What Bobbie Chase’s Promotion Means For Women In Comics Stats OR Reasons To Be Optimistic

DC’s just announced that DC editor Bobbie Chase has been promoted to Executive Editor, replacing Eddie Berganza who is moving elsewhere in the editing house apparently… DC’s being sort of vague about Berganza.  A female Executive Editor is a very exciting thing, of course, and it’s impressive that Chase has risen so fast since returning to comics at DC less than a year ago.  Lately, Chase has been an editor on seven DC titles, and interestingly two of them, Red Hood and the Outlaws and Voodoo, did not go over well AT ALL for their portrayal of female characters.  But on the other hand, Chase also edits Batgirl and Birds of Prey, so that evens things out some. 

Anyway, what does this mean for the numbers?  Well, there are a lot of different ways to look at this.  Chase’s promotion to Executive Editor means that her name probably won’t be on any books anymore.  It’s an overseer sort of position, not one that gets you credited as a regular editor on specific series.  It’s been months since I’ve seen Berganza editing a book, so it’s likely Chase will have a similar role.  That means we’ll lose her credits in our count.

Using the latest published set of monthly totals, January 2012, cutting Chase out directly means a big dip for women overall.  DC’s overall percentage of female creators was 10.4% in January, and if you take Chase’s 7 credits out of the equation that number falls to 9.4%.  So that’s a little bit ominous.

However, other editors are going to have to replace Chase, and there will likely be a lot of shuffling.  Particularly if Berganza’s been demoted and is editing books again.  Even if he’s not, people are probably going to have to move around.  Chances are, at least a few of these editors filling the holes will be women, so that’ll mitigate Chase’s losses some.

We also have a bit of a precedent for this scenario from when Janelle Asselin left DC in September.  Most of her assistant editing gigs went to Harvey Richards, or the entire editorial team was changed, but on the books where she was a FULL editor, Birds of Prey and Savage Hawkman, she was replaced by Chase and Rachel Gluckstern.  So Asselin’s two editorial spots being filled by two female editors bodes well for this transition too.

Hopefully overall the numbers will break about even after everything is sorted out.  It’ll be a few months before we know for sure, since all of the issues Chase had been working on will need to come out.  I doubt we’ll see a Chase-less month until June at the earliest.

Chase’s promotion might bode well for female creators across the board, though.  Chase is pretty good for hiring female creators, and not just in an anecdotal “ladies sticking together” sort of way.  I removed all of the editorial credits for all of DC’s books in January, leaving just the credits on the creative side, and added them all up to see who the editors hired.  Chase comes out looking well:

• On average, DC Comics’ percentage of female creators, minus editorial, is 4.3%.
• If you take out Chase’s 7 books, that number falls to 3.9%.
• If you take out Vertigo, the kids books, and video game properties and just look at DC’s superhero titles, again minus Chase’s 7 books, it falls to 3.2%.
• The overall percentage of female creators on Chase’s 7 books, minus editorial, is 8.1%.

So roughly, Chase hires more than double the amount of women that the average DC editor does.  Hopefully this continues, and promoting her to Executive Editor results in a jump for female creators across the board.  I will, of course, be all over it statswise in the months to come, so check back to see how it all plays out.

Women In Comics: The DCnU in Review, September 2011

A full stats look at DC Comics’ “The New 52″ titles is up now over at Bleeding Cool.  The overall drop is really not that bad, but there are some interesting and disheartening trends when you look at it by category.  Also, I look at the effect Janelle Asselin’s departure might have on DC’s stats, and we look at the DCnU totals from a different angle.  Pop over to Bleeding Cool and check it out!!

Women In Comics Statistics: The DCnU, September 14, 2011

It’s the second week of the full DCnU onslaught, and if any of you were hoping that more ladies would show up in the credits this week, I’m very sorry to disappoint you.  The numbers were actually remarkably similar to last week, so the DCnU seems to be consistent at least.  On September 14, 2011, DC released 13 brand new number ones featuring 109 credited creators, 101 men and 8 women.  Remember that the average for the year through August was 9.4%… here are the overall percentages:

So we’re down 0.3% from last week, which really isn’t much of a change at all.  We remain nearly a quarter below the year’s average as well.  The DCnU definitely has fewer female credits so far, but I’m cautiously optimistic about next week.  There are at least four books in the Bat-family due to come out, and the Bat-family means female editors.  I wouldn’t be surprised if we got 6 or 7 female credits just from the Bat-books alone.  Onto the categories:

And the chart:

Things are basically the same as last week.  We’ve got slight variations on the editorial totals, but nothing drastic, and the writing credit from last week has turned into a colorist credit from Tanya Horie co-colouring Superboy #1.  The raw numbers are even the same in editorial, with two full editors (Rachel Gluckstern and Bobbie Chase) and five assistants (Janelle Asselin, Katie Kubert twice, and Kate Stewart twice).  And, of course, a bunch of zeroes everywhere else.  The lack of distribution from last week remains.  Check back next week… the overall total might be better and hey, maybe we’ll get a female letterer or something.  You never know.

Notes:

• Take a second and guess which book had the most female creators… I’ll tell you the answer in a few lines.
• I love Geoff Johns’ comics, but so far DC’s Chief Creative Officer is a combined 0 for 22 in terms of credited female creators.  Both Justice League #1 and Green Lantern #1 had nothing going on… in two weeks, we’ll see if Aquaman #1 nets a lady creator.
• The busiest book of the week was, in fact, Green Lantern #1 with 12 creators, none of them women.
• Okay, it’s time for the book with the most female creators.  Did you guess Grifter #1?  Because I sure didn’t.  It was 2 of 8, with Bobbie Chase editing and Katie Kubert assistant editing.
• To learn more about this statistics project and its methodology click here, and to see the previous stats click here.

Women In Comics Statistics: The DCnU, September 7, 2011

I’ll be doing the women in comics stats for DC and Marvel like always this month, but since the DC relaunch is sort of a big deal, we’re going to have special reports on the New 52 as they’re released… hopefully very soon after they’re released, if I can keep on top of things. 

Now, just looking at the DCnU requires a bit of an adjustment for those who follow these stats (here’s an explanation of the methodology for those of you who don’t follow the stats).  We’re used to seeing DC in the 11% percent range, but that’s for all of their books, including Vertigo and the kid’s books and such.  Stripped down to just the main DC line and the 375 comics they’ve released from January to August, the key number for comparison is 9.4%.  That’s the overall percentage of female creators for the DC proper for all of 2011 thus far.

This week, we’ve got thirteen new number ones, plus Justice League #1 from last week.  I added it in because it seemed a little silly to give it its own post last week, so I saved it.  On September 7, 2011, DC released 14 (really 13, plus 1 from the week before) brand new titles featuring 105 credited creators, 97 male and 8 female.  Here are the percentages, in new Justice League inspired colours:

So we’re nearly two percent less than the average amount.  If you want to get into a whole percentage of percentage thing, this 7.6% is almost twenty percent below the average total of female creators.  It’s not a particularly great beginning, and here’s the part where I would say something about how it looks like it might get better or worse, but I literally have NO idea how it’ll go.  It’s a whole new universe, folks!!  Let’s look at the categories:

And chart them up: 

Gail Simone had Batgirl #1 this week, so there’s your lady writer.  And then nothing until editorial.  I wasn’t expecting any pencillers or inkers, but I thought we’d maybe get a colourist or two, or maybe even just one on a cover.  But no.  Plus in editorial, only 2 of the female credits were for full editors, while the other 5 were for assistant editors.  Assistant editors are of course super important, but it’s nice to spread things around some and not have all the ladies in the category with “assistant” in the title.  Also interesting is that this week belonged to the Bat-books… Janelle Asselin and Katie Kubert assistant edited Detective Comics #1 while Gail Simone wrote, Bobbie Chase edited, and the very busy Katie Kubert again assistant edited Batgirl #1.  That’s 5 of the 8 female credits in only two books.  What we have here is an epic lack of distribution all around.  Check back next week to see what’s happening for Week Two of the DCnU!!

Notes:

• There was a three-way tie for busiest book of the week between Action Comics #1, Men of War #1, and Justice League #1, all with 10 creators.  Only Men of War #1 had a lady on the book, with Kate Stewart assistant editing.
• The book with the most female creators by number and percentage was Batgirl #1 at 3 of 8.
• Thanks to the many sites where I scrounged information on the credits for these new books today, and to Todd McCallum for kindly filling in the rest.
• To learn more about this statistics project and its methodology click here, and to see the previous stats click here.