Comic Book Sales Figures

[Endless Flight]

Hi all,

Does anyone have any ideas on where I could find monthly sales figures for comics that were released during the 80's? I've googled and found nothing so far, besides some general figures. Is any of this information even on the interweb? :D

Thanks in advance for any replies.

[Paradox]

Not specifics on the web, no. Every once in a while someone's posted specific info on individual comics using those...aw, crap, I can't even remember what they're called...but once a year there was a little box that told the yearly sales for that particular book, usually stuck on part of the letter's page. I'm pretty sure it was a legal requirement that they have it.

But, something even close to comprehensive? No, not really.

[Rob Imes]

Statement of Ownership box. I think they usually appeared in the comics dated around Feb-March-April.

You know, if someone wanted to go to all the effort, that would be a good idea for a webpage. (hint, hint)

[Paradox]

Thanks, Rob. I hate it when things like that elude my addled old memory.

[dan bailey]

once a year there was a little box that told the yearly sales for that particular book, usually stuck on part of the letter's page. I'm pretty sure it was a legal requirement that they have it.


so i've always assumed, too, which means i was given pause thursday when i read mark carlson's statement -- in the 2nd part of his nostalgia zine "funny business" column on comics sales figures at http://www.nostalgiazone.com/doc/zine/05_Q2/funnybusiness.htm , as linked yesterday by tom spurgeon -- that in '86, "DC stops publishing paid circulation figures in its comic books, perhaps in shame." i presume the regulations changed along about that time.

[gentlesatirist]

...in the Standard Catalog of Comic Books, published by Krause Publications, which I believe is now in its 3rd edition.

It compiles a lot of the info you're looking for, but does so title by title rather than in a list or graph. Still, it's the best info out there.

I used it to write an article for a comics website a few years back comparing sales of DC and Marvel's top characters.

Also looked at sales of team-up titles and a couple other things. Most surprising thing I found was how much sales DC was still generating from horror and war titles through the 70s. Definitely helped offset sales it was losing to Marvel elsewhere.

And Marvel provides #s through the 90s, giving a startling look at the early 90s speculator boom and the effect it had on sales.

Other big surprise was that of all the mass market tie-ins for movies and TV, the only one that elevated sales for any length of time was the Hulk TV show in the late 70s. The Batman show of the 60s was a juggernaut, but it only helped sales for a year or two.


- FE

[gentlesatirist]

...from the article I wrote for the now-defunct fanzing.com a few years ago :





In 1981, Cap’s sales of 165,000 per month finally cruised past Supes
at 148k. Supes had been in freefall for the entirety of the 1970s - losing
about 2/3 of his sales volume - so it shouldn’t have been much of a
surprise. Spidey and Hulk were well above Cap, at 296k and 201k,
respectively. Batman wasn’t far off Supes at 129k, while Wonder Woman lagged
the pack at 94k.

***********

One-on-one comparisons can be made from 1970-85. Marvel started publishing sales data in ‘70, while DC stopped doing so in ‘87. DC #s for their Big 3
are out there for ‘60 and ‘65. In ‘60, S/B/WW sent 1.525 million copies of
their solo books flying off spinner racks every month. By ‘65, that number
had dropped a hair to 1.485 million. Comics still cost 12 cents and were a
fixture in the media lives of most 8-to-15-year-olds across the country. You
could find them in drug stores, grocery stores, convenience stores and, of
course, at newsstands.

But the worm turned quickly. Numbers for 1970 - for all 6 books now, not
just the DC offerings - were 1.667 million. DC’s share of that had dipped to
898k, and Marvel was charging hard at 769k. Clearly, the two firms were
fighting for pieces of a much smaller pie.

By ‘75, Marvel had the lead for good - 649k to 600k - in a Top 6 market that
topped out at 1.249 million per month. ‘80 and ‘85 were bleaker yet for DC -
and for the market as a whole.

1980 : Marvel Big 3 - 662k, DC Big 3 - 371 k. Total Big 6 market - 1.033
million.

1985 : Marvel Big 3 - 668k, DC Big 3 - 225k. Total Big 6 market - 893k.

****************

The biggest of course was Batman, whose camp classic TV show dominated the
pop culture scene for a few magical months in 1967, ‘68 and ‘69. Sales of
Bats’ solo title skyrocketed from about 450k in 1965 to almost 900k in 1966
and just over 800k in ‘67. They stayed around 530k in ‘68, but by ‘69 - with
the show off the air - the comics-buying public’s cold, fickle hand pushed
the book down to 355k - a bitter 22 percent lower than it had been the year
before the whole technicolor joyride began in the first place!

Superman also once held Hollywood in the palm of his hand, with hit movies
in 1978 and 1980 and two less-successful sequels in ‘83 and ‘87. But in ‘78
- with the first hit film in theaters - solo Supes sales were down 5
percent!

DC sales data is missing for 1979-80 - when the films would have had some
impact - but sales in ‘81 were down another 34 percent from ‘78. So if there
was some big sales spike, a la 66-67 Batman, the dropoff was even more
precipitous. Again, no lasting fans made.

Wonder Woman enjoyed a hit TV show from 1976-79. Yet sales of her solo title
were essentially flat in ‘76-‘77 and down about 20 percent in ‘78. They
recover to a bit above prior levels in ‘79, but - with the show in its final
season - it’s hard to credit that sales bump to TV. By 1984, the book had
lost roughly 2/3 of its 1979 readership. Again, the media spotlight doesn’t
necessarily help sales.

Maybe it’s not a surprise that Hulk - with Marvel huckster Stan Lee calling
the shots - seemed to be the only title to benefit from the 70s/80s media
mainstream. The hit show that ran from 1978-82 did indeed cause a major
solo-title sales boost (61%) in 1979, but even with a big drop the next
year, Hulk sales remained above 1978 levels until 1985.

**************

Marvel reported sales numbers through the ‘90s, and the tale they tell for the 90s is a grisly one indeed, one filled with the excesses of the speculation market,
where new publishers and hastily-opened comic shops pushed collectibility
past the breaking point, leading to a massive sales bubble. That bubble then
popped just as the one surrounding Internet stocks has done in the last few years.

Speculation drove sales of Spidey up 60 percent in 1992. A 9 percent jump
the next year put the title’s sales close to 600k. Then the bubble popped,
and by 1996 Spidey sales had tumbled 64 percent to 216k - their lowest level
since 1982. Hulk soared from 160k in 1989 to 300k in 1992, only to sink to
114k by 1996 - a drop of 62 percent from the 1992 high. Cap - a chronic
underachiever whose sales dropped almost from the minute he was given his
own book again in 1968 - even benefited from the 90s mania, seeing sales
jump 31 percent from 1990-92, only to plummet 63 percent from 1992-95.


**************

As late as 1975, DC’s 4 war titles were raking in combined sales of almost
620k per month, representing a nice little side business as DC’s Big 3
superhero books lost ground to Marvel.

Horror provided another similar lift for DC. In 1975, DC’s 4 main horror
books - House of Mystery, House of Secrets, Unexpected and Ghosts - were
moving a combined total of almost 600k per month.




***********

As for the present tense, here’s where the Big 6 solo titles stood in
September 2002, according to sales estimates from ICv2.com:

(And as a prelude, I just have to toss in this number I just came across. In
the 1950s and 1960s, Dell - the comics publisher who controlled the
lucrative Disney and Warner Bros. licenses, as well as most movie and TV
spinoffs - would consider canceling a book if it dropped under 600k per
month. With that in mind, proceed.)

Spidey 98k, Cap 63k, Hulk 51k. Marvel Big 3 total for September 2002 : 212k.

Bats 43k, Supes 37k, WW 24k. DC Big 3 total for September 2002 : 104k.

Lo, how the mighty have fallen.

[MDG]

...Bats 43k, Supes 37k, WW 24k. DC Big 3 total for September 2002 : 104k.
Very sad and very scary, especially when you think about how many freakin' people there are in this country. A few other ways to look at these numbers:

Most (all?) MLB stadiums seat more people than these books sell. They can double the circulation of WW by having "comic book day" at Yankee stadium.

Less than 800 people in each state read superman.

100,000 attended the San Diego con this year.

And more to the point: http://www.magazine.org/Circulation/circulation_trends_and_magazine_handbook/6210.cfm

MDG

[gentlesatirist]

...have grown a bit healthier since then, but your overall point is still very valid.

For August '05, Batman sold 66k, Superman 61k and Wonder Woman 38k for a total of 165k.

These are only comic shop sales as estimated by icv2.com. If you allow that these titles sell another 10 percent through the few remaining non-comic shop outlets - Borders, Barnes & Noble, grocery stores, the stray drug store here and there - that still leaves you shy of 200k for all 3.

(And that additional 10 percent may be wishful thinking.)


- FE
Wickliffe OH

[Rob Imes]

Cool link. Interesting to see that, aside from the two AARP publications, Reader's Digest and TV Guide are the two best-selling magazines in the country. And that's who the Archie digests are sitting right next to on the grocery checkout aisle. Makes ya wonder if things might have been different for Marvel and DC today if they had spent some time and resources building a viable digest line in the past, like Archie had the foresight to do.

[dan bailey]

the few remaining non-comic shop outlets - Borders, Barnes & Noble, grocery stores, the stray drug store here and there -

do larger b&ns sell comics? i ask because the one here in montgomery doesn't. i guess it's a bit smaller than the one in little rock (the only other one i'm acquainted with, & which unlike the montgomery outlet is large enough to encompass a cd section), & i can't recall if that one sells comics or not. the nearest borders is probably in atlanta, & i've only set foot in it once or twice.

both books-a-millions here sell comics. can't remember if the only area hastings (in auburn) does or not ... seems to me that the one near little rock used to.

& speaking of selling outside comics shops, what's the timetable for that arrangement we heard about a few months ago between marvel & 7-eleven (not that i've seen one of those stores since lr's gave way to circle k back in the '80s; the latter are long gone now, too)?

[Rob Imes]

A 7-11 and some drugstores in my area have been carrying a couple of the Marvel "flip" comics, although apparently on an inconsistent basis. I saw one of the flip comics that had a semi-recent Capt America on one side and a semi-recent New Avengers on the other, for $3.99. Looked like a good deal, but then I like those two series anyway.

[The Wayner]

I have two B&N's in my area.

Both carry comics.

The larger of the two has a small magazine rack that is literally stuffed with them. There is no order to it. You can flip through the stacks and find issues that go back a few months for a single title. It's a total mess.

The smaller store carries the Superman titles, and a Star Wars comic which title escapes me.

Whoa.

The Waldenbooks, however, has a spin rack and carries a decent variety of titles. They're also good about adding whatever title you might request. Unfortunately, they're not too good about organization, though. There's still a copy of Captain Marvel #25 on the rack, and it came out---what?---nearly 2 years ago. Sometimes, I think about buying it just because it looks so lonely, lol.

And that, aside from my LCS, is that.

[dan bailey]

well, crap. now i feel really resentful toward the local b&n. afaik, the 2 books-a-millions (both of which carry maybe 40 titles, divided pretty evenly among marvel, dc & more kid-oriented books) are the only non-lcs sources of comics hereabouts. i don't think the final waldenbooks here carried comics, but it went out of business early this year anyway. i haven't seen a spin rack in ages ...

[Slam_Bradley]

I came across some sales figures for EC in a somewhat unusual place last night. I was reading Bradbury: An Illustrated Life last night and it has a chapter about the EC adaptations of his short stories complete with a fair amount of correspondance between Ray and Bill Gaines. In one of the letters, Gaines gives some sales figures for EC books which ran Bradbury adaptations. Given the context, I didn't feel there was any reason for Gaines to be puffing the figures.

Haunt of Fear #18 450,000
Wierd Science #19 350,000
Vault of Horror #31 450,000
Shock Suspenstories #9 400,000

According to Gaines, the Horror books were selling through at over 80% and the other books were selling through in the 70's.

Interesting stuff.

[sepia]

Here is a great link with informations about several Marvel titels from the 60's through 2000.

www.geocities.com/drghecht/circulation.pdf

I searched a whole time through the web but was able to find only a few interesting sites. If you want to know about the sales figures from a less known title before the 90's there's nearly no information.

I was searching for circulation numbers for the Sub-Mariner/Namor series from 1939 till 1995. I've got some numbers from the 90's Namor series by Byrne but everything that has been published before (Marvel Mystery Comics, Sub-Mariner Comics from 1941, Tales to Astonish, Sub-Mariner from 1968 etc.) I found NOTHING about. It's really, really disappointing.

There must be someone out there who has got the informations. Give it to us!

[Johnny Morningstar]

Is there a study or something that gives a formula for how many people read a comic?

For example, I've been told by serveral different people in the business side of newspapers, the average readership is 2.5 people per 1 copy.

[MDG]

Is there a study or something that gives a formula for how many people read a comic?

For example, I've been told by serveral different people in the business side of newspapers, the average readership is 2.5 people per 1 copy.
I've wondered about this too, and wondered if the actual readership per copy could work out to less than one.

I'm basing this on the facts that 1) picky comic collectors probably don't share their comics 2) some people buy multiple copies (probably not as much now as in the early 90s) and 3) unsold issues are counted even though they never make it out of the comic shop.

Although for Archies and other kid-friendly books, copies probably do get passed around.

MDG

[Slam_Bradley]

Is there a study or something that gives a formula for how many people read a comic?

For example, I've been told by serveral different people in the business side of newspapers, the average readership is 2.5 people per 1 copy.


In what time period? I think MDG is right that currently it would be around 1 to 1.

However, in the 1940's it was well regarded within the industry that it was around 5-7 to 1. I'd guess that probably continued to around the mid-60's and then began to gradually decline.