Comics Sales 1983-1984

This post features the sales of established comics titles published by Marvel, DC, and Archie during the 1983-1984 sales year. A few series from other publishers are also included. Established titles are ones that have had 20 issues or more. The sales year is approximately the spring of 1983 through the 1983-1984 winter.

The first group is of titles for which U. S. Postal Service Statement of Ownership forms were filed in late 1984. The forms were published in early 1985 in the titles' letter columns. The accompanying numbers are the average per-issue paid circulations reported in the forms. The titles are listed from the highest sellers to the lowest.

Estimates are provided for select titles that did not publish a Statement of Ownership in early 1984. The estimate number is a rounded average of the title's sales from 1982-1983 and 1984-1985.

Mad 783,192
X-Men 393,000 (est.)
Fantastic Four 268,568
Amazing Spider-Man 261,064 (sales at sales-year end: 312,904)
Avengers 241,463
Daredevil 233,580
Conan the Barbarian 205,751
Incredible Hulk 196,567
Spectacular Spider-Man 180,498
Star Wars 179,917
Iron Man 177,659
Thor 171,290 (sales at sales-year end: 241,151)
ROM 162,090
Captain America 148,659
Conan the King 141,537
Legion of Super-Heroes 140,249
Savage Sword of Conan 133,689
Doctor Strange 121,574
Power Man & Iron Fist 115,734
Superman 111,073
Justice League of America 110,915
Marvel Tales 110,681
Warlord 101,195
DC Comics Presents 93,693
Batman 89,217
Green Lantern 87,322
Action Comics 86,422
World’s Finest 82,415
Detective Comics 77,509
Flash 70,127
Sgt. Rock 69,826
Archie 64,871
Archie's Girls Betty and Veronica 64,516
Laugh 62,319
Betty and Me 61,328
Archie and Me 59,836
Life with Archie 58,704
Jughead 58,377
Archie's TV Laugh-Out 57,857
Archie at Riverdale High 57,357
Jonah Hex 55,888
Everything's Archie 55,194
Pep 55,078
Wonder Woman 52,145
G. I. Combat 49,184

Marvel's biggest success was apparently Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars, which debuted towards the end of the sales year. It was a 12-issue limited series that featured most of the key characters from Marvel's company-owned titles. Sales were reputed to be close to a million copies per issue. The events of the story included a new costume for the Spider-Man character. The outfit was introduced in the Amazing Spider-Man title, and gave it a substantial boost in sales. The series was selling over 300,000 copies per issue by the sales-year's end, an increase of almost 20% over the year's per-issue average.

The sales of DC's newsstand titles continued to flounder. Only four books with reported sales had average per-issue numbers of more than 100,000, and only one, Legion of Super-Heroes, sold above Marvel's cancellation threshold of 125,000 copies per issue. (Doctor Strange, Power Man & Iron Fist, and Marvel Tales were exceptions to this policy for various reasons.) The sales of New Teen Titans, which was reputed to be DC's top-selling title, are not being considered in this discussion. DC was still not publicly reporting sales for the series.

Internally, steps were being taken to deal with DC's prospects. In early 1984, Warner Communications, DC's parent company, entered into negotiations with Marvel to shutter DC's editorial operations and license the character properties to Marvel for a new imprint. Marvel ended up withdrawing from the talks over anti-trust concerns. DC executives changed the company's sales strategy. According to Paul Levitz, who at the time was DC's Vice-President in Charge of Operations (effectively the company's business manager), a decision was made to emphasize titles with appeal to the comics-store audience, and shift resources away from the newsstand market.

The following group are titles that had 20 or more issues published by early 1985, but had no Statement of Ownership filed in 1984. Publishers often did not file the form for titles that had not published at least 20 issues when forms were due to be submitted, so those are not listed. Titles that were published during the sales year, but were cancelled before the Statement of Ownership could be printed, are not listed, either.

All-Star Squadron
Alpha Flight
Arak, Son of Thunder
Archie's Pals 'n' Gals
Arion, Lord of Atlantis
Dazzler
Fury of Firestorm
New Mutants
New Teen Titans
Swamp Thing

Other Comics Sales Posts

--1969-1970
--1970-1971
--1971-1972
--1972-1973
--1973-1974
--1974-1975
--1975-1976
--1976-1977
--1977-1978
--1978-1979
--1979-1980
--1980-1981
--1981-1982
--1982-1983
--1984-1985
--1985-1986
--1986-1987
--1987-1988
--1988-1989