Are 50% of the People Reading Comics Women??

[paperheart]

% seems outrageous. i'd say on any given Wed at the LCS's i frequent, 10% of the customers are female. happy to say the % is 50% in my household as my wife just read Daytripper.

[MetalPSI]

My gf likes Archie. And spy vs spy. I consider myself very fortunate considering other relationships

[RCheli]

% seems outrageous. i'd say on any given Wed at the LCS's i frequent, 10% of the customers are female. happy to say the % is 50% in my household as my wife just read Daytripper.

 

That's probably true, but there are many, many, many more ways to get comics than at a LCS.

[jaybuck43]

Are you sure it wasn't last years survey that showed that 46.67% of comic book fans are female? The data on that was based on checking facebook profiles to see who identified as a comic book fan. Based off that data 46.67% of respondents were female. But that is a terrible study (as it 1) only counts people on facebook, 2) only counts people who self identify,

 

And why would women be more likely to do either of those things than men?

 

I'm not suggesting the data is right, but I don't see those as reasons why it's wrong?

 

I think you are either misreading my statement or I didn't make it clear enough. It has nothing to do with women, or men for that matter. I'm complaining that any "study" that uses a data set of just facebook users and just those users who self identify, is a bad study, as it misses the litany of people who either don't use facebook, or who don't mention comics in their profile. My comment has nothing to do with gender, my comment is about a flawed sample set.

[revat]

I would say that 50% of comic readers are women in some cases, but you'd have to get more detail about the sampling/data set

 

Here's some of the sampling/data specifics I'd buy into.

 

50% of new comic readers are women.

50% of comic readers under 25 are women.

50% of worldwide comic readers are women (if you include manga as comics).

 

 

without more detail about the original stat, any argument is moot. it could literally be anything, purely anecdotal or made up entirely.

 

50% of the comic readers in my house are women.

50% of readers who buy comics in the lesbian part of LA are women.

50% percent of comic readers named Leslie are women.

 

 

 

 

[jaybuck43]

% seems outrageous. i'd say on any given Wed at the LCS's i frequent, 10% of the customers are female. happy to say the % is 50% in my household as my wife just read Daytripper.

 

That's probably true, but there are many, many, many more ways to get comics than at a LCS.

 

Several of my female friends who are comic book readers prefer to get TPBs and order them off of Amazon because they are cheaper.

[dupont2005]

I saw something the other day that stated 50% of all comics readers are women.

 

I find that impossible to believe based on who I see at my LCS, at conventions etc.

 

Is there any data to support this?

Comics exist outside the mainstream and outside the direct market. What you see at the LCS is Marvel and DC comic fans. Which are about 94% male. Outside the direct market things are very different.

[dupont2005]

This reminds me of when a stat floated around that something like 50% of gamers were women... turns out they were counting all types of gamers as 'gamers' - if you'd played a game of Angry Birds on your phone, you were counted.

 

What does a woman have to do to be counted here? Have read Sally Forth once in 1983? Maybe she's read XKCD once? Maybe her parents used to buy her Donald Duck comics when she was a kid?

Hey, at least we're doing our part to make all woman comic fans extremely uncomfortable and chase them away from our hobby, right?

[SquareChaos]

This reminds me of when a stat floated around that something like 50% of gamers were women... turns out they were counting all types of gamers as 'gamers' - if you'd played a game of Angry Birds on your phone, you were counted.

 

What does a woman have to do to be counted here? Have read Sally Forth once in 1983? Maybe she's read XKCD once? Maybe her parents used to buy her Donald Duck comics when she was a kid?

Hey, at least we're doing our part to make all woman comic fans extremely uncomfortable and chase them away from our hobby, right?

 

I don't know, are you?

 

I immediately ignore most stats if I can't determine how they're compiled. It's easy to make statistics say anything you want them to say, and only 85% of the people that take them at face value are likely to be 60% skeptical.

[dupont2005]

% seems outrageous. i'd say on any given Wed at the LCS's i frequent, 10% of the customers are female. happy to say the % is 50% in my household as my wife just read Daytripper.

In the past ten years I'm willing to bet the number of brick and mortar comic stores has declined. I'm also willing to bet unit sales of the ones that remain are either static or declining.

 

 

In the past ten years bookstore sales of TPB's and GN's has skyrocketed. Online sales through sites like Amazon and B&N, as well as sites like DCBS and Heavyink have skyrocketed. Digital comic book sales have skyrocketed, and so have free to view webcomics. All the growth in the industry is outside the direct market. ALL of it. Outside the direct market the demographics of readership as well as comic market share are VERY different than within the direct market. A while back I checked the NYTimes bestselling graphic novels, and something like 80% of them had female creators, ten percent of them had super heroes.

[dupont2005]

This reminds me of when a stat floated around that something like 50% of gamers were women... turns out they were counting all types of gamers as 'gamers' - if you'd played a game of Angry Birds on your phone, you were counted.

 

What does a woman have to do to be counted here? Have read Sally Forth once in 1983? Maybe she's read XKCD once? Maybe her parents used to buy her Donald Duck comics when she was a kid?

Hey, at least we're doing our part to make all woman comic fans extremely uncomfortable and chase them away from our hobby, right?

 

I don't know, are you?

 

I immediately ignore most stats if I can't determine how they're compiled. It's easy to make statistics say anything you want them to say, and only 85% of the people that take them at face value are likely to be 60% skeptical.

Being skeptical of stats is one thing. Your post was another.

[slym2none]

I saw something the other day that stated 50% of all comics readers are women.

 

I find that impossible to believe based on who I see at my LCS, at conventions etc.

 

Is there any data to support this?

Comics exist outside the mainstream and outside the direct market. What you see at the LCS is Marvel and DC comic fans. Which are about 94% male. Outside the direct market things are very different.

 

To sort-of go with this, although it is kind of contradictory (you'll see what I mean) - I managed a newsstand for 3 of the 5 years I worked there (this was in the mid-1990s), and at one point had a female employee part-time with us, she helped out on shipment days and a couple of nights. I never saw her pick up a comic book to read but I did see her reading some magazines. At the same time, I part-timed at my LCS, and was a bit surprised to see my employee come in on the weekends (not long after she was hired by me) to pick up her comics. So, while she was at the LCS, she wasn't buying Image, DC, or Marvel books. She was more into the independants/small press publications.

 

 

 

 

-slym

[SquareChaos]

This reminds me of when a stat floated around that something like 50% of gamers were women... turns out they were counting all types of gamers as 'gamers' - if you'd played a game of Angry Birds on your phone, you were counted.

 

What does a woman have to do to be counted here? Have read Sally Forth once in 1983? Maybe she's read XKCD once? Maybe her parents used to buy her Donald Duck comics when she was a kid?

Hey, at least we're doing our part to make all woman comic fans extremely uncomfortable and chase them away from our hobby, right?

 

I don't know, are you?

 

I immediately ignore most stats if I can't determine how they're compiled. It's easy to make statistics say anything you want them to say, and only 85% of the people that take them at face value are likely to be 60% skeptical.

Being skeptical of stats is one thing. Your post was another.

 

That is not the case - if you read further down, I factually state this industry has never been more welcoming, and I say it is a good thing.

 

One thing I've noticed when you post... you always seem ready to judge and jump on things as being 'against' something. Typically you feel the need to constantly defend 'indie', which is fine, but in this case you're actually attacking a perfectly factual statement that I made ridiculing some number picked out of the air.

 

I'm all for female inclusion in our hobby, but just because some statistic, or some NYTimes article you read ranked certain types of trades higher than others, doesn't make that original statement any more true.

 

My point is, why even talk about it until we know how the number was derived. All it is at this point is click bait.

[slym2none]

They say that 72% of statistics are made up right there on the spot

& 85% of the people believe them, whether they are accurate statistics or not.

Now I'll never know what you believe, of that there is no doubt

but now I need another double-shot of something 100% 'cos it's too much to think about.

 

 

 

 

-slym

[dupont2005]

This reminds me of when a stat floated around that something like 50% of gamers were women... turns out they were counting all types of gamers as 'gamers' - if you'd played a game of Angry Birds on your phone, you were counted.

 

What does a woman have to do to be counted here? Have read Sally Forth once in 1983? Maybe she's read XKCD once? Maybe her parents used to buy her Donald Duck comics when she was a kid?

Hey, at least we're doing our part to make all woman comic fans extremely uncomfortable and chase them away from our hobby, right?

 

I don't know, are you?

 

I immediately ignore most stats if I can't determine how they're compiled. It's easy to make statistics say anything you want them to say, and only 85% of the people that take them at face value are likely to be 60% skeptical.

Being skeptical of stats is one thing. Your post was another.

 

That is not the case - if you read further down, I factually state this industry has never been more welcoming, and I say it is a good thing.

 

One thing I've noticed when you post... you always seem ready to judge and jump on things as being 'against' something. Typically you feel the need to constantly defend 'indie', which is fine, but in this case you're actually attacking a perfectly factual statement that I made ridiculing some number picked out of the air.

 

I'm all for female inclusion in our hobby, but just because some statistic, or some NYTimes article you read ranked certain types of trades higher than others, doesn't make that original statement any more true.

 

My point is, why even talk about it until we know how the number was derived. All it is at this point is click bait.

I took your post as saying people who read Duck comics, or webcomics, aren't "real" comic fans. As if you have to be reading superhero comics to count. That type of attitude has been expressed more than once online in my presence, so forgive me if I jumped tot he wrong conclusion here. It just seemed like "GIRL comic book fans? Yeah right! Cyanide And Happiness isn't comics!"

[Bronty]

I saw something the other day that stated 50% of all comics readers are women.

 

I find that impossible to believe based on who I see at my LCS, at conventions etc.

 

Is there any data to support this?

 

I'd say this is as true as... 50% of the people dealing with PMS symptoms are men

[SquareChaos]

This reminds me of when a stat floated around that something like 50% of gamers were women... turns out they were counting all types of gamers as 'gamers' - if you'd played a game of Angry Birds on your phone, you were counted.

 

What does a woman have to do to be counted here? Have read Sally Forth once in 1983? Maybe she's read XKCD once? Maybe her parents used to buy her Donald Duck comics when she was a kid?

Hey, at least we're doing our part to make all woman comic fans extremely uncomfortable and chase them away from our hobby, right?

 

I don't know, are you?

 

I immediately ignore most stats if I can't determine how they're compiled. It's easy to make statistics say anything you want them to say, and only 85% of the people that take them at face value are likely to be 60% skeptical.

Being skeptical of stats is one thing. Your post was another.

 

That is not the case - if you read further down, I factually state this industry has never been more welcoming, and I say it is a good thing.

 

One thing I've noticed when you post... you always seem ready to judge and jump on things as being 'against' something. Typically you feel the need to constantly defend 'indie', which is fine, but in this case you're actually attacking a perfectly factual statement that I made ridiculing some number picked out of the air.

 

I'm all for female inclusion in our hobby, but just because some statistic, or some NYTimes article you read ranked certain types of trades higher than others, doesn't make that original statement any more true.

 

My point is, why even talk about it until we know how the number was derived. All it is at this point is click bait.

I took your post as saying people who read Duck comics, or webcomics, aren't "real" comic fans. As if you have to be reading superhero comics to count. That type of attitude has been expressed more than once online in my presence, so forgive me if I jumped tot he wrong conclusion here. It just seemed like "GIRL comic book fans? Yeah right! Cyanide And Happiness isn't comics!"

 

That isn't what I'm saying.

 

To be a comic 'fan' takes some longevity. If I read one comic and never read another, am I a comic fan? No.

 

If I read a comic every now and then, maybe one this week, and another a month later? Am I a fan? Dubious... I'm not sure? Maybe?

 

What statistics did they use? Real studies tend to define their pool:

 

Has read at least one comic before: #A

Reads at least 1 comic a week: #B

Reads 1 to 4 comics a week: #C

Reads more than 5 comics a week: #D

 

Etc.

 

I myself read web comics - SMBC is probably my favorite at this point - and I like Duck comics. My examples are drawn from instances where people who would never self identify as comic fans have interacted with comics. The Sunday funnies, Duck comics, a Facebook link to a popular web comic - almost all of us have interacted with comics on this level.

 

I wish the industry was more inclusive, but it isn't, there are still comic shops where a woman most likely wouldn't feel welcome (I've been to many of them)... and for all of these female fans to be reading via graphic novels and trades... I find that hard to believe too.

 

I know more women are reading comics, but to claim that number is 50% without some significant proof is absurd... that is where I'm coming from.

[Dr. Balls]

I remember reading this article. I think it also mentioned that 89% of all female attendees at conventions are groped.

[Iceman399]

Did you know the average person has 1 ovary?

[SquareChaos]

Did you know the average person has 1 ovary?

 

I'm below average