Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio.  This week Bennett looks at the launch of DC's Super Hero Girls and the revelation of Jughead's asexuality.

I hope you saw the piece on ICv2 (see "'Super Hero Girls' Come To Target") about the young female-skewing franchise for girls six to twelve, because I think it's an important story.  Not because of the announcement regarding the Target-exclusive line of licensed products; no retailer likes hearing about comic-related merchandise that isn't not being made available to the direct sales market.

Or even the news about an hour TV special.  Though it is worth noting that it's making its debut on Boomerang, the Cartoon Network's sister network.  Otherwise known as the place where CN routinely abandons cartoons they deem to be too old, weird or "niche" to run on the main channel.  Maybe I'm wrong, I very often am, but it's hard for me to see this move as a vote of confidence in the property.

But because it's an important story about the future of comics.  If you think otherwise you haven't read the piece by Ryan Faughnder that appeared on the Los Angeles Times website, "Make way!  Warner Bros. expands its universe with DC Super Hero Girls."  Particularly worth reading are a couple of quotes, the first from DC's chief creative officer Geoff Johns, "I think this is one of the most important things that DC will do.  It's changing the culture of what superheroes are."

Anyone still under the impression that this sort of thing is driven by some kind of "feminist agenda," I refer you to this quote from Laura Martin, the senior entertainment analyst at Needham & Co.: "Superheroes at DC Comics traditionally have been targeted toward men and boys, so targeting girls is the smart economic thing to do.  That DC Comics is focusing on the less well-served target market is smart business."

It's a program that could not only help create an entire new generation of comic book readers, but double the number of comic book readers.  The only strange thing about it is, so far, there are no Super Hero Girls comic books.  Print, digital, what have you.  Maybe the idea is for the comics to come later, but I find the absence of any comics to be curious to say the least.

The Comic Book Resources website broke the news on Monday ("'Jughead' Follows Through with Zdarsky's Promise, Identifies as Asexual in Issue #4") but it was soon all over the Internet.  My favorite piece on the subject was "Jughead's asexuality isn't the only time Archie Comics has turned a new page lately" that appeared on the website of Canada's The Globe and Mail.  Not only because it defines asexuality for us ("asexuality--as distinct from celibacy, which is a conscious choice not to be sexually active--is a part of the sexual spectrum in which one experiences no or little sexual attraction").

But also because it features this quote from the writer of the Jughead comic Chip Zdarsky, "I think something like asexuality is underrepresented, and since we have a character who was asexual before people had the word for it, I'm continuing to write him that way."  It'll be interesting to see if the character is played that way in the upcoming Riverdale pilot for The CW.  If for no other reason than, as far as I know, there are no out asexuals on any prime-time American television programs.

Not that you needed to be Freud to see this one coming, but for the record, I totally called this back in May 2015 (see "Confessions of a Comic Book Guy--The Deal With Jughead").  And now that the matter has finally become canonical, maybe we can finally put it to rest and move on to other matters.  Such as, when Scooby Apocalypse comes out maybe it’ll finally provide the answer to what’s the deal with Shaggy?

The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.