The Femmebots

by Femmebot

I’ve been wanting to go to Japan ever since I read “Memoirs of a Geisha” about 10 years ago. That’s the beauty of fiction. It transports the reader to a different time, a different place, a different culture. A book can often fulfill our natural human appetite for escapism from the everyday grind…and its carbon footprint is less than a plane trip from Miami to Tokyo plus a train ride to Kyoto.

OK, no, it’s not entirely the same, but in a recession, the imagination can be more valuable than C-A-S-H. These dayz, I’m more into cyborg Geishsas, probably a sign that I’ve been using too much technology. But technology IS my everyday grind, and the only art form that expresses my angst with it, is Japanese animation.

So, I’ve been overdosing on Japanese animation over the last year.

My fascination started with Top Cow Productions’ “Witchblade,” which follows the trials and adventures of Masane, nicknamed “Melanie” because of her sizeable rack – coincidence? I think not. Masane also happens to be “charmed,” or rather, “cursed” – depends on whether you are a pessimist or an optimist – with the power of the Witchblade, a really cool bracelet I would like to design and sell someday, ha ha. No, I’ll just tell my friend Uma Nanda Saraswathi about this particular design since she already has her own jewelry line…and she would understand since she likes to dress up as Kali for Halloween.

Anywayz, gotta stay focused. I’m the storyteller.

Throughout the Witchblade series, it is clear that the only reason Masane fights is to protect and support the love of her life: her six-year-old daughter, Rioko. And when her daughter is taken away from her, she loses all motivation to continue battling the iWeapons.

I learned a ton about myself from this series last fall as I was going through the pains of building my own company. Masane was really good at negotiating a better salary for herself. Basically, she threw tantrums until she got what she needed…let me emphasize “needed,” not “wanted.” Throughout the series she wears the same ugly yellow shirt and blue pants…so, she’s not the kind of chic that wants to buy cute shoes and dresses (not that there’s anything wrong with that!), although when she transforms into the Witchblade and she’s decked out in full costume, she is quite fabulous….

Masane is in a position to throw tantrums because she never asked to wield the power of the Witchblade, i.e., her “secret sauce,” the thing that makes her unique and the reason others want to pay her. Talk about “law of attraction.” Instead of trying to GET others to pay attention to you, you just follow your own path, your own destiny, and others will naturally seek you out for the skillz you possess. Thanks, Witchblade, for that very important marketing lesson!

Netflix is cool because once you find a flick or series you like, it leads you to other suggestions. “Ergo Proxy” seemed like the natural successor to my Witchblade obsession, since they are both stories about techie chics who are battling “the machines.” Yes, sci-fi always has political commentary, so it is a natural segue from a journalism career…except this time I’ve got a chance to tell the truth. This series is full of the kind of dialogue I always wanted to put into my journalistic articles:

“Knowing the truth doesn’t always make you happy.”

“Lies make us happy! Lies make us happy!”

“Now is the best time to consume. Why skimp when you deserve more?”

“Immigrants lack complete control of their emotions.”

“Doubting the system is bad. Always obey. Those are the conditions necessary to become a citizen.”

Riel, granddaughter of the Utopian leader, is spoiled, dark, wicked intelligent and bored with her utopian bubble city. She is an inspector. Her tantrums sound like Masane’s in Witchblade, although she is much more refined than Masane. Her sidekick is a robot, called an “autorave” who sounds like a gay boyfriend.

Riel’s job is connecting dots. Hey! That sounds familiar! She is bored with utopia, so her world is shaken up when a creature visits her…the proxy, but when she tries to report the incident, her autorave’s memory has been erased. Um, that sounds painfully familiar as well.

“She can’t distinguish between illusion and reality,” says the conspiring doctor’s autorave. “This is common for humans.”

Dr. Daedelus arranges for a brain scan when Riel acts distressed that no one believes her. She isn’t the type who needs anyone to believe her. She is confident and solid in her character…although eventually, she does have to trust someone…because it is impossible to accomplish tasks alone.

What is so interesting about this animation isn’t the actual animation itself. Mind you, this is Japanese animation, which means the story takes precedence over cool effects (which takes lots of C-A-S-H). Camera panning over detailed still artwork, cool sound effects and badass music are the elements of this animation. The closing song, “Paranoid Android” by Radiohead wasn’t approved until the band actually saw the anime. Hmmm. That’s reassuring.

Another really cool element is the use of Classical Roman statues as the administration in power. They float up and down in the background as they talk about secrecy and monitoring the movements of Riel as she tracks down the truth.

It’s all so interesting as I consider taking money from the government to fund my artistic projects. In “Ergo Proxy,” Riel is a renegade, but she also works for the government. And her grandfather is the leader of the administration. Apparently it can make for a good story if I fund my project with government money…it creates this semblance of a conflict of interest, and yet, watch how I rationalize it…

First off, government money is my money. My tax money. I pay the government to give me services I need: health care, education, housing, food. Hmmm. Wait. That’s not right. In the U.S., I don’t have health insurance unless I work for a corporation. My mortgage is owned by a corporation. My food comes from a corporation. The money I give to my government pays for W-A-R so that I can continue to burn energy for my techie addiction. Hmmm. Back in 2003, I didn’t pay my taxes because I thought I could use the excuse of “conscientious objector” since Bush declared a W-A-R I protested along with millions of others around the world. A year later, they tracked me down, and I eventually paid my debt…but we’re still in this W-A-R. My government officials can’t represent me anymore because they are representing corporations.

So, taking money from the $15 billion Census 2010 outreach pot will allow me to spend tax payer money for constructive things: like education. Multimedia literacy. Creating jobs.

Both Masane and Riel use the system to beat the system. And, if you are an entrepreneur, this is the land you live in. Always trying to think three chess steps ahead; always trying to live within the cracks of the Matrix. There is a passion inside of you others don’t possess, and usually it goes beyond the desire to make money so you can buy a McMansion on the bay and drive a gas guzzling car and eat endangered animals called “delicacies” at 5-star restaurants (if you fall into that category, that’s your preorogative, but you suck).

I started my business because I saw a hole in my local community and I felt I had the skills and the desire to fill it. The hole: not enough well-paying jobs for professional writers who want to write about things besides luxury items for rich people. The infill: BiscayneWriters.com.

It’s a pure intention, but what I didn’t take into account was that I would have to learn how the advertising industry works in order to generate enough income to pay these writers.

Four years later, I know a lot more about advertising, and it’s one of those things I wish I didn’t know anything about. Advertising is a soulless, poisonous business. It’s all about convincing people to buy things they don’t really need. Yes, I subscribe to the speech Brad Pitt made in Fight Club.

So then what? I thought I could follow a different business model: the NPR/PBS model that gets its support from subscribers. So I set up a Paypal donation button. I imagine this will EVENTUALLY work. But by that time all my South Florida writers will have moved to a different location to find work.

Then I thought – I’m an Internet-based business. And writing can be done from the comfort of one’s own home. I can build a network of journalists in the different markets I covered over the past 10 years and connect them to advertisers.

Great. Good. Whatever. It all sounds like the work of a good little former AmeriCorps volunteer, but at the end of the day, I had no Rioko to hug me and tuck me into bed. Over the course of four years, I gave away so much energy that I hadn’t allowed myself the opportunity to receive anything back.

I also found out that the hole I wanted to fill in the market was a metaphor for the hole in my heart. It has recently been filled, not with a daughter, not by a man, not by my parents or my sister or my brother…not by dirt, not by money, not by jobs for writers…

The hole has been filled by LIGHT. Light is energy. Light reflects. Light attracts. Light is L-O-V-E. And so, I am motivated, I am propelled, I am energized by light.

These were the themes as I explored as I created my costumes for Halloween last year: “The Urban Mermaid” and “Chakra Girl.”

The Dance of the Urban Mermaid to Kode 9 & Spaceape’s dubstep track, “Backwards,” shows our evolution, swimming like tadpoles in a stream of consciousness, walking along the bottom of the sea like crabs until we could swim on top of the water. But then we got fancy and started butterflying like dolphins and our egos got the better of us…and when that happens, we find ourselves swimming breastroke backwards, falling down, and starting the process all over again. History repeats, repeats, repeats itself like a DJ scratching a record, and the Urban Mermaid finds herself caught in the next hurricane of MyAmi, spinning and spinning, going nowhere because she only sees with her eyes…until she dies and resurrects as Chakra Girl, a beacon of light who speaks the truth.

It’s a work in progress…we’ll see how it all manifests. I guess I see this particular story in animation because that’s how I saw the world every Saturday morning…look at my 5th grade journal on 9/13/85, for cryin’ out loud!

Inspired by Japanese Manga,
Major American Publishers
Aim for New Female Fans

The next wave of heroes in the comic book business may look more like “Plain Janes” than X-Men.

Industry heavyweights including Time Warner Inc.’s DC Comics and Marvel Entertainment Inc. are betting that girls represent a big growth opportunity for the traditionally male-dominated medium. It’s part of a renewed push in recent years by the two biggest comic-book companies to court a new audience with products aimed squarely at teenage girls.

The new titles are inspired in part by the fast growth of translated Japanese comics called manga. While gory and violent themes aimed at boys are staples of manga, fantasy and romantic storylines meant to appeal to girls have helped manga capture the attention of female readers, an audience comic publishers have long struggled to attract.

Last month, DC Comics launched a line of original books, dubbed Minx, which include “The Plain Janes,” about a band of suburban outcasts who form a “secret art gang.” Other Minx graphic novels include “Re-Gifters,” — about a Korean-American girl and martial arts enthusiast who falls for a surfer boy who gives a present she buys him to someone else — and “Clubbing,” which follows Charlotte “Lottie” Brook, a London girl sent to live at her grandparents’ dowdy country club after being caught with a fake ID at a chic West End nightspot.

The publishers are following the lead of upstart manga publishers — such as Los Angeles’ Tokyopop and San Francisco’s Viz Media, both closely held — that have managed to draw female readers with a mix of girl-friendly content and distribution to both comic book shops and mainstream bookstores. Trade publication ICv2 puts the total comics and graphic novel market at about $640 million last year in the U.S. and Canada, with manga accounting for about $200 million of that figure.

The manga category is expanding quickly. Total sales of manga books jumped 22% to 9.5 million units in 2006 from 7.8 million a year earlier, according to Nielsen BookScan, which collects point-of-sale information from 6,500 retail locations across the country, including those operated by Borders Group Inc. and Barnes & Noble Inc. The manga category in 2006 accounted for about two-thirds (68.5%) of all graphic novels sold in U.S. bookstores, up from slightly more than half (53.8%) in 2004, according to Nielsen BookScan. (The figures don’t include comic-book stores.)

That fast growth helped convince DC that the time is right to cultivate a significant customer base of teenage girls.

Female comic-book heroes, through the years.

“We were looking at the success of manga as a great sign that teenage girls were actually reading comics again,” said Karen Berger, a senior vice president at DC Comics who oversees the Minx line. “Girls tend to read more than boys historically, and the fact that there hasn’t been that much material in the comic and graphic novel form aimed for young girls before this just leaves the area wide open.”

Reading manga can be an unusual experience for the uninitiated. The paperback books, usually translated from Japanese, are read top right to bottom left and are priced around $10. (In some books the first pages remind readers to start at the back.) Manga also has a different pace and story-telling style than traditional comics. For instance, instead of action-driven storylines punctuated with frequent fight scenes, manga titles — especially those aimed at girls — often dedicate significant space to awkward silences, embarrassing moments and close ups of tear-filled eyes. Friendships and romance tend to figure prominently, even against fantastical backdrops that include robots, ninjas and vampires.

Viz Media’s “Vampire Knight” tracks the adventures of Yuki Cross, who attends a boarding school loaded with vampires. Its pages feature their fair share of gun play and neck bites. But even in this setting, a complicated relationship quickly emerges between Yuki and Zero Kiryu — who both are responsible for protecting regular students from the vampire contingent — and a tall, dark, dashing vampire named Kaname Kuran.

DC Comics’ new Minx comic book line is aimed at attracting female readers

The artistic conventions and techniques of manga can differ markedly from U.S. comics. For example, female characters in manga tend to be less voluptuous than the superwomen in U.S. comics. Such curvaceous characters can be tough for young women to relate to, says Nicole Lewis, a 19-year-old manga reader who is going into her sophomore year at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. “It’s a little off-putting,” Ms. Lewis says of some female superheroes in American comics. “Especially to young women who don’t look like that at all.”

Ms. Lewis says she likes the fact that the female stars of manga are often girls without any special powers, who wear normal clothes, attend high school and are trying to resolve some life problems. “They don’t need to be bit by a spider or be from another planet,” Ms. Lewis said.

DC Comics has an existing manga imprint, called CMX, which is translated from Japanese. The new Minx series will mimic the general look and price-point of manga. But Ms. Berger stresses that the books are designed with American readers in mind. They read in the standard, left-to-right, manner. And they’re written in English, not translated.

Meanwhile, DC’s archrival, Marvel, has also been gunning for female readers, although its strategy differs. Instead of starting a separate line dedicated to the demographic, the company has been hiring writers known for their established female following. In format, these comics are more like traditional superhero periodicals, but the company’s strategy also involves repackaging the material in hardcover and graphic novel formats.

Last year, Marvel launched its “Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter” series of comic books, based on the swift-selling novels by Laurell K. Hamilton. The title character in the series tracks criminals through the sometimes-seedy vampire underground of St. Louis. The series has proven popular with women and brought a range of new shoppers into Carol & John’s Comic Book Shop in Cleveland, says co-owner John Dudas. “They came out of nowhere,” Mr. Dudas says.

Marvel has brought in other writers popular with women before. In 2006, Marvel began publishing a miniseries on the character Storm, a female mutant member of the X-Men that was written by romance novelist Eric Jerome Dickey. Before that, Marvel hired Joss Whedon, the creator of cult television series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” to write Marvel’s “Astonishing X-Men” title, in part because of his track record attracting women readers.

DC Comics’ ‘The Plain Janes’

Such moves have been part of a push by Marvel over the last three years to try new strategies to bring readers to Marvel titles, says David Gabriel, senior vice president of sales and circulation at Marvel’s publishing unit. “Before that, the thought was, if you do ‘She-Hulk,’ that will attract girls,” he says.

The moves to attract female readers come as the comic-book industry is at its healthiest point in recent memory. In 2006, dollar sales from dominant distributor Diamond Comics to specialty comic shops rose 15% — the biggest jump since comic-and-hobby trade publication ICv2 began tracking figures in 2001. Last year, Marvel Entertainment’s publishing-segment revenue — which includes sales to booksellers and comic shops — rose 17% to $108.5 million. (Time Warner doesn’t break out DC’s numbers.)

Barnes & Noble’s graphic-novel buyer, Jim Killen, says sales of manga books are roughly split between the sexes. But that’s a far cry from traditional comic-book audience, dominated by male buyers.

“We want all of our customers to realize this isn’t an exclusive club just for college age males,” said Cliff Biggers, who owns Dr. No’s Comics & Games in Marietta, Ga. “There’s material for everyone. That’s what we keep stressing.”

Write to Matt Phillips at matt.phillips@wsj.com