It’s funny she should find the lack of American girls’ comics surprising, because pretty much all our cultural exports from comic books are superheroes. (Think she realized that when you said “Yes, or at least that was the case for many years” — that for the American public, comics are almost synonymous with superheroes?) It really is puzzling that there aren’t more mass media aimed specifically at women and girls here, though to be fair, shonen manga is more popular than its distaff counterpart even in Japan. For some reason.

The bit about weekly magazines coming after monthlies struck me as well — think future developments in American comics could follow such a pattern if the market were to really open up in terms of genre?