Well, at least I got three good stories out of it before it ended. For the record, anything with "Janes" in the title can be ruled out.

I think that's what hurt the line the most: there was an assumption that the only thing young girls would want to read in the Minx format was story after story about an ordinary person's drama. Of the three I'd recommend, the only one that's "ordinary" at all is Confessions of a Blabbermouth. Good as Lily is surreal fantasy in a coming of age story, and Kimmie66 is a sci-fi story of letting go of lost love ones. They're all awesome. Whereas I found the "ordinary girl goes through something sort of extraordinary" stories to be painful. The less said about the whole "Janes" series, the better, unless you want to hear me curse like a drunken sailor; and the heroine of Clubbing was just incredibly unpleasant and fits into the stereotype of "all goth girls are bitchy". Because of that, the other ordinary series, Regifters, didn't even interest me despite its praise.

Part of the appeal of manga, at least the series that reach us, is the escapism it offers. Minx didn't offer that escapism as much. Their general tone was, "Look, ordinary people just like you! Isn't that fascinating?" No. I'm boring; ordinary people are boring. I want to get away from ordinary when I read something, and I know I'm not alone in that. Not every girl reads "chick lit" novels about clothes and dating, and approaching comics from the same mindset of "women are allergic to the fantastic" is ultimately what killed this line before it could really be well-known.

Well, that and using a steaming pile of shit like Plain Janes as your benchmark and returning to it. Seriously, that was garbage.