Last Monday we kicked off our Facebook Fandom Spotlight with Iron Man. It’s only appropriate that this week we look at DC Comics‘ resident tinkerer that has starred in his own movies and video games, Batman! Who are the Batman fans and how do they compare with Iron Man fans and the demographics of the greater comic fandom? Find out below!

Like Iron Man, we looked at all the terms we could come up with when it comes to Batman. That includes, movies, comics, the character, television shows, video games, etc. What we didn’t include is any of the other characters, so no Robin, no Joker and so on. This is all about the Dark Knight.

Facebook Batman Fan Population: Over 9,775,800 in the United States

That’s about 2 million more fans than Iron Man and 4.6 million more fans than the general comic fandom. It’s clear there needs to be a strong focus to convert these folks and engage them about a character they’ve shown they care about.

Spanish speakers is a smaller set of the population, 439,660, 4.50%. That’s lower than the Iron Man fans and the greater comic fandom.

Gender and Age

This statistic I actually had major issues with. For some reason, the male and female breakdown is larger than the general population. I have no explanation of the cause of this, but I ran the number numerous times. Each time, the numbers were the same. Consider it a glitch in the system. If we just look at the rough percentages men still make up the bast majority, 63.53% while women make up 36.64%. Women account for a bit more than the Iron Man fans and general population.

In the Iron Man report, it was interesting in that female fans became a majority after a bit. Definitely different than the general fanfom.

General Comic Fans

Iron Man Fans

Batman fans breaks down in a similar way as the general comic population.

Batman Fans

Here’s the full raw numbers as far as age and gender.

Relationship Status

More Batman fans are listed as “single” than the general fandom and Iron Man fans, but they’re also “in relationships” in a greater amount percentage-wise too. Also slightly more are engaged as well.

Education

Female Batman fans dominate this one when it comes to percent of the population. College educated across all our studies are about the same, around a third of the population. But, when it comes to women, more are “in college” percentage wise and more are “in high school.”

Gender Interest

Remember, this doesn’t necessarily mean folks are interested in the same or opposite sex for relationships. There’s a slight up-tick in same-sex interest and women interested in men is a greater portion of the population as well.

This weekend saw the explosive debut of Iron Man 3 on the big screen so, it’s appropriate to kick off our new feature looking at the demographics of the fans of various characters with Iron Man. We have been previously running a feature at the beginning of the month looking at the demographics of the greater comic fandom. Now, every Monday, we’ll be checking out one aspect of that fandom. It might be characters or publishers, it’ll vary week to week depending on what’s occurring around that time.

This will vary a bit differently compared to the breakdown of the greater comic book fandom. Instead, this looks might include generic terms for characters, movies, video games, comic series or more. In the case of Iron Man, we included his movies, but we didn’t include The Avengers.

Facebook Iron Man Fan Population: Over 7,805,760 in the United States

That’s about 2.7 million more fans of Iron Man than comic books. Maybe these people do read comics, but don’t “like” any terms that’d tell us so. But, with April’s sales numbers released, Marvel’s Iron Man comic isn’t even in the top ten. That’s a lot of people who can be engaged and converted!

Spanish speakers is a smaller set of the population, 389,580, 4.99%. That’s lower by 0.16% from the greater comic fandom.

Gender and Age

This statistic is fascinating. The percentage of men versus women is similar to that of the generic population. Men account for 64.58% and women 35.40%, women about 3% more and men about the same amount less.

What’s interesting is the age breakdown. Below is the chart of ages and their genders for the generic comic fandom.

This is that same age breakdown, but for Iron Man fans.

The widening of the gender gap in the case of Iron Man fans is much shorter, and reverses when women become the majority of fans at the age grouping “46-49.” We’ve seen that young women are the majority of manga fans, but this is the only other instance so far where we’ve seen women being the majority of fans. Maybe Marvel should be targeting their prose books to this age group and have it feature their Iron Avenger.

We haven’t dived in to figure out where this comes from, but the majority of the population consists of fans of the first Iron Man film.

(Update) Last night in a discussion with some of our crack staff, we pondered what might be the cause of this. The answer might be simply, the star of the movie. While we can’t tell the overlap of Robert Downey Jr. fans and fans of Iron Man, we do see that his fanbase is very much women, a possible factor in the above. Only in the age segment “Under 17″ are men a majority of the fans. See the graph directly below to see how the age of Robert Downey Jr. fans plays out when it comes to gender.

Here’s the full raw numbers as far as age and gender.

Relationship Status

How do fans match up with the ladies man Tony Stark? They seem to have lucked out better as compared to the generic comic population.  While single individuals are still the majority, they don’t make up the majority. Those that are engaged, “in relationships” or married have a slim majority of 51.64%.

Education

Tony Stark is an educated man, how does his fans compare? When looking at this statistic compared to generic comic fandom, we find that it’s… about the same.

Gender Interest

Remember, this doesn’t necessarily mean folks are interested in the same or opposite sex for relationships. But, in this case the same-sex interest is smaller than the generic comic fandom.

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It’s the beginning of the month, so that means we look at who the comic book fanbase on Facebook are. You can check out the previous month’s results here. It seems appropriate to measure this with Free Comic Book Day upon us.

This is the third edition since we expanded the search criteria in this monthly study.

This information is gathered by looking at over 30 different “like” terms in Facebook. All data is for individuals whose location is 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.

Facebook Comic Book Fan Population: Over 5,172,400 in the United States

That’s an increase of over 1.3 million fans over the past month! I ran the numbers multiple times in the day and got the same result. Spanish speakers saw a boost of over 80,000 individuals, to 266,520 fans, 5.15%. That’s an increase of almost a half a percent.

We have seen large boosts in the past as the summer comic movies kick off, so this gain isn’t surprising. I expect a shedding of fans later in the year or early next year.

Gender and Age

With that huge increase the percentage of men versus women remained pretty stable with men increasing about 1.5% and women decreasing about the same. It’s been a stable 2/3 to 1/3 balance between the genders.

Below is the breakdown by age and gender. Again, percentage wise, the age breakdown is about the same with not a lot of shift. Most of the gain was older segments with some loss of people age 22-25, but gains older than that.

Relationship Status

With a huge bump, we still see a relatively stable set of percentages. The single population dropped about 1.5% from the previous month while the married population gained about the same amount.

Education

Again the percentages are stable from the previous month. The men listed as college grads saw a decline of 2%, the rest remained about the same.

Gender Interest

The biggest shift is that men interested in women increased about 1.5%, women interested in women dropped about 0.5%, while women interesting in men dropped about 1%.

It’s the beginning of the month, so that means we look at who the comic book fanbase on Facebook are. You can check out the previous month’s results here.

This is the second edition since we expanded the search criteria in this monthly study.

This information is gathered by looking at over 30 different “like” terms in Facebook. All data is for individuals whose location is 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.

Facebook Comic Book Fan Population: Over 3,841,200 in the United States

That’s a decrease of about 20,000 fans over the past month. Not a huge shift at all. Spanish speakers decreased slightly, to 182,540 fans, 4.75%.

Gender and Age

Compared to last month, most of the loss was from female fandom. The female comic book fans dropped about 32,000, while male fans increased in population by 6,000. For the female fans, the loss was across all age breakdown. Male fandom increased for those age 37 and under, but dropped over that.

Below is the breakdown by age and gender.

Relationship Status

Were the 20,000 people who dropped out all single? It’s almost the same amount of people loss from each. Also more people are in relationships, while less are married.

Education

There’s an interesting drop in the college graduate stats but a massive increase in folks in college.

Gender Interest

Generally these stats remained the same from the previous month with percentages remaining pretty steady.

It’s the beginning of the month, so that means we look at who the comic book fanbase on Facebook are. You can check out the previous month’s results here.

This month is special, as I’ve expanded the search terms and have returned even more fans with much more data than ever before. We’ll be looking at how some of the percentages compare from this super size set versus the previous smaller set of search terms.

This information is gathered by looking at over 30 different “like” terms in Facebook. All data is for individuals whose location is 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.

Facebook Comic Book Fan Population: Over 3,864,140 in the United States

Spanish speakers increases as a count and percentage, to 182,800 fans, 7.73%. That’s an increase of about .50% from the previous month.

Gender and Age

Even with a huge increase in population from the previous month, the percentage shift isn’t quite as crazy as one would expect. Overall the fanbase is about 2/3 men and 1/3 women, but some of the terms I added were digital comic related, which skews very male in a breakdown of just those terms.

The biggest shift though is in the age breakdowns. Women are no longer the majority when it comes to fans under the age of 18. The vast majority of fans still fall in the age range of under 25.

Below is the breakdown by age and gender.

Relationship Status

Relationship stats are almost the same from the previous population. The percents barely shift from the previous universe.

Education

College grads remained the same when it comes to percents, but in college and high school both dropped. While the universe of those in high school or younger increased, the percentage is about the same. You’d expect all the percentages to be about the same, but in this case we have some hold steady and others drop.

Gender Interest

Like education, you’d expect this to remain fairly steady, but like education it didn’t. Men interested in men stayed steady, men interested in women increased and women interested in either men or women both decreased.

I’m a day late with this post, but, the data was pulled at the usual time that I do it, so it really is month to month and not a month and one day extra. You can check out the previous month’s results here.

This information is gathered by looking at over 30 different “like” terms in Facebook. All data is for individuals whose location is 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.

Facebook Comic Book Fan Population: Over 1,879,340 in the United States

That’s a decrease of almost 18,000 individuals from the previous month, negating the gains of that month. What segments grew gets interesting and we’ll talk more about that below.

Spanish speakers dropped negating the previous month’s fain of 3000 individuals, to 79,360 fans a decrease in the percentage to 4.22%, down 0.13%.

Gender and Age

From the previous month it’s primarily those aged 21 and under that have been lost. 22 and up relatively stayed the same or gained fans. Why the loss of the younger fans? I couldn’t say, but there’s a chance lack of big budget movies might be the cause. We’ll see what patterns hold this summer when movie season begins again.

Women also decreased more than men. They shed 10,000 fans compared to a little over 7000 men. The unknown population as shrank as it did the previous month too.

You can see below the raw numbers and what age ranges gained and lost fans.

Relationship Status

Overall, there’s no major change, just lots of less of everything.

Education

Generally everywhere there were drops, except for women marking themselves down as college grads, that increased.

Gender Interest

Mem interested in men is the only statistic that gained here as well, all the rest saw a drop.

It’s the first of the month (and first of the year!) and that means a new breakdown of who the comic fans on Facebook are. We’ll present the new info as well as compare it to the month before.

This information is gathered by looking at over 30 different “like” terms in Facebook. All data is for individuals whose location is 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.

Facebook Comic Book Fan Population: Over 1,896,820 in the United States

That’s a gain of about 18,800 individuals from the previous month. What segments grew gets interesting and we’ll talk more about that below.

Spanish speakers continued to grow by a little over 3000, to 82,480 fans an increase in the percentage to 4.35%, up 0.13%.

Gender

Even though though the overall population grew, that growth wasn’t even and wasn’t seen throughout all ages. Men broke 60% and account for 60.12% of fans. Women dropped slightly to 39.77%. The “unknown” population also decreased.

Even though the population grew, it didn’t do so evenly. The under 21 population shrank compared to last month in both raw number and percentage.

The female population in the age breakdown is interesting. They’re still a majority under the age of 17 but made gains percentage wise in ages 18 to 29 and a few other age ranges.

Relationship Status

There’s just more of everything here. More people seem to be putting their relationship status, almost 20,000 more people.

Education

Some went up and some went down. There’s some shifts in percentages and it’s all over the changes.

Gender Interest

Again, I wouldn’t take as to what this means. Some people list interest as to interest in relationships and others have other meanings.

It’s the first of the month and that means a new breakdown of who the comic fans on Facebook are. We’ll present the new info as well as compare it to the month before.

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.

Facebook Comic Book Fan Population: Over 1,878,020 in the United States

That’s a gain of about 8,000 individuals from the previous month. What segments grew gets interesting and we’ll talk more about that below.

Spanish speakers rose by a little over 100, to 79,260 fans a drop in the percentage to 4.22%, down 0.01%, not much of a shift.

Gender

Percentage wise, women and men were about the same, with men gaining a small percentage and women losing a small percentage. Not much of a huge shift compared to the previous month. Men account for 59.93% of the fans with women making up 39.95%.

And below we can see exactly who gained and who didn’t from the previous month.  There was a loss of the population under the age of 21. Almost every other age breakdown gained from the previous month.

Again, like the previous month, women make up the majority of fans age 17 and under. This is due to the female Manga fans of that age range. This also shows that the previous month’s results weren’t a fluke. We again ask, does this show a gap in the major publishers attempts of gaining female fans?

Relationship Status

Has it been a rough month for comic fans when it comes to love? The number of engaged and in relationships have dropped, though married has increased. The “single” fans have also increased. Could folks be putting out a sign in hopes they don’t want to spend New Years alone?

Education

There’s not much change here. Most of the raw numbers have increased and the percentages have increased. It’s later into the school year, so not shocked to see this.

Gender Interest

More men are seeking men as well as women and more women are seeking women, while less women are seeking men. It’ll be interesting to see how this matches up with the relationship statuses going forward month to month.

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.