Looking at the DC fandom

[lemonpeace]

I wanted to try and get a good breakdown of the demographic makeup of the DC fandom on these boards. I'm sure we've done these kinds of survey try threads before, but I wanted to see what's the shakedown right now. so the poll is multiple choice and it breaks down into 4 parts

age:
- Over 35
- Under 35

why 35? no clue! felt right

race:
- Black
- Latino
- Native/First Nations
- Asian
- White

I know grooooan....or yaaay...wherever you fall, I feel you

gender:
- Male
- Female

and how you feel any or all these affect your reading experience:
- doesn't affect
- positively informs
- negatively informs

obviously, this is a thread for discussion so, you feel free to elaborate on your selections, discuss your opinions on the topic, or what have you. or you could let the thread die or whatever. *shrugs* thought it'd be interesting tho

[Holt]

Black
Male
Under 35

Yeah it definitely has affected my reading preferences and experiences in fandom.

[lemonpeace]

Black
Male
Under 35

Yeah it definitely has affected my reading preferences and experiences in fandom.

how would you say it's affected your fandom experience? I feel in terms of fandom, for me personally, it rarely informs my interactions in a particularly positive way; more so negative or it doesn't at all.

[Frontier]

White
Male
Under 35

I'm not sure if it's effected my fandom, but I try and be conscious of the fact that there are story concepts or characters that might appeal to people of different backgrounds in a deeper and more significant extent than it does to me.

[Holt]

how would you say it's affected your fandom experience? I feel in terms of fandom, for me personally, it rarely informs my interactions in a particularly positive way; more so negative or it doesn't at all.

From a relatively young age I was drawn to stuff featuring more diverse heroes; reruns of the the X-Men cartoon, Static Shock, Justice League and Teen Titans all played a big part in how I got into DC and broader Marvel (I was always into Spider-Man, but not much else).

[Celgress]

Latino/White/First Nations/Other (I'm a mix of a lot of things lol)
Male
Under 35 (borderline)

I'm not sure how it affects my fandom.

[Jim Kelly]

I hate bananas. My mother fed me bananas when I was very small and I became deathly ill. Since then I have never eaten them (intentionally). If I come near them just the smell makes me sick to my stomach. Sometimes, someone has given me something with banana in it by mistake and I had to hurl it back up. I can't have bananas anywhere near to me and when I buy food at the supermarket, I get very nervous when someone else's bunch of bananas comes near to my purchases on the belt. They are my kryptonite.

[joebleau]

I like my bananas in a sandwich with some caramel

[Restingvoice]

Asian
Male
I'm not telling my age, eff off. XD

I only bring up my ethnicity and gender when it's necessary, to provide context why this specific story or that experience is more meaningful to me than others... but that's rare, because I'm coming to DC to read the SuperBatWonder family I know as a child... and what I knew they're all white. I didn't even expect that there will be other ethnicity in the Bat family for example... so I wasn't as affected by the politics. When I found out about Cass Cain, my reaction was simply, well okay, I'm gonna read Golden Age first, since New 52 and Rebirth sucks.

Oh I only talk about comics this detail online by the way, my friends and families in real life know I read it but we're not talking that detail about comics.

I like bananas since it's one of the easiest fruit to peel. Never tried banana sandwich though. Banana itself is already pretty heavy to me.

[Ascended]

White male, over 35 (but only by a few years).

I don't think this really impacts my reading habits.

And I like bananas.

Now, I say that this doesn't affect my reading experience, and to a large degree that's true but I also took enough psych and sociology courses in college to know that's not *entirely* accurate; being who/what I am influences my life in ways I don't really notice unless I stop and look for them (which is true for all of us, according to my old textbooks). I don't have to keep an eye out for characters who "represent" me because white guys are everywhere in comics, for example.

But personally, and this is probably a little bit of bullsh*t coming from a white dude, but I've never really found much in comics that I felt "represent" my experiences (insofar as stories about flying aliens will represent any of us). I grew up in a rural area that was the third poorest county in America as well as the pill capital of the world. We didn't have opportunity, jobs, and a bright future, we had drugs, unemployment, and smuggling. We weren't a city, but we were bigger than the comic book small towns like Smallville. In high school the cops harassed me a lot because they assumed, being a kid, I was always high (to their credit, it was true for most of my peers). I never felt comfortable or "at home" there, always felt like an outsider. And I was a comic book/sci-fi nerd, back when that wasn't cool or accepted. So there's plenty of people in comics who look like me, but most of the ones who I feel are semi-close to my own life experiences tend not to look like me at all.

[Jackalope89]

Much whiter, I'd be albino. Under 35. Male. Doesn't really impact what I read.

[sifighter]

Let’s see I’m white(or Caucasian for the official term), and I’m under 35.

If it’s impacted me in anyway it’s that I’m use to newer characters and can accept them more, I got started reading late 90’s early 00’s so I was getting introduced to new legacy characters left and right, not to mention so many of them already existing. It also means I’m used to a lot of continuity weirdness settling in between Post-zero hour and infinite crisis.

[Celgress]

No one has selected female yet in the poll options. LOL, you know the old joke about comic book fans being like a sausage factory.

[the illustrious mr. kenway]

I'm under 35, South Asian, Male.

It hasn't affected my expierence with fandom. It can influence my reading expierences but not always directly. I'd say its more my life expierences that impacts my reading expierences than my race itself.

[OopsIdiditagain]

I hate bananas. My mother fed me bananas when I was very small and I became deathly ill. Since then I have never eaten them (intentionally). If I come near them just the smell makes me sick to my stomach. Sometimes, someone has given me something with banana in it by mistake and I had to hurl it back up. I can't have bananas anywhere near to me and when I buy food at the supermarket, I get very nervous when someone else's bunch of bananas comes near to my purchases on the belt. They are my kryptonite.

I really wish there was an I hate bananas option. Democracy has failed today.