• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, October 16, 2015

Comic book fans may like learning that Harley Quinn stands among the top-searched costumes nationwide. She's no superhero, but rather a former psychiatrist who went insane after falling in love with the Joker. While love makes us do crazy things, Quinn is actually one of Batman's greatest enemies.

This year on Experian Marketing Services' List, characters from comics like Marvel, Disney and others dominate. The Hitwise data tracks about 1,000 variations of the keyword related to "costume" in the U.S.

It turns out "harley quinn" took the highest percent of branded character costume searches for the week ending Oct. 10, 2015, with about 2.12% of all searches. Searches for the Disney character "evie descendants" took the No. 2 spot with about 1.2% of all search share.

"It reflects an increase interest in comic characters, Cosplay, and Comic-Con," says John Fetto, senior analyst at Experian Marketing Services. "We're seeing higher trending search activity. You will see a lot of costumes ranking high have a tie to Comic-Con such as Harley Quinn."

The data comes from an online panel of about 10 million U.S. adults, mobile and desktop online search behavior and the Web sites they visit. Experian analysts ran a report on searches for people searching on the word "costume" or "costumes." 

In 2014, Elsa dominated the searches, per Experian, followed by Mickey Mouse, Weeping Angel, Harley Quinn, and Minnie Mouse. Experian also sees the decline of Frozen-themed costumes that were very popular in 2014. Today’s hot branded costumes are from the Disney original movie "Descendants," with the most sought-after characters being Evie and Mal.

"Adult costume searches are expected to grow in share, but kids costumes will still account for a majority of searches until the week of Halloween itself when they will likely dropped below 50%," per Fetto.

The analysis of the data shows that men are more likely to be last-minute costume seekers. Searches last year for men's costumes doubled share weekly in the last three weeks before the holiday. Leading into the week of Halloween itself, men's costumes made up 19% of demographic-related searches, the highest share of the season.

Kids' costume searches reached a peak in 2014 during the week ending Oct. 11, with 73% share of searches in which a specific demographic was mentioned.

Generally, Experian Marketing Services sees a similar trend so far in 2015, although there's a hint that adults are more likely to dress up this year. Last week, for instance, searches for kids' costumes accounted for 69% of demographic-related search compared with 73% a year earlier.  

On Google's list of top Halloween-related costume searches, Quinn also takes the No. 1 searched costume in New York, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia.