Monday, November 07, 2011

Women's introduction in the new DCU - the findings! part 2

You can read about my goals with this mini project here.  I recommend you do read that post as it will explain exactly what we were analysing, and without reading it, this data won't make sense.

Now, what did we find out?
We've got 52 titles..
In which there are 97 female characters (including one kid)...
Looking at the titles -
27 of the titles feature female characters that look sexual, either by their clothes or because of the way they are drawn.  That's 51% of titles.
29 titles introduce female characters as a love interest.  That's 55% of all titles.
Combine these, and there are 33 titles that feature female characters that are either drawn sexually, or are a love interest.  That's 63%.  Some characters are drawn sexually and are love interests, some are love interests but not drawn sexually, and vice versa.


Of the female characters themselves...
41 are drawn sexually, that's 42%.
41 are love interests, again, 42%.
53 characters are drawn sexually and/or are a love interest.  That's 55%.

4 titles had no major female characters in them (Batman and Robin, Detective Comics, Justice League and Men of War)
No women were introduced as the love interest of other women.

I looked at the ratio of titles per subgroup and female characters per subgroup.  You'd hope that if there was an even spread of female characters the ratios would be roughly similar.  They aren't.  Instead we have:
Subgroups: Batman:Green Lantern:Justice League:Superman: The Dark: The Edge: Young Justice
Titles per subgroup: 11:4:11:4:7:9:6
Female characters per subgroup: 14:5:20:6:15:15:19

So, no correlation between female characters and subgroups.

Justice League Dark, Suicide Squad and Legion of Superheroes all have 3 female characters that are drawn sexually.  No other comics had a higher number of sexually drawn characters.
Justice League Dark had 4 female characters as love interests, this is more than any other title.

As for subgroups:
The Justice League books had the most number of female characters (20).
The Green Lantern books had the least number of female characters (5).

As for which books has female characters drawn sexually and/or as a love interest.. here is the list:
Subgroup         Title                                   Sexual?     Love interest?
Batman             Batman: The Dark Knight    Yes           Yes
Batman             Birds of Prey                      Yes           Yes
Batman             Catwoman                          Yes           Yes
Batman             Nightwing                           Yes           Yes
Batman             Red Hood                           Yes           Yes
Green Lantern   Green Lantern Corps          Yes            Yes
Green Lantern   GL: New Guardians            Yes           Yes
Green Lantern   Red Lanterns                      Yes           Yes
Justice League   Aquaman                           No            Yes
Justice League   DCU Presents                    Yes           Yes
Justice league    Green Arrow                     Yes            Yes
Justice League   JLI                                    No             Yes
Justice League   Mr Terrific                        No             Yes
Justice League   The Flash                          Yes            Yes
Justice League   Wonder Woman                Yes            Yes
Superman          Superboy                          Yes            Yes
Superman          Supergirl                           Yes             No
The Dark           Animal Man                       No              Yes
The Dark           Frankenstein                      Yes            Yes
The Dark           Justice League Dark           Yes            Yes
The Dark           Resurrection Man              Yes            Yes
The Dark            I, Vampire                         Yes            Yes
The Edge           All Star Western                 Yes            Yes
The Edge           Blackhawks                       No                 Yes
The Edge           Stormwatch                       Yes                Yes
The Edge           Suicide Squad                    Yes                Yes
The Edge           Voodoo                             Yes                 Yes
Young Justice    Blue Beetle                          Yes                 Yes
Young Justice    Legion Lost                         Yes                 Yes
Young Justice    Legion of Superheroes         Yes                 Yes
Young Justice    Teen Titans                          No                   Yes


Titles with no female characters drawn sexually or as a love interest:
Subgroup          Titles
Batman               Batgirl, Batman, Batwing, Batwoman
Green Lantern     Green Lantern
Justice League    Captain Atom, The Fury of Firestorm, The Savage
                          Hawkman
Superman          Action Comics, Superman
The Dark           Demon Knights, Swamp Thing,
The Edge           Deathstroke, Grifter, OMAC, Stormwatch
Young Justice    Hawk and Dove, Static Shock

Next post will feature my thoughts and musings on what this all means.  Or as otherwise known, the conclusions.

A note:  This may well make you lose faith in the entire thing, but I figure I should confess - my maths isn't very good.  I've gone over and over the figures (done using excel - it's a godsend) and I think that mathematically speaking, they make sense.  But now my brain is a bit fried so if you notice a glaring error in the results please tell me!  Then I will redo them.


I can send the findings as put into an excel chart to anyone who wants them.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

You might want to re-check Suicide Squad, Batwoman, Voodoo, Supergirl, Wonder Woman, possibly Nightwing though I'm not sure off hand.

Basically this list is not very accurate. Any conclusions drawn from it are highly problematic.

Anonymous said...

In addition I'd check Batwoman carefully for subtext before saying no woman was introduced as a love interest for another woman.

Or, you know, text when she's on a date.

Saranga said...

Dear anonymous.

(This is Saranga replying, I am posting this from work and it usually won't let me log in, hence the probably anonymous handle from me.)

I am wondering if you read the first part of these posts. We were only looking at the first page where on which we saw the character. For Batwoman, this was a big splash page of Kate Kane in her Batwoman garb, crashing through a window. She was not on a date with Maggie in these pages.

If we were looking at how the women were portrayed throughout the comic, your comments would be applicable. As it is they are not.

Saranga

Saranga said...

Oh what do you know. It logged me in for once.

BG said...

Who in Birds of Prey was a love interest? It's an all-female book, and the leads are all single or widowed.