The answer is no, according to publishers who actually see the younger female audience as a promising source of new and long-term comics readers. As PWCW can exclusively report, one project supported by this belief is the original graphic novel The Last Dragon by Jane Yolen, bestselling author of hundreds of stories for children and young adults, to be published by Dark Horse in 2010. The action-fantasy, with art by Rebecca Guay, will join other titles that the publisher says have successfully attracted a large young female audience, such as Gerard Way's Umbrella Academy and Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Dark Horse is also working with Japanese manga collective CLAMP to develop new material that will be simultaneously released in the American and Asian markets. While details are still under wraps, the partnership has potential to introduce existing manga fans, many of whom are young women, to a broader comics catalog.

Yolen, who read comics as a child and rediscovered them via Neil Gaiman's Sandman series, says she tried to sell a graphic novel for years before Dark Horse bought The Last Dragon (she also has FOILED in the works with First Second, release date still to be announced).

This hauntingly evocative semi-autobiographical graphic novel recounts Ka's real-life struggle to come to terms with his childhood encounter with a bohemian priest. Growing up in the Parisian suburbs in the 1970s, Ka is torn between the strict Catholicism of his grandparents and the hippie atheism of his parents, until he meets Peter, an unconventional priest. A friendship develops between the two, and soon Ka begins spending the summers at Peter's camp at Happy River in France. Even though readers will suspect early on where the relationship between man and boy is headed, Ka allows the story to unfold at its own pace, and when the inevitable happens when Ka is 12, readers will be as unsettled as if it were truly a surprise. Life goes on and Ka marries, starts his own family and pursues a writing career. But when his own daughter turns 12, Ka is unable to ignore his past any longer and decides to tell his story, teaming with artist Alfred to create a graphic memoir. Alfred's blending of ink drawings and digital photographs in the final gut-wrenching scenes are perfect visual complements to Ka's voice, which shifts effortlessly from the innocence of childhood to the responsibilities of adulthood. (Feb.)

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