I am currently about to begin the graphic novel the Watchmen. I have never read it before nor have I seen the movie. I don’t know very much about the story other than the fact that it is about superheroes. I am going into reading it with no expectations or prior knowledge of the plot.

The only other experience I have with comic books is Boys’ Love, which we briefly discussed in ASTU and what we covered in Women’s Studies surrounding Manga, unless you count Archie comics.. and even those I haven’t read in years. Another brief encounter with comics I have had would be the many movies which are based on them. I also currently follow the TV series, The Walking Dead, which is also based on a graphic novel. However, I have never actually read it.

Last term when we discussed the popular Japanse, Korean and Chinese comic books, Boys’ Love, I found it incredibly interesting because I had never come across anything like it before. The idea of male homoerotic romance comics seemed so foreign to me. Even more fascinating was the audience that it appealed too, young women. These young women were able to find something liberating surrounding the questions of their own gender and sexuality through reading ‘BL’ comics.

At first I didn’t really understand the appeal of this type of comic book to young women, many of whom were heterosexual but through further reading in Cultural Theory it began to make sense. In regular comic books featuring a heterosexual relationship the women is always portrayed as weak and in need of a man to rescue her. This is usually the general plot for any type of story found anywhere. But it is this type of relationship between a man and a woman that drove many female comic book readers in parts of east Asia to turn to ‘BL’. In the book, Cultural Theory, many women were quoted as saying that they preferred Boys’ Love comic books because of the more believable relationship between the two men who were both portrayed as equals, as opposed to the dominant male in a heterosexual relationship.

I’m not sure if I personally would enjoy ‘BL’ comics, but the reasoning behind the enjoyment by so many of these other women makes a lot of sense to me. Women are constantly being portrayed as weak and dependant on men in many forms of media. As such it has become commonplace. If such depictions don’t change, why wouldn’t people begin to look for relationship portrayals that better reflect equality and also support a healthier outlook on what a relationship in today’s society should look like?