Jeremy Whitley's Princeless Analysis

While glancing at comic book covers and inside the comic, it can give one a lot of insight as to what the comic book is about and the authors and or publishing companies’ values. It can be as simple as whether it is more cartoonist or realistic, colorful or dull, filled with lots of word bubbles or majority just art. It also can be more complex, such as the presence of females or African-Americans and how each is portrayed in comics. With the use of certain images and the style of art and character images, the comic Princeless illustrates that it is standing up and going against social norms of not only comic books, but as well as in real life.
The writer of the comic Indie comic book Princeless, Jeremy Whitley, has some very interesting …show more content…
The first real life problem that Whitley addresses involves women. In particular, the inequality, stereotypes, how women are portrayed and the expectations of them. The first art work that should be noted is on the cover of the series’ first issue, it is bright pink, but Princess Adrienne is holding a sword, in a power stance with her hair up in a ponytail. Whitley states in an interview, “We were trying to strike that balance between people that want nothing to do with princess stories and kids who are going to look for the princess stories that can still benefit from an interesting and subversive, important story” (Girarud). This is a great idea because it does not limit the audience. Boys may still be intrigued when looking at this cover because it involves swords and girls may be immersed because there is a book that finally has girls fighting in it or is not a “typical” girl comic book involving romance. Which leads me to my second point, this comic book goes against social norms for a couple reasons. Here the main character is a girl, which used to not be common in comic books. Secondly most comic books portray women being weak, and in need of a man to come fight and save them, but here Princess Adrienne is doing the fighting and saving herself. Whitley puts the idea of women needing to be saved to shame, “It’s really iffy to …show more content…
For instance, the comic Princeless, represents its values and stands up for women and African-American equality. It does this through the colorful yet fierce cover. It goes against social norms in that a woman is the lead character, and she also happens to be black. This comic picks fun at other comics sexualizing the female body when it comes to attire and even artwork. It shows the struggles that minority races face. This comic is aimed for young children, but I believe that everyone could benefit from reading this comic and open their eyes to the real problems many people are facing in