When DC Comics canceled its Minx line for girls in 2008, diagnoses ranged from problems with the books' distribution and release calendars, to issues of story quality, to DC's impatience with a growing product less than two years old. But underlying the discussion was a perennial question: had American comics lost teenage girls as readers?

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. 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 UmbrellaAcademy 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). Yolen hopes the book will attract "fantasy lovers, romantics, graphic novel fans, and I hope my fans as well"—and says that while she's uncomfortable breaking down reading skills and interests by gender, "I think girls read across the genres more than boys and will probably respond more quickly to The Last Dragon because of the romantic elements and because the main character, and the real hero, is a girl. But I hope that boys will also find a story of an uncomfortable male hero who learns to love something besides himself."

"[Yolen] is someone who's a well-known name, and the kind of story she wants to do is this interesting fantasy story that I think is perfect for teenage readers," says Jeremy Atkins, director of publicity for Dark Horse. At the same time, Atkins says the company is going into the project knowing that its success with younger females will have to come naturally by its own merits. "Buffy and UmbrellaAcademy happened very organically," says Atkins. "We hear from retailers over and over again, especially in the direct market, that those two books specifically brought in more new younger female readers last year than anything else out, including the manga titles they were selling. And that's really great for us based on the idea that that is a market we want to reach, but we don't want to do it in any sort of way that feels forced."

Indeed, not marketing to teens seems to be one of the more effective ways of marketing to them. “I think teens are smart enough to know when something has been created for their market and stay way from it,” says Dan Vado, president and publisher of Slave Labor Graphics, whose books such as Jhonen Vasquez’ Johnny the Homicidal Maniac have a strong following among teen girls and were carried in Hot Topic stores for years. “People like me or some other publisher trying to figure them out or trying to market to them is useless, you have to start with a sincere story and creator, or it all goes to hell.”

Atkins agrees: “Teenagers more than any other audience realize when someone is directly trying to get their attention, and usually they’re going to resist that,” he says. “It’s going to be the things that appeal to them naturally that they’re going to get into.”

As for what naturally appeals to teen girls, there’s clearly no magic formula, though strong, relatable characters tend to be central to books that do well. Vado says that among SLG’s specific titles, common elements that seem to attract younger women include “a darker sense of sexiness and a somewhat skewed look at the world around us.” Rob Reger, creator of popular merchandise and Dark Horse comics character Emily the Strange says he believes Emily’s primary audience of 13-18 year-old girls identify with her “because she doesn’t fit society’s image of what’s acceptable in girls. And a lot of people feel that they don’t fit in… men and women of all ages. So I think Emily is sending the message that it’s okay—even better—to be different.” Atkins cites Buffy’s success as “a strong female character who is providing both escapism and inspiration,” adding that the teenage superheroes in Umbrella Academy are also written to be both powerful and identifiable: “That book is so much about relationships and family and coming of age that it’s a perfect story for [teenagers], male or female.”

Joe Keatinge, PR and marketing coordinator for Image Comics, says that while Image believes great comics can and do have universal appeal, the company also acknowledges that getting those books to young women takes conscious effort. "The 19-24 year-old male comics store reader knows who we are and what we do," says Keatinge. "In the past year, Image has done a lot of outreach to these other markets, in particular by doing things like sponsoring a concert event at South By Southwest (the annual pop music festival in Austin, TX)."

Alex Cox, owner of Brooklyn comic shop Rocketship—known for its broad clientele and family-friendliness—says that he sells plenty of non-manga comics to girls of all ages, and targeting books for them works up to a certain age. "By the time girls are 15 or 16, the idea of getting something marketed specifically towards them is kind of out the window," he says, adding that his top seller to girls 16-20 is Bryan Lee O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim from Oni Press, a hit that crosses gender and age lines. "It's a weird split, because prior to that, girls do want something that's specifically for them. And for up to 13 or 14 there's a pretty wide variety that's targeted pretty closely." Cox cites Dark Horse's Little Lulu collections, First Second's Sardine in Outer Space books by Emmanuel Guibert and Joann Sfar, the Baby-Sitters Club series and Kazu Kibuishi's Amulet, both from Scholastic, as big sellers for early and pre-teens. He says the Minx books such as Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg's The Plain Janes have in fact done extremely well with girls in the 10-12 age range, but months-long publishing gaps between volumes were a problem. "We had a lot of girls come in and say 'where's the new line of Minx books?' and there wasn't anything for a long time. And that's a really quick way to lose your audience, because at that point they've moved on to something else."

Of course the "well-known name" factor, which Yolen will bring to The Last Dragon, can be helpful in attracting new readers of any demographic that follows the talent or property. It benefited both the current Buffy series and Umbrella Academy—the former spun off the hit TV show, the latter written by the frontman of the hugely popular rock act My Chemical Romance—bringing in first-time comics readers that included a lot of teen girls.

"I think the initial reason for interest [in Umbrella Academy] from teenagers is obviously my day job, but I think after that they became genuinely interested in the comic as well as other American comics," says Way, a long-time comics fan who tried to break into comics before music. "One of the coolest things I would hear at the first signings is that this was a lot of these readers' 'first' American comic, having only read manga before. That to me is a big victory." Way says that although fans of his music were likely contenders to buy the book, he didn't set out to reach any particular audience, a practice that he believes "lends itself to bad comics."

Not targeting an audience is not the same as ignoring issues around who might read a book, however. Dark Horse Senior Managing Editor Scott Allie, who edits both Umbrella Academy and Buffy, says that he and Way had to consider the potential of reaching a younger audience with Umbrella Academy in various editorial decisions. At one point, says Allie, he talked Way out of including profanity, thinking less about censorship and more about "the comic book retailer who's going to have a 14 year-old girl run into his store to buy the comic because Gerard wrote it, and then she runs home and mom sees in black and white the word F--- in big letters—and she's not going to come to me, she's going to go to the retailer. There's a certain innocence to these characters, and [profanity] doesn't feel necessary." Other decisions, however, such as the high level of violence in the series, were deliberately maintained to fit the story. "You don't want to get hampered by your audience too much," says Allie, "but when you have an opportunity to reach a lot of readers you don't want to screw it up. It's a balancing act."