If you are at all interested in the behind-the-scenes goings-on in the comics industry (and you probably are if you’re reading this blog about work in comics…), then you can’t have helped but to see the recent outpouring of commentary around the MariNaomi / Scott Lobdell sexual harassment “case.” Women Write About Comics has a handy post that summarizes the particulars and links to some of the primary documents.

Former comic-book editor and current Wired.com contributor Rachel Edidin had a series of widely shared and very insightful posts on her Tumblr on the ways that the gendered division of labour within the comics industry makes it much less likely that women are in a position to stand up against harassment (whether targeted at them or a colleague or peer). The assertion here is that most women in comics work as editors (and often as relatively junior ones in the corporate structure), and are thus more vulnerable than famous, celebrated male “creators” doing the harassing.

I got to wondering if I could demonstrate this gendering of work in comics in the preliminary data set.