Jim Lee: between 15 and 40% of DC readers are women

>>94902618
In Part 2 the co-pubs look at changing demographics, and Lee even hazards a guess:

>What is the current demographic of the audience reading DC across channels compared to what it was five years ago?

>Didio: It’s interesting. It’s shifted a bit. We have seen an influx of female readers. We had a discussion with some of our sellers, like Barnes & Noble and our Random House reps, and we’re seeing a larger infusion of female readers in the bookstore markets. We’re seeing some of it in the direct market, but I think we’re seeing a better growth with graphic novels with female readership. DC Super Hero Girls, naturally, is off the charts for that, as well.

>Lee: We have information from our digital sales, for example. We will have some titles -‑ and I want to say it was Smallville ‑- that track as high as 40% female, or at least the people that were purchasing the content through their accounts.

>I have information, my own anecdotal information like my Instagram account — 270,000 followers. I don’t know how of many of those actually read comic books, but they break down male/female, and that’s about 85/15.

>If I had to hazard a guess, I feel very confident that that number [the percentage of female readers of DC] is between 15 and 40%.

>Obviously that’s a huge 25% range, but also in line with Brett Schenker’s FB analysis that’s we’ve run here many times.

>Also discussed: the relative success of Wonder Woman trades after the movie. The co-pubs point out that even if it wasn’t as big a jump as The Killing Joke, which surged as the Suicide Squad movie was coming out even though it had nothing to do with it, the jump was still a jump, even if relative. Preacher and Flash have also seen jumps based on TV exposure.

>As a long time Kremlinologist, one of the biggest shifts I see in all this is DiDio’s acceptance of the graphic novel format. A few years back, when the Earth One gn line was announced, the format bounced back and forth because DiDio wasn’t convinced that GNs were as viable as a periodical launch. The Earth One books have been surprise hits however, and the numbers are pretty undeniable now.

>A question that’s of interest to me only, perhaps: The 80s classics – Killing Joke, Watchmen, Dark Knight, even Arkham Asylum – were driven by protean talents in the flush of youthful creativity who changed everything about the way superhero comics were perceived. Do we have a similar talent pool today? We definitely have some incredibly talented creators but giving them the keys to the car to take Batman on a terrifying joy ride won’t be as easy today. In 1984 DC’s characters were a clannish backwater of Warner Bros. Today they’re the pillar of the company’s brand.

>Also, creators are hampered by having everything available all at once via constant web bombardment. Singular visions are often drowned out by the sheer force of the information era.

>That said, when someone does hit it on the nose for an audience that’s 40 years down the road, it will be incredible.

So there's why the Dark Matter line was created.

Though we haven't heard anything else about it since the Terrifics.

>>94902618
>between 15 and 40%

...That's an absurdly imprecise figure. Might as well just say "we have no idea how many of our readers are female, and haven't really tried to find out".

>>94902780
>a preliminary guesstimate indicates that female readers exist at all which may come as a surprise to some in the industry

There's a lot more female comics readers than most here would think. Just few of them go into most comic shops.

More trades being sold in bookstores and online have made women more able to buy comics, which is exactly what helped manga get popular with women as well.

Also, and a lot of you are going to call bullshit on this but it's true, /co/ has a large amount of female posters because of storytime threads. Obviously it's still a small number because this is an obscure board on a less mainstream site, but it shows that girls ARE, like with manga, likely to read comics if they're available online for free.

>>94902618
>These are done by high‑end creators, typically out of continuity, featuring our most iconic characters in stories that have beginnings and ends and have very different kinds of formats and coloring approaches.

> It allows us to tap into the creators that don’t have the capability of doing a monthly book or don’t want to do a monthly book that’s tied into continuity, and have to play within those parameters. We feel that there’s a real opportunity to produce these high‑end, prestige material books featuring high‑end creators. That’s something that we are also actively exploring.

This must be how the rest of the board felt with Rebirth. It feels good.

>>94902618
>between 15 and 40%
that is just guessing, that numbers mean nothing if the gap is so wide.

>>94902780
>>94903051
He only says 15% because his instagram page is 85/15 in favor of male.

>>94902929 is right in that women don't want to go to comic stores and that it's probably higher than 15%.

I'm not sure Jim, I heard it was somewhere between 10 and 35