Women In Comics Statistics: DC And Marvel, March 2012 In Review

My regular Gendercrunching article is up on Bleeding Cool now!!  Go check it out to see the women in comics stats for March 2012. DC had an average month at 11% female creators, but Marvel broke the monthly record with 12.7%!!

There’s also a look at Marvel’s monthly numbers from a different perspective, focusing on DIFFERENT creators instead of CREDITED creators, though interestingly the numbers turn out to be about the same.

Anyway, go to Bleeding Cool and check out Marvel’s record-breaking month!!

Women In Comics Statistics: Marvel, March 2012 Week By Week

While DC is the picture of consistency, Marvel is always mixing it up, and March was no exception.  This was an impressive month for them, with some very big numbers.  Let’s jump right in:

So that 7.7% in the third week isn’t so great, but luckily the rest of the weeks are NUTS.  Two weeks over 13% and then a whopping 15.8% is crazy good!!  While that third week will be a drag on their overall total, this is nonetheless a really great span of female creators.  And the mega-chart is looking pretty decent as well:

Let’s go to the zero counter first… in February, Marvel hit a new low with an adjusted zero counter (because it was a five-week month) of 9.6, but they’ve bounced back this month with 8 zeroes!!  Not that 8 zeroes is fantastic, but 4 of them are a given because they never hire female letterers.  We shouldn’t write off lettering and excuse Marvel’s perpetual lack of female letterers by any means, but apart from lettering Marvel has only 4 zeroes in the 28 remaining slots, which is really quite good.  Lettering is a constant stain on Marvel’s record, but at the same time they do well elsewhere.

Cover artists did well in March, with one week in double digits, two other strong weeks, and a zero.  That third week wasn’t very good for Marvel, despite their overall success this month. 

Writers skipped the third week curse, though, with solid totals across the board!!  There was at least one female writer every week in March, and most of the time there were several.  It’s good to see such strong numbers for the writers.

The art categories had three zeroes, but there were also two weeks in double digits too, so there are some pros and cons.  Pencillers had a fairly solid month, apart from that third week, with inkers not doing quite as well but still having some fair representation.  While not great, it’s not too bad either, comparatively.

Colourists had a very consistent and very good month, sitting squarely in the mid-teens all four weeks.  The third week curse knocked them down slightly, but only negligibly so.  There were, as always, no letterers.  We need to start a counter for how long it’s been since Marvel’s had a female letterer, like they did way back with the Iranian hostages.  Let me tabulate… Marvel last had a female letterer on X-Men Forever 2 #16 way back on January 26, 2011 (Lois Buhalis holds the honour), so that’s 476 days without a female letterer. 

Editors did very well, with several solid weeks preceded by a really great week that almost hit 40%.  Those are some of the best numbers we’ve seen from Marvel editors in a while.  Assistant editors weren’t so hot though… two weeks in the low teens isn’t great, and while they ended the month on a high note, overall their total is going to be pretty low for March.  In an otherwise strong month, assistant editors didn’t have the best go of it.

Altogether, March was great for Marvel.  Their monthly totals should be pretty stellar, and a lot of categories had some consistently good numbers each week.  This may be the best month Marvel’s had since we started keeping track of the stats.

Notes:

• It was a tie for busiest book of the month, with Fear Itself: Fearless #10 and #11 taking the top spot yet again with 14 credited creators each, no women on either.
• There was a tie for highest percentage of female creators as well, with Journey Into Mystery #635 and Northanger Abbey #5 both at 3 of 7.  This was Northanger Abbey’s final issue, so maybe JIM will take the top spot alone next month, or they’ll be a new challenger for the crown.
• To learn more about this statistics project and its methodology click here, and to see the previous stats click here.

Women In Comics Statistics: DC, March 2012 Week By Week

DC is an impressively consistent company.  Over in spreadsheet land, I’m neck deep in May numbers and the Second Wave is finally mixing things up a bit, but until then DC is following their usual patterns.  The numbers look to be about average, because DC is always average.  They are consistency personified, except that it’s a company and not a person… institutionalized maybe?  That just makes them sound crazy.  Anyway, onto their overall totals:

A bad first week, then things get better, as always.  In March, however, the bad first week wasn’t all that terrible, and the weeks that followed weren’t all that great.  Having 8.4% as a low and 11.9% as a high isn’t particularly extreme, and it should all even out into the usual range overall for DC.  Let’s go to the mega-chart… maybe something fun is going on there:

First up, of course, is the zero counter!!  Last month, with the extra week, we had an adjusted zero counter of 9.6, but in March DC had 11 zeroes.  Not good… that’s a bit of a step down.  It’s not their worst total, but double digits is a bad scene.  Over a third of the slots in March were zeroes.

Cover artists had one really good week, hitting doubly digits, one fairly average week, and two zeroes.  With nearly one hundred covers a month, counting variants, you’d think there might be more ladies working on them, if only because eventually you’re going to run out of guys.  Cover artists is always the biggest category in terms of sheer numbers… there were 164 credited cover artists in March, and the next highest total was inkers at 116.  And only 6 women on covers in the entire month.

There were two writers for low percentages, and two zeroes, but finally Gail Simone  doesn’t have to carry the load all by herself now that Ann Nocenti is on Green Arrow.  That’s a silver lining at least.

On the art side, there were five zeroes in the eight slots for pencillers and inkers, but pencillers hit 7.1% one week, which is rare for them.  Altogether these numbers are abysmal, but you’ve got to celebrate the little things… HOORAY one of the eight slots didn’t totally suck!!

Colourists had a wide array of weeks in March, from bad to good to awful to great.  All in all, colourists should end up in double digits for the month, which is good.  It’s still odd that what used to be such a stalwart for female creators continues to falter though.  In terms of letterers, March started off slow but finished well with Saida Temofonte getting some gigs on some video game and digital first properties.

Editorial was a bit all over the map, but never got too disastrous.  While 13.6% isn’t a great number for full editors, we’ve seen FAR worse, and the other weeks were up in the 20s and 30s.  For assistant editors, the first three weeks of March were fantastic, and although the final week was lower it was still pretty decent.  All in all, it looks like a fairly solid month for editorial.

Overall, March 2012 was pretty routine for DC.  There were no big surprises, and even the ups and downs were less severe than usual.  Only colourists had a really zany month, and colourists have become an odd mystery just generally.  So yeah, very average all around. 

Notes:

• The busiest book of the month was Action Comics #7 with 14 credited creators, none of them women.  Action Comics had routinely been one of the busiest books at DC since the relaunch, and I don’t think it’s had a single female creator the entire time.
• The book with the highest percentage of female creators was Batgirl #7 with an even 50-50 split at 4 of 8. 
• To learn more about this statistics project and its methodology click here, and to see the previous stats click here.

Women In Comics Statistics: Previews And Predictions For DC’s Second Wave

Now that DC’s Second Wave has launched this week with Dial H, Earth Two, GI Combat, and World’s Finest, I got to wondering how that might affect their women in comics stats for May.  Luckily for me, I’m the guy that tabulates them, so I dug into my numbers.  I haven’t got the new books yet, and there are two more yet to come, but I do have a lot of data for the old books.

By looking at the six books that got cancelled (Blackhawks, Hawk and Dove, Men of War, Mister Terrific, OMAC, and Static Shock), we can see what effect their departure will have.  Tallying up their stats for the last four months, they have some interesting totals:

• The books had 196 credited creators over 4 months, 184 men and 12 women.
• The overall percentage of female creators for the 6 cancelled titled was only 6.1%.
• The 6 books combined for 3 female creators a month, 1 editor and 2 assistant editors.

With DC’s average percentage of female creators fairly steady at 11% each month, the cancelled titles’ 6.1% is a real bring down for the overall total.  We don’t know how the new titles break down yet, creatorwise, but the loss of the cancelled titles is only going to help things.

Though not by a lot… it’s only 6 books.  For example, if we take those six titles out of March’s numbers (which are coming soon!), then DC’s overall percentage of female creators jumps from 11% to a whopping 11.3%.  It’s not super exciting, but it’s certainly better than nothing.  If the books are at least in the average range, then things should be up a tick at DC.

The 6 cancelled series were also putting up goose eggs on the creative side of the charts, so a) DC’s not losing anything with their cancellation, and b) there’s only room to grow.  Nicola Scott’s drawing Earth Two, so the new books are already one up on the creative side of things.  And Karen Berger’s editing Dial H I think, so there’s another lady.  Plus, based on information from previews for two issues (only two books had full credits in their previews), Rosemary Cheetham is colouring World’s Finest and Kate Stewart is the assistant editor on GI Combat.  With only partial information, we’ve already topped the 6 cancelled titles’ combined 3 female creators!!  And there could be even more once we have full credits for everything.

Overall, DC’s Second Wave should be nothing but a plus in terms of women in comics!!  The 6 cancelled titles were a combined drag on the numbers, so it looks like things will be going up.  The May numbers won’t be up for a while, but I’m optimistic.

FINAL FUN FACT: In case you were wondering why 4 of the 6 new series debuted all at once this week, it’s because DC’s trying very hard to have their titles come out on the same week every month.  Hawk and Dove, Men of War, OMAC, and Static Shock all came out at the first of the month, so that’s four holes for DC to fill with four of their new titles.  Now that I think about it, “Fun Fact” might not be the best title for this tidbit… I might be the only one that finds this sort of fact to be fun.

Women In Comics: DC And Marvel, February 2012 In Review

The Gendercunching numbers for February 2012 are up over at Bleeding Cool!!  DC and Marvel tied for overall percentage of female creators at 11% each, but got to that total in very different ways. 

There’s also a look at sales by gender that was hampered in some ways by how very few women wrote or drew Diamond’s Top 300 books.  The sample size was so small that it was tricky to make any broad generalizations, but overall the sales difference was pretty minimal.

Head on over to Bleeding Cool to check out all the stats fun!!

Women In Comics Statistics: Marvel, February 2012 Week By Week

It looks like Marvel had a good February, but how it’ll all pan out is hard to say.  Unlike DC’s general consistency, Marvel is just all over the place, and February was no exception.  There were some great numbers and some terrible numbers, but altogether it feels like more good than bad.  Here are Marvel’s overall totals for February 2012:

While a 7.6% isn’t so great, four weeks in double digits and three of them over 12% is really good.  February marks six months of Marvel stepping up their game a few percentage points with female creators, and they look to be carrying on their new and improved status quo here, which is good to see.  But what of the super-sized mega-chart?

Just like with DC, we need to adjust our zero counter so as to have a comparable number.  In February, Marvel was 12 of 40 for an adjusted total of 9.6 on the zero counter.  That’s the highest total they’ve had yet, and this number wasn’t helped by having an extra week to not employ a single female letterer.  This lack of lady letterers makes up nearly half of their zeroes every month!!  I just don’t understand it.

Cover artists had a good month, with no zeroes, some decent weeks, and one REALLY good week.  Though we should keep in mind that the last week of February was pretty slow for Marvel… they only put out 11 books, so it was a lot easier for a couple female creators to make a big impact on the stats.  Nonetheless, female cover artists every week is great to see.

Writers were odd, though.  On average, Marvel had one female writer a week, but three of them were lumped in the middle of the month, and February was bookended by zeroes.  At least hitting double digits one week is a pleasant sight.

Both pencillers and inkers had two awesome weeks, an average week, and two zeroes, and they were all the same week!!  Marvel has a lot of female pencillers/inkers, you see, so chances are if there’s a woman in one column, she’ll be in the other one too.  The zeroes aren’t great, but some of those numbers definitely are.

Colourists had a downhill sort of month, but they started out very high with two weeks over 20% and a third week very near there.  The last two weeks under 10% were bad, but not catastrophically so.  Also, there were no female letterers, surprising no one.

Editorial was just chaos all around in February.  I think this might be the first time since I started these stats that we’ve had a week without a female editor, and the other weeks didn’t exactly make up for it.  An 11.1% isn’t much help, and the high of 36.4% doesn’t go a long way to counteracting a zero.  Assistant editors were almost as nutty, with one week at 50% (though it was the last week, so grain of salt) preceded by two weeks of swinging back forth with numbers that were terrible on one end and nothing to get excited about on the other.  It was just crazy all over the place in editorial.

February was very weird at Marvel, but I think the good edged out the bad by a slight margin.  There were a lot of zeroes and low numbers, but there were also a lot of high numbers and categories hitting levels they usually don’t.  There’ll be a lot of counteracting, but overall it looks like it should be a net positive.

Notes:

• The busiest book of the month was again Fear Itself: The Fearless with #8 and #9 tying at 14 creator each, with 0 and 1 female creators respectively.  There were also four books at 13, and tons of other titles in the double digits… between double shipping and being hardcore about deadlines, there’s been a ton of books with multiple colourists and inkers and such to get things done on time.
• It’s a three-way tie for highest percentage of female characters!!  Journey Into Mystery #634, Northanger Abbey #4, and Anita Blake: Circus of the Damned – The Scoundrel #4 all came in at 3 of 7.
• To learn more about this statistics project and its methodology click here, and to see the previous stats click here.

Women In Comics Statistics: DC, February 2012 Week By Week

Amusingly, the shortest month of the year had comics shipping five times, so we’ve got five weeks to look at in our monthly rundown.  So that means February 2012’s stats are super-sized, with bigger charts and more data!!  It’s all terribly exciting.  DC had a fairly average month in February, though the extra week helped to make up for a slow start.  Let’s take a look at their overall totals:

DC’s first weeks have not been good at all lately, but starting out at 7.5% isn’t the worst number we’ve seen in this slot.  Things got better from there, though, with DC hovering around their average range for a few weeks before finishing off with a strong 14.5%.  All in all, things should equal out to about average for the month.  DC is nothing if not the epitome of consistency, good and bad.  Onto the super-sized mega-chart:

It’s time for the zero counter!!  Now, the zero counter is based on our usual 32 spot chart, but with the extra shipping week we’ve got 40 spots so we need to adjust.  Thus 12 out of 40 gives us a comparable zero counter total of 9.6.  That’s DC’s lowest total yet, which is nice to see.  Hopefully this more consistent use of female creators continues next month when we return to our regular sized chart.

As always, we’ll start with the big name categories.  Female cover artists did okay in February with one zero week, one good week, and a few low but consistent showing.  All in all, it balances out to the usual range.

There were a couple weeks without female writers, and never more than one female writer in the weeks there were some.  Luckily Gears of Wars came out this month or there would have been three zeroes.  And as always, pray for the safety of Gail Simone lest she be hit by a bus or some such and DC’s superhero line loses its entire female writing staff.

Pencillers and inkers didn’t have a great month either.  Both had two weeks with one each and three zeroes, and oddly no weeks where there was both a female penciller and inker.  I guess DC didn’t want to shock us with two lady artists in the same week.  Very thoughtful of them.

Colourists had an odd month with an awful week, two subpar weeks, and then two weeks that we’d used to call slightly above average, but given DC’s lack of female colourists lately we have to call it pretty stellar this days.  For letterers, the gal with my favourite name in the comics business, Saida Temofonte, is still holding down the fort, though oddly all of her credits are always on video game properties or books that were digital first.

Editorial was very up and down, bookended by two bad weeks with a really good week in the middle.  The good week likely won’t counteract the two bad weeks, so editorial might be a little lower than usual this month.  Assistant editors did great though!!  One week has a bit below average, but there were two weeks in the 50% range for the first time ever I think.  That last week the chart cuts off goes all the way to a whopping 54.5%, which is huge.  So well done, assistant editors!!

Overall, the things that are usually bad were fairly bad and the things that were good were fairly good.  Like I said earlier, DC is consistency personified.  It would just be nice if they consistently hired more women.

Notes:

• The busiest book of the month was Justice League #6 with 18 creators, 1 of them a woman.  They were clearly in a rush to get this one out on time… it had 5 inkers and 4 colourists!! One of those inkers was Sandra Hope.  I don’t know how much of the book she did, but she pitched in to help them meet the deadline.
• The book with the highest percentage of female creators was Birds of Prey #6 at 3 of 7, followed closely by Batgirl #6 and Voodoo #6 at 3 of 8.  All of these books were edited by Bobbie Chase, by the way, DC’s new Executive Editor.
• To learn more about this statistics project and its methodology click here, and to see the previous stats click here.