The first group is of titles for which U. S. Postal Service Statement of Ownership forms were filed in late 1985. The forms were published in early 1986 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 744,817
X-Men 449,780
Amazing Spider-Man 326,695
G. I. Joe 290,080 (sales for last sales-year issue: 300,970)
Fantastic Four 264,760
Spectacular Spider-Man 247,196
Avengers 241,966
Thor 234,795
Iron Man 201,092
Tales of the Teen Titans 182,297
Daredevil 177,884
Conan the Barbarian 176,397
Incredible Hulk 172,033
Captain America 144,000
Star Wars 141,489
Savage Sword of Conan 138,183
Defenders 133,723
Doctor Strange 122,638
Conan the King 120,335
Marvel Tales 120,058
Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes 109,247
Power Man & Iron Fist 102,109
Superman 98,767
Justice League of America 96,408
DC Comics Presents 89,693
Warlord 85,742
Green Lantern 80,897
Batman 75,303
All-Star Squadron 69,338
Detective Comics 66,872
Action Comics 66,656
Archie's Girls Betty and Veronica 64,908
Archie 63,143
Laugh 60,568
Archie's Pals 'n' Gals 59,787
Sgt. Rock 59,745
Jughead 59,126
Archie and Me 58,571
Betty and Me 58,023
Pep 55,164
Life with Archie 54,735
Archie at Riverdale High 54,243
Everything's Archie 54,055
American Flagg! 43,624
Jon Sable, Freelance 40,015
Grimjack 35,537
The most striking development in the year's sales, at least among the titles whose numbers were made public, was the new high achieved by X-Men, Marvel's perennial top performer. The series became the first color title from any publisher to report average per-issue sales of more 400,000 copies since the early 1970s. It was also the first Marvel title to ever officially report an annual per-issue average that high.
Other Marvel titles reported impressive numbers. Marvel's number-two title for the year, Amazing Spider-Man, had a per-issue average of over 300,000 for the first time since 1970-1971. Six other titles had a reported per-issue average of over 200,000 copies, and three continuing series that were unreported--Alpha Flight, New Mutants, and Transformers--are believed to have had sales at that level.
The newsstand market was still a vital one for Marvel. Although Marvel dominated the comics-store market, generally accounting for up to three-quarters of new-comics sales, the majority of its readership still bought their comics from newsstand vendors. The G. I. Joe title, published in conjunction with a syndicated animated TV series, was a far greater success in the newsstand market than in the comics-store one. The sell-through was so high in the newsstand market that issues were frequently sent back to press, something that was all but unheard of up to this point with periodical comics. It was one of Marvel's top four sellers during the 1984-1985 sales year, and the final issue that year sold more than 300,000 copies.
The situation with DC's newsstand titles was more miserable than ever. Only two reported books had per-issue averages of more than 100,000 copies: Tales of the Teen Titans and Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes. The slight title changes for these series reflected DC's new interest in emphasizing the comics-store market over the newsstand. At the beginning of the sales year, the publisher launched new comics-store-exclusive continuing series for the Teen Titans and Legion features. The two newsstand series had their titles changed, and beginning in the 1985-1986 sales year, they would just reprint the comics-store-exclusive issues for the newsstand market. This guaranteed the two newsstand series would eventually lose almost all their comics-store readership. DC was deliberately undermining their top two sellers that had newsstand distribution. Their determination to turn their back on the newsstand market could not be clearer.
This was the first year in which the company's newsstand Teen Titans series, launched in 1980, saw its sales reported. Approximately half the sales year was published after fan-favorite artist George Pérez's departure, so the reported per-issue average was likely lower than for previous years. The New Teen Titans may have been DC's only continuing series to have average per-issue sales of greater than 200,000 during the first half of the 1980s.
DC also passed an unfortunate milestone this sales year. For the first time, Superman, the publisher's perennial top seller from the 1940s through the 1970s, saw its annual per-issue average sales fall below 100,000 copies. This set the stage for a reboot of the character during the 1986-1987 sales year.
First Comics, whose output was exclusively distributed to comics stores, published Statements of Ownership for three of their titles: American Flagg!, Jon Sable, Freelance, and Grimjack. The first two were generally considered the most popular titles in the comics-store market that were not published by Marvel or DC.
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.
Alpha Flight
Batman and the Outsiders
Blue Devil
Fury of Firestorm
New Mutants
Power Pack
Star Trek
Swamp Thing
The Thing
Transformers
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
--1985-1986
--1986-1987
--1987-1988
--1988-1989
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