It’s been almost one year since I did the last update of the demographic breakdown of self-identified comic book fans on Facebook. One year and we’ve had some of the biggest comic book movies ever released, the first year of the DC New 52, and now Marvel NOW!. Beginning today a new monthly installment of this series begins. Expect it around the first day of each month and maybe there’ll be some special ones in between.
This information is gathered by look at over 30 different “like” terms in Facebook and all information is for individuals in the United States. To make this clear if someone says they like “comic books” they are included in this, if they say “Superman” then they are not. Just because someone likes a character doesn’t mean they are a fan of comics, same with movies. So, that’s over 30 terms of comic book terms, publishers, etc.
In that year, there’s been a hell of a shift, so lets begin!
Facebook Comic Book Fan Population: Over 1,870,760 in the United States
Since a year ago, that’s a loss of almost 800,000 individuals. But, interesting enough there’s now 79,140 Spanish speakers that are fans. That’s an increase of about 24,000 individuals even with a loss of overall population. That comes out to 4.23% of the total fans.
Gender
The gender gap has decreased. Men now account for 59.85%, down from 63.03%. Women are now 40.06% of the fan base, an increase from 36.5%. This continues the trend we saw one year ago when the female identified fan base was increasing.
But, things get crazier….
For the first time since I began tracking this, women are the majority in one of age breakdowns. Women account for 53.92% of the comic book fans for those age 17 and under. That caught me off guard, so it was run multiple times with the same result. I dug down further to figure out what accounts for this. When looking at just Manga fans (included in this demographics report), women 17 and under were 60.99% and men just 38.97%. When Manga is removed from the greater list of terms, the majority flipped. Men accounted for 59.61% of fans while women were 40.34%, just a little bit higher than the overall percent. Could this blip show a key to getting women interested in comic books? Is Manga the way to sell to women? This would indicate there just might be something there.
Looking at the general age trends, we see the expected dip in age when it comes to their percent of the fan base. Not much has changed over the year and this breakdown is pretty consistent.
Relationship Status
With the massive population drop there was little change in the relationship status of fans. Percentage wise married fans decreased and those in a relationship increased since one year ago.
Education
Education is something I’ve been tracking, but haven’t been including, now for the first time it’ll be added regularly to reports. When it comes to those identifying themselves in high school or in college, women outnumber men as far as percents of their population. However, when it comes to college graduates, men outnumber the women in both percent and raw count.
Gender Interest
The most controversial of information is included again. Gender interest is measured by people’s designation of “interested in.” Some take that as who they’re interest in dating, some think that might be friendship, some might see that as general networking. I wouldn’t read too much into this, though people interested in the same sex have increased percentage wise for both men and women.
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