GIRLS JUST WANNA

Comic books for girls have grown up.

Barbara Slate, creator of the feminist “Ms. Liz” strip, is coming out shortly with a new heroine called Angel Love, the star of an eight-issue DC Comics series.

Angel’s not your old-fashioned comic-book type. She’s a struggling artist and sometime waitress on Manhattan’s Upper West Side who sports spiked red hair and dangling jewelry. Angel also grapples with such problems as her boyfriend’s cocaine addiction, a friend’s unplanned pregnancy and her mother’s bout with cancer. The target audience: girls 11 to 18.

DC “wanted to do a book like this for girls graduating from Archie comics,” said editor Karen Berger. The comic’s tone is “funny, realistic, lighthearted and whimsical,” she promised. “If you look at 13-, 14- and 15-year-old girls, it’s stuff they come in contact with a lot. It’s the real world.”