Poll Suggests DC's New 52 Readership Has Resonated with Existing Readers, Not New Ones

On Friday, Feb. 10, Laura Hudson of Comics Alliance reported that 70 percent of 5,336 respondents in Nielsen survey of DC's New 52 readers were already fans before the relaunch happened. Ninety-three percent were male, and only five percent were new to comics. Only about 2 percent were younger than 18.

Hudson found this data troubling, since DC had promoted the New 52 as an initiative to hook newer readers--non-comics fans, women and young people--who hadn't read comics before. But apparently, all it did was grab more of the same adult males who'd already been reading comics to begin with.

So far, the creative teams behind the New 52 have mirrored its audience: the vast majority of them are male. Gail Simone, Nicola Scott, Amy Reeder and Ann Nocenti are the lone female creators cited by Comics Alliance.

The article quoted blogger and writer Jill Pantozzi, who wrote DC the following message at The Mary Sue:

"The bottom line? It's not that women aren't reading comics, it's that a lot of women aren't reading DC comics and there are legitimate, concrete reasons for that. Why do women make so much noise about what's going on at DC? They WANT to read your comics. They LOVE your characters. They're just turned off by how they're represented. It's an incredibly easy fix if you'd just try."

But if DC's concerned about the survey results, there may be hope. The research only spans readership data that came out soon after the New 52's September relaunch, not data from more recent months. Since the New 52 is six months old now, there's a lot of room for reader habits to have changed in that time. According to Hudson, DC plans to conduct its own internal research to gauge readership data as well.

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