With the recent announcement that the MINX line, a DC company owned publisher that targets teenage women, will close it’s doors and end it’s run I thought I go a little further with the discussion by review the most recent graphic novel released by the company. Janes in Love is a second vole to the first P.L.A.I.N. story and quite frankly I never got around to reading it. But this is written in a way where you dont really need to read the first volume and it holds up fine by its own. BTW, I know this is a book more lined for girls so in order to keep my manhood alive I’m pumping iron with my left hand and watching Chuck Norris on my TV to make sure I dont turn too girly.

In short the story is pretty good and it actually feels like a normal, everyday life of a group of teenage women. Too often do I notice that comic book companies like to keep their women as sex objects and use them more for that method and not as a strong and free-willed individual. Sure comicd are trying a little harder to make their women characters better then they were in the 80’s and 90’s; but it’s still pretty laughable to think Ms. Marvel is a strong individual while wearing a skimy outfit into battle.

Anyways I’m getting away from the story at hand….JIL is a pretty good read and like advertised it feels like watching a soap opera like drama on tv. The characters are well definied, the plot isnt too far out, and overall it feels like reading a novel then anything else. With good story we get some pretty good art as well. Not too realistic but pretty detailed but has a nice cartoony look to them. It’s like MINX was trying to sell this book to Nickelodean or something. So yes we’re good with the story and art and overall it’s a pretty fun time by all. Plus it’s cheap and it’s a great gift for your girlfriend or wife if they are in to this whole ‘reading’ aspect.

But let me go alittle out on my final thoughts and bring back up the cancellation of MINX as a whole. Yes the stories arent on par as quality like an Alan Moore epic, but they were still fun to read and it seemed like they got the right creators to do the stories. But once again it seems like the main powerhouses of the comic industry got scared to try new things and do what they normally do when they get scared: Cancel the line all together, bury it, put the ground on fire and put salt around so nothing grows, lay an empty tombstone, and pray it never comes up again. It’s a shame too that DC was too scared to actually let this grow becuase they could’ve gotten a great niche company going and maybe got more readers then they have right now.

But maybe I’m being too pessimistic. Sure they cancelled a line that was only around for a year, but they are trying to make women better in their stories. Who needs a realistic take on women when they are writing new stories for big breasted women like Power Girl and be edgy with a lesbian Batwoman….It’s these ideas that are making women more….acceptable…in a…comic….industry…

*Sighs and sulks to his room. Locks the Door……A Single shot is heard*