Analysis reveals most-searched superheroines
Word Balloons #1256: Wonder Woman receives the most support
According to a recent analysis, Wonder Woman is still the top female superhero in the United States.
Privacy Journal analyzed Google Trends data from the past year and found Wonder Woman was the most-searched-for in 31 of the 50 U.S. states. Wonder Woman was also the top choice in my home state of Oklahoma.
Coming in second, the Teen Titans’ Starfire, taking six states.
Captain Marvel finished third overall, taking four states (including the District of Columbia for the purposes of this analysis).
Black Widow took three; Jessica Jones surprised me with two victories, Nevada and Illinois.
Power Girl and Batgirl only took one state each, but they were large ones: Power Girl nabbed California, and Batgirl took Texas.
Invisible Woman grabbed Alaska; Valkyrie surprisingly got Maine; and Supergirl was the top choice in New Jersey.
Here’s how the analysis was conducted.
We analyzed Google Trends search data over the past 12 months, comparing searches for
well-known DC and Marvel superheroines like Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, Supergirl
and Black Widow. This allowed us to identify the most searched-for female superhero in
each state.
Keywords -- which included a range of female superheroes' names in addition to the
characters who came out at the top of the ranking -- were selected based on the characters'
prominence in comics, movies and television shows, as well as their historical significance in
superhero media.
The most surprising omission to me was Spider-Gwen, given her popularity in the animated Spider-movies, but perhaps her name change to “Ghost Spider” hasn’t caught hold in the larger population. Meanwhile, a perhaps surprising miss is Storm of the X-Men, though it’s possible a one-word name of that nature is hard to quantify. Valkyrie being more popular than Storm or Rogue strikes me as unlikely, though I guess that could change if a new X-Men film goes into production.
Credit: Privacy Journal
Matthew Price, matthew@matthewLprice.com, has written about the comics industry for more than two decades. He is the co-owner of Speeding Bullet Comics in Norman.