Graph of the Day: The Gender Gap of Mainstream American Comics
Lies Damned Lies
Tim Hanley has been statistically examining the breakdown of creator gender at Marvel and DC comics since the beginning of this year, and his post today on Bleeding Cool is an incredibly informative and interesting look at the gender imbalance.
This week, 11.3% of the creators behind DC’s comics were women, and Marvel had 9%. Both of these numbers are, so far, above average.
Other highlights from Hanley’s post:
If Gail Simone doesn’t have a book out in a given week, chances are that DC [will have no women writers]. But having [no women] in two categories that get your name on the cover is distressing. Cover artists rarely get into double digits, so 13.8% is a really solid number, while letterers and editors are also well above average this week. Putting up a 5.3% for pencillers is surprisingly better than usual too, even though it’s only one credit (Nicola Scott onTeen Titans #93)… there are lots of weeks with no female pencillers at all. Colorists are usually good for a few more percentage points than that, and assistant editors are firmly in the thirties most of the time, but the numbers they posted are far from disastrously outside the norm. Overall, this is a pretty good showing for DC compared to past weeks…
Wonder Woman #608 and Zatanna #11 were the only two books with female headliners, and went a combined 0 for 20 with female creators.
Captain America #616 was a special anniversary issue and was by far the busiest book of the week, with 26 creators. One of them was a woman.
Charts and graphs can be found at the article on Bleeding Cool. Hanley’s methodology and updates on his project can be found here.
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