Women In Comics: DC, April 13, 2011

Well, it was a bad week all around… terrible for DC, and not so good for Marvel.  On April 13, 2011, DC Comics released 20 new books with 160 creator credits, 146 men and 14 women.  These are the startling low percentages:

DC below ten percent is an oddity, so this 8.8% is really bad.  As I always say when we see wild swings, a week is just a week.  DC’s been remarkably consistent this year for monthly totals and started out April well with last weeks numbers, but weeks like this are still a bit of a kick in the pants.  After number compiling, it’s far more fun to think “Oh wow, this is really going to raise the average!” than “Oh damn, this is going to drag them down.”  Here are the numbers by category:

And in chart form:

No pencillers or inkers was obviously no help, nor was no letterers.  One writer wasn’t great either, but it’s about average for DC.  Cover artists and editors were well within average too, if not slightly higher than usual.  Assistant editors were a little low, but the glaring drop this week was colourists.  Colourists are usually good for double digits, but they were way down for some reason.  This brought down the overall average a bit, though the three zeroes were the real killers.  There’s not much to be excited about this week.

Notes:

• Justice League: Generation Lost #23 didn’t list a letterer this week, so we’re technically one credit short.  But I can’t count it if it’s not there!
• The busiest book this week was Superman #710, with 14 creators, none of them women.  Generally speaking, the Super-books are not so great with gals, apart from Amy Reeder doing some awesome Supergirl covers.  That’ll get a little better soon, though, when Kelly Sue DeConnick starts a three-issue stint on Supergirl.
• Birds of Prey came out this week, so it of course was the issue with the most female creators in both percentage and numbers.  It was 3 of 7, though kudos to Batgirl #20 and Cinderella: Fables Are Forever #3, both of which were 2 of 7.
• To learn more about this statistics project and its methodology click here, and to see the previous stats click here.