#comictok

I stopped reading regular books because I fell into booktube/goodreads toxic productivity hell where everyone was claiming to read 300 books/year, posting rant reviews, dnfs & tbrs, overconsuming books, complaining about authors and other creators, starting drama, being fake intellectuals etc etc. My AuDHD ass could not keep up with what was “expected” of a reader so instead i just got burnt out. Reading was no longer fun and just felt like a competition/chore.

for sure!!! I decided not to include people who are mainly editors/cosplayers, but if you did want that let me know and I'll compile another list

anyway these are most of my favorite comictokers whether or not they're specifically about these subjects, feel free to check them out either way and see how you feel

so firstly and obviously if you're not following thepandaredd and nikhilclayton are you even on comictok? I'm honestly always pleasantly surprised by how UN-dudebro-y they are and thepandaredd is like a solid 40% of how I got into batfam in the first place. nikhilclayton does batfam and spiderman but I mostly associate him with x-men

then we've got myself, obviously! my username on tiktok is gailpirl and any character I talk about here gets talked about there. right now my smallville obsession is literally everywhere but obviously peter parker, spider gwen, deadpool, batfam, etc, plus whatever comic I just read all get some content made on them

then we have @stackthedeck my dear beloved mutual, who has the same username on tiktok, and whose content is mostly spider-people with a decent amount of daredevil and the occasional foray into other characters

for dc I recommend literallyloislane, theactorbat, nightwingser, kennenbabbles (another mutual!), mia.likes.bats (yet another mutual!!), sandmanlibrary, and for the flash specifically, theflashmuseum, their content is fucking great I don't care about flashfam until their videos show up on my fyp and then I suddenly don't care about anything else

ayaanshahlikesyou makes content on both marvel and dc; I mosty see his young justice content on my fyp but he likes blue beetle and kamala khan as well

speaking of kamala khan, h3yd4v3 talks about a lot of marvel content but mainly focuses on ms marvel; also notfranklinsherald is f4 focused but occasionally talks about northstar and aquaman too

also @emptyjunior has a lot of really fun skits for batfam, team red/spiderman, xmen, and captain america, among others

I get that people probably do this because they’re scared people will dismiss comics as little kid stuff, so they rush to recommend the “grittiest, most grounded, realistic and grown up” comics. But this is totally the wrong move. It’s like once upon a time a bunch of 30 yo men decided that these are the top tier comics of all time, glazed them to hell, then all these young people who are just now coming into the fandom picked up on this sentiment and spread it further. I get it, the comic book fandom can be pretty intimidating. For a lot of young women it is their first male dominated fandom (which feels super different to a female dominated fandom). There is a ton of comics to read and lore to learn, and it takes years and years. It’s also not always clear where one should start. People who have been into comics for a long time seem like they know what they’re talking about, and young women are prone to take older men’s word as gospel. So when some millennial man on your FYP says that TDKR is peak and that you gotta read it, it’s so easy to believe him. We have to do better guys.