There are 327 Comic Guests at NYCC - Here’s How Many are Women

Today kicks off New York Comic Con which seems grow in size and importance every year. Too bad it is still hosted at the armpit known as the Javits Center.

Over the last few years given the show’s importance I have tracked the diversity of its comics guests. It’s been a pretty grim story. 

This year? Read on.

Well, let’s start with lead. There are 327 comic guests at NYCC and 32 of them identify as female. That means 10.21%.

We’ve broken 10% people! Good news!

The good news is that ReedPop has increased the number of women who are “spotlight guests” (the show has three levels of guests). This year out of 32 “spotlight” guests three identify as female - Amy Reeder, Gail Simone and Kelly Sue DeConnick. Still about 10% but better than last year when out of 29 spotlight guests just one - Kate Beaton - was female.

This year there are 207 featured guests of which 13 identify as female or about 6%. That’s about the same as last year when 8 of 122 guests were female. But down from two years ago.

This year there are 88 special guests of which 16 identify as female or 18%. That’s up from 16% last year. Yay!

Note that some of these special guests are not creators per se but YouTube commentators.

Each year NYCC increases the number of comic guests. We’ve seen a slight statistical uptick this year of about 1%. 

But let’s put it another way. They increased the number of guests from 274 to 327 this year or 53 guests. The number of female guests went from 25 to 32 or 7 guests. So for every 7 male guests they add they add 1 female.

Thoughts?