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.
TIM HANLEY 