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By Brett Schenker

[Editor’s note: I’ll be continuing to spotlight the Facebook demographic information being posted at Graphic Policy. This week, Brett Schenker takes a look at the demographics of comic book company employees.]

It’s Monday, which means it’s a new edition of Facebook Fandom Spotlight, where I break down the demographics of a particular group of fans. For this week I attempt to figure out who exactly is creating and delivering us out comic books. That’s right, I attempt to break down those employed in the comic book industry. We’ll compare this group to the greater comic fandom.

About a year ago, Marvel was looking to hire a new digital director. I felt I was qualified and applied by sending in my resume, but also running Facebook ads targeting Marvel employees. I went with that function including about a dozen companies I could find in the industry. This includes Marvel, DC, some shops and Diamond. It’s a very small sample, mostly made up of those who have marked themselves as employees of Marvel and DC.

Facebook Population: Over 2,220 in the United States

Spanish speakers account for now 240 individuals, 10.81% in the United States that’s about 3% lower than the general comic fandom.

Gender and Age

When it comes to gender and employment in the comic industry, we find a starker split between the breakdown between men and women when compared to general comic fandom. Men accounted for 69.37% compared to 58.62% and women account for 30.63% compared to  39.66%. This report is skewed as companies that have a good mix of men and women like IDW and BOOM!/Archaia aren’t included, nor are independent creators. Still, this shows a pretty wide gap.

Continued here…

9 COMMENTS

  1. @Dan, that also is difficult because the system is set up for inclusion of terms and not exclusion on “likes” like that. There is another way to go about that I might try, but won’t be as good.

  2. I enjoy number-crunching as much as the next guy, but this really strikes me as a a great example of what’s-the-point?

    I mean, is there really any actual insight that we’re supposed to draw from all this?

    Because, honestly, the main thing I take away from all this work is that Facebook seems to be a spectacularly bad data source for getting at an actual, useful, insightful picture of comics industry employees.

    Is there any more to this than that?

  3. Is there any particular use for information about comics industry employees that is so important that it requires more detail and accuracy than this?

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