What you don't know about your little girl.

You're wrong about your little girl. You only think you know her.

Underneath those curls and Hello Kitty (insert product here) is a young person longing for adventure. Oh sure, she enjoys the latest dress-up doll and reading tales about the latest babysitting exploits, but stirring below the surface is the desire to take flight, find lost treasures, and maybe even deliver a karate-kick to a bad guy.

For almost two decades now, parents have entered our store, many with the same request, "Do you have comic-books for girls?". Archie, Betty & Veronica, and the like immediately come to mind. I mean, girls like reading about dating & relationships, right? While it's true that females tend to enjoy stories that are more character driven and reality-based, my best-selling comics purchased by girls aren't about dating and babysitting.

They're about wizards, monsters, lost valleys, cartoon super-heroes, and Sonic the Hedgehog. Yup, the same Sonic character based on the long-running video game.

This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. Some of the best-selling books of all time for young girls are the likes of Nancy Drew, Wizard of Oz, and of course, Harry Potter. Each of those book series feature strong female leads, but the thing they have in common is the sense of danger, fantasy, and lots of action.

In our store, young girls often purchase BONE, the adventures of cartoonish male cousins and their female friend in a lost valley, comics based on Pixar animated films such as FINDING NEMO and THE INCREDIBLES, as well as adaptations of ALICE IN WONDERLAND, and the various WIZARD OF OZ books. THE SIMPSONS is a consistent seller among girls. DC comics TINY TITANS, featuring the elementary-school hijinks of the super-hero teams sells extremely well to girls. SUPERMAN has his young female fans as well.

And SONIC THE HEDGEHOG.

So the next time you see your young daughter acting out some type of romance between her dolls, remember, she's probably thinking about ways to make them fly, or is planning their next great adventure.

David Romeo, Jr.
Comics on the Green