Girl in Four Colors

An Example of the True Problem: More on “Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics”

On Facebook, my post “Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics: On DC Comics’ Nielsen Surveys” caught some flak from a reader who called the post “misleading,” “misguided,” and “an example of the true problem.”

People spinning this controversy don’t think twice before shooting their mouths off, not understanding how their particular accusations of racism and/or sexism are equally - if not moreso - racist and/or sexist than the perceived racism/sexism in question.

So, allow me a moment to “shoot my mouth off” again.

In September 2011, the month the survey was published, Batman sold a bit over 188,000 copies to comic book stores. Worldwide. Diamond, unlike every other publishing interest, does not allow their sellers to return unsold stock, so there are no numbers about how many of those books were purchased by readers.

188,000 is about 2.3% of the population of New York City. On a global scale, that is an “incestuous” population. I will not take that back.

That same month, 6 out of 52 DC Comics (or less than one-ninth) featured a person of color in the lead of a solo book. That same month, DC Comics hired ONE writer who was Black, and ONE writer who was female. So no, I will not take back my accusation that these books were marketed only to young White males.

Meanwhile, in November of 2000, Static Shock was viewed by 3.2% of all television viewing households. That’s about three-and-a-quarter-million homes in the United States alone. Each of those homes had one or more members viewing, so the actual number of people watching Static Shock was much more. Five years later, reruns of Static Shock were watched by about 2.9% of all 6-11 year olds on the Cartoon Network, which reaches far fewer homes than Kids’ WB! did. 1.9% of all girls 6-11 were also watching the show at that time. That’s abouit 228,000 little girls, a little under forty-thousand more than the entire global market for Batman. And, the amount of young girls watching Static Shock in 2005 TRIPLED over the course of 16 weeks in 2005 without losing a single male viewer.

So don’t tell me the audience isn’t there. Don’t tell me I am making this problem worse simply by talking about. And don’t tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about.