This post features the sales of established comics titles published by Marvel, DC, and Archie during the 1986-1987 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 1986 through the 1986-1987 winter.
The first group is of titles for which U. S. Postal Service Statement of Ownership forms were filed in late 1987. The forms were published in early 1988 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.
Mad 742,743
Transformers 436,312
X-Men 430,158
New Mutants 368,964
X-Factor 340,850
Amazing Spider-Man 284,692
Web of Spider-Man 233,008
Avengers 216,841
Fantastic Four 216,108
Spectacular Spider-Man 213,980
West Coast Avengers 205,792
Alpha Flight 201,692
Batman 193,000
Thor 190,600
Daredevil 188,642
Action Comics 181,767
Iron Man 179,567
(Adventures of) Superman 161,859
Incredible Hulk 153,791
Captain America 147,750
Conan the Barbarian 135,051
Savage Sword of Conan 132,750
Detective Comics 128,475
Wonder Woman 118,550
Groo the Wanderer 108,158
Marvel Tales 105,700
Power Pack 103,150
Conan the King 95,917
Green Lantern Corps 85,379
Warlord 66,961
Archie's Girls Betty and Veronica 66,179
Archie 66,176
Betty's Diary 58,797
Archie’s Pals ‘n’ Gals 57,397
Jughead 54,227
Laugh 53,338
Betty and Me 52,082
Life with Archie 50,493
Everything’s Archie 49,515
The 1986-1987 sales year was one in which the most noteworthy successes did not see their numbers publicly reported.
Let's start with Marvel. The spring saw the debut of
Classic X-Men, which featured reprints of the early stories from the phenomenally successful mid-1970s revamp of the X-Men feature. It also featured new stories that were set in the same continuity. All three of Marvel's other X-Men titles--
X-Men,
New Mutants, and
X-Factor--had average per-issue sales of more than 300,000, so it stands to reason that the new title did as well. That summer Marvel launched
The 'Nam, a series that provided a grunt's-eye, real-time view of American involvement in the Vietnam War. It is also believed to have sold more than 300,000 copies an issue. Another summer launch was
Elektra: Assassin, an eight-issue limited series by scriptwriter Frank Miller and artist Bill Sienkiewicz. Jim Shooter, Marvel's editor-in-chief at the time, has recalled that total sales for the series exceeded two million, which means the per-issue average was over 250,000 copies. A fourth title, the ongoing
G. I. Joe series, did not print a Statement of Ownership form for the year, but the trend from previous years appeared to hold, and its per-issue average is believed to have been more than 300,000.
DC Comics saw its fortunes turn around. Writer-artist Frank Miller's
Batman: The Dark Knight, a four-issue limited series in an upscale format--the $2.95 cover price for an issue was almost four times the industry's 75¢ standard--became the sensation of the field. The sales of the series are unknown, although the individual issues are believed to have sold over 300,000 copies each. The end of the spring saw the debut of
Watchmen, a 12-issue series by scriptwriter Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons, that is believed to have had average per-issue sales of over 200,000. The summer saw the long-awaited revamp of Superman, by writer-artist John Byrne, in the six-issue limited series
The Man of Steel. The average sales of each issue is believed to have been in the mid-to-high hundred-thousands.
The success of
Batman: The Dark Knight and
Watchmen pointed the way to a new market for comics publishers.
The Dark Knight series was collected in a trade-paperback edition titled
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns in the autumn of 1986.
Watchmen, following the series' completion, was collected in a trade-paperback edition a year later. Along with the first volume of
Maus: A Survivor's Tale, a Holocaust-themed multi-generational memoir by Art Spiegelman, these books were successfully marketed to bookstores. They paved the way for book-collections of comic-book comics, under the rubric "graphic novel," to have a platform in the bookstore market. All three have proven perennial sellers, each with cumulative sales reputed to be in the millions.
Frank Miller and John Byrne also provided a boost to the sales of DC's regular Batman and Superman titles. Miller, working with artist David Mazzucchelli, provided a four-part revised origin story for the Batman character titled "Batman: Year One." It was serialized in the monthly
Batman series. Along with the interest in the character generated by
Batman: The Dark Knight, it helped to more than double the per-issue average of the
Batman series to 193,000.
Detective Comics, DC's second Batman title, also saw its sales more than double. Byrne's Superman revamp continued in the monthly comics in three titles: a new
Superman series,
Action Comics, and the previous
Superman series, which was retitled
Adventures of Superman. Byrne wrote and drew the first two, with other creative personnel handling the third. The sales of the new series are unknown, but Byrne almost tripled the per-issue average of
Action Comics. The series not by Byrne saw a sales increase of over 60 percent.
The sales year ended with the departure of Jim Shooter as Marvel editor-in-chief. The company let him go in April of 1987. When he took over Marvel's editorial operations in 1978, the company only had two titles with reported sales of more than 200,000 copies an issue, and it was more or less even with DC, its principal competitor, in market share. The editorial direction Shooter established increased Marvel's sales in short order. They were on an upward trend throughout his tenure. By the 1986-1987 sales year, at least 15 titles sold better than 200,000 an issue, with six believed to be selling over 300,000, and two doing better than 400,000. No Marvel title had ever reported per-issue averages greater than 400,000 before Shooter took the helm. As for DC's market share, it shrank substantially, and by 1986-1987 none of their ongoing titles were known to have per-issue averages of more than 200,000. Only the three unreported titles discussed above are believed to have done better than the 200,000 average that year. There were also the sales boons for Marvel from new formats and aggressively marketing material to the comics-store audience, which had grown by a factor of more than ten during Shooter's tenure. Shooter, though, had long-running conflicts with company president James Galton over administrative issues. The biggest point of contention was apparently Shooter's insistence that the company was publishing more titles than its production department could comfortably handle, and which forced the publisher to hire sub-par talent to write and draw the material. Corporate parent New World Entertainment (who bought Marvel in late 1986) was not sympathetic. After Shooter sent New World executives a reportedly scathing letter denouncing Galton's ethics, Shooter was fired. It was the end of an era.
The following group are titles that had at least issues published by early 1988, but had no Statement of Ownership filed in 1987. 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 Statements of Ownership could be published, are not listed, either.
Classic X-Men
Firestorm
G. I. Joe
Secret Origins
Star Trek
Swamp Thing
Tales of the Teen Titans
Thundercats
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
--1983-1984
--1984-1985
--1985-1986
--1987-1988
--1988-1989
