The Issues - Treatment

Graphic Novels & School Libraries

• Graphic Novels can have dialogue, violence, or sexual situations just like any other novel.

Comics/Graphic Novels:

• Women– Hero (examples: Wonder Woman, Jean Gray,

Storm, Rogue, Batgirl, Supergirl)• Strong, attractive, “perfect”• Clothing: Two words…Form Fitting• Physical Features: Extremely Attractive

– Villain (examples: Cat Woman, Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn, Emma Frost)• Typically depicted as very intelligent, seductress type• Clothing: Dominatrix

– Non-Heroes/Villains• Damsel in distress (Lois Lane)

Comics/Graphic Novels:

• Men– Heroes• Always built• Always attractive

– Villains• Creepy, ugly, dark clothing

Comics/Graphic Novels:

• Violence– Typical comics display blood but not

gore and people hardly ever die– Newer comics will display little to

extreme gore and people do die (they will kill off a main character)

• Minorities– There really aren’t any in the older

comics…

Manga:

• Women– Hero (examples: Sailor Moon, Tohru from Fruits

Basket, Belldandy from Ah! My Goddess, Kikyou from Inu Yasha, Faye from Cowboy Bebop)• Comical, strong, sometimes bossy, sometimes clumsy

& ditsy (if it’s a comical manga), smart (if it’s a more serious manga), portrayed as dumb (if it’s comical)

• Clothing: sometimes very little depending on the age of the target audience

• Physical Features: Varies, for adult audience usually one of the main female protagonists is well endowed and very attractive, for children physical features are average

Manga:

• Villain• Usually the stereotypical evil (destroy/rule

the world)• Clothing: Sometimes very little clothing,

usually dark• Physical Features: Attractive seductress if

for adults, creepy evil if for children

Manga:

• Non-Heroes/Villains– Damsel in Distress type

• Clumsy, ditsy, shy, naive, modest, smart, always getting into trouble, the “perfect” Japanese girl (special term for it, need to look it up)

• Clothing: Modest but for adults they always tend to get into something risqué usually forced on them by the hero or bossy protagonist

• Physical Features: Range from cute to extremely attractive

• Bossy– Bossy, arrogant, adventurous, getting the hero into

trouble– Clothing: Modest to Scantily clad– Physical Features: Unattractive to Extremely attractive

Manga:

• Violence– Range from mild to extremely graphic• Artists do not pull punches with violence in

manga for teens and adults, drawing everything with intense detail

Manga:

• Minorities–Most characters in manga are depicted

with pale skin and have an assortment of hair colors (blonde to neon pink) drawn to look like Caucasians many times and minorities are rarely depicted