BTW, there's a GoodReads list entitled "Nerdy Guys Are Hot" containing 114 books. And that list is obviously incomplete. For example, Harry Potter -- the most popular youth fiction series ever -- has a nerdy main character and plenty of romance subplots.
Hermione was nerdy, but was usually made fun of for being nerdy, and was a love interest despite her nerdy ways.
Yes, in a certain sense, although a slightly more accurate characterization might be that Harry Potter is a nerd's idea of a hero. Although I have to admit my knowledge of the series is rather superficial, so perhaps I'm wrong.
> he definitely never did homework or studied and lucked into every solution he ran into by dumb luck.
Nerdy doesn't necessarily imply industrious or studious. I wouldn't say the average MtG or DnD player was a particularly good student at my high school.
Rethinking through the series, which I have re-read within the past year, the only truly nerdy moments he has all involve girls; and then only really at the beginning of his involvement with girls. Very quickly, he begins to have quite mature thoughts regarding his relationships, even if he doesn't always make the right choices.
Tina Fey also did a good exploration of this idea in 30 Rock S3E5 "Reunion" when Liz Lemon has to face the reality that she wasn't the nerdy victim but the bully. It's a recurring theme in media because no one ever thinks they're the bad guy. It's especially hard to tell when you're young and haven't learned how to be a human yet.
All that said, I don't think Harry was a bully. Malfoy was pretty unambiguously antagonistic. Snape was more antihero, but did make a point to antagonize Harry when he could. Harry mistook the antagonization as evidence that Snape was up to bad dealings because "I'm the good guy and my enemies are bad", but even this gets flipped on its head throughout the series. Malfoy doesn't become humanized until they show his family life in detail and even then he only redeems himself in the home stretch.
Much of it is "sappy guy gets the girl(s)" type stories or other power fantasies/wish fulfillment of various kinds. (Or bookish girl gets found by prince charming or multiple prince charmings.) It's very popular over there. It's been a persistent thought in my mind why this type of stuff isn't written in the US (or if it is, I can't find it).
Colin Mochrie: "How come there's no one who looks like me on Friends??" (audience goes wild with laughter)
For example, imagine watching a Top Gear episode about the latest Ford Fiesta. Most of the fun of the show is the presenters, how they talk about the cars, and how much fun they seem to be having. I'm sure watching them I could get pretty excited about the Ford Fiesta. It could be a great episode! Except the fact that I could rent one for a day for $35 would force me to think about why I don't actually want to do that, why I would rather watch a TV show about driving it rather than driving it for myself, and the difference between fantasy and reality, and then the excitement evaporates pretty fast.
If you're trying to write a book that appeals equally to all people without offending anyone, I think you'll end up with something anodyne. Some authors have a consistent style or niche and I don't think anything is wrong with that.
Finally, it's also not true that there are no romance novels focused on nerdy boys. There are plenty. Likewise, there are plenty of comic books where women or girls are portrayed well or are the focus of the story.
Polo is criticizing Miller in a way that you could not, for instance, criticize Todd MacFarlane, who had the clearly defined audience you're thinking of. It wouldn't make sense; of course MacFarlane's work was silly and superficial; that's the point.
This is a thing people say a lot about Roger Ebert --- that part of his skill as a critic was his ability to put himself in the shoes of the intended audience for a piece, and evaluate it on those terms, so that for instance he could give 4 stars to "Iron Man", the same rating he'd give to "Tokyo Story".
Polo's criticism here is compatible with Ebert's approach.
Miller's comics are known to be "gritty", violent, whatever. That's his style. The author liked it when she was a child and doesn't like it having grown up. That seems not too remarkable to me.
Maybe it's helpful just to mentally substitute "superhero comics" for "comics".
I am also ok with the thought that that earlier exposure clouds all later exposure.
I am further ok with someone not liking comics. Or super hero stories.
I can't really think of any, though maybe early-1990s X-Men, which had a palpable subtext about bigotry long before that was a super trendy idea (making the series antagonist himself an opponent of bigotry was a pretty slick move).
I think most of that is definitionally, though. If you accept that super hero comics are bad, you probably consider any good ones to not be super hero.
Edit: that said, Gaiman's Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader is undeniably a super hero comic. Complete with an amazing call out to Goodnight Moon.
Edit2: Perez's Wonder Woman set is highly regarded, I think. In many ways more feminist than current works, from my memory.
But like, I stopped reading superhero comics pretty quickly (I got to comics late, with Punisher [gag] and X-Men, and switched within like a year to the Vertigo/Cerebus/Comix stuff). So for all I know, there's a long "Aquaman" arc where he subtextually confronts misogyny or contemplates Rawlsianism.
"Wonder Woman" is a good example! Thanks!
--Ulysses Everett McGill
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8697402-scott-pilgrim-th...
That's too bad because I have been told that that was a stereotype and was no longer true.