bombed Forbes had an article taking issue with someone who said it was for teen girls and not comic book fans and they said something like "as if those two groups aren't the same".

Imagine if someone had told the execs that women don't buy this product in large numbers so exclusively catering to this audience is a losing proposition. I also remember an interview with Kathleen Kennedy saying she gets a lot of calls from male directors wanting to work with Star Wars but few women. A good interviewer would've told her "who do you think is mostly interested in Star Wars".

Finally, one of the most annoying things in "nerdy hobbies" is a feminist saying she never felt welcomed in a comic book store, or in a video game store. I don't know how many times my friends and I would roll out the red carpet when a girl came into the comic book store or how awesome I thought it was as a teen when I met a girl who was into games.

Anyway, sorry for the rant. On the bright side, I got some back issue comics and my niece got me a manga for an early Christmas gift. Alice in Borderland.