The first group is of titles for which U. S. Postal Service Statement of Ownership forms were filed in late 1986. The forms were published in early 1987 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 three titles. A Statement of Ownership was not published for X-Men or Spectacular Spider-Man in early 1987. The estimate numbers for those two are are rounded averages of their title's sales from 1984-1985 and 1986-1987. With Transformers, a Statement of Ownership was published, but I have not been able to review it. The only numbers from it that I could locate were related to the print run. The per-issue average of copies printed was 595,943. Print runs for newsstand-distributed titles generally reflect an expected sell-through of 50%, so I have estimated the per-issue average as 300,000. Transformers, though, most likely had sell-throughs greater than 60%, so the 300,000 number probably understates the sales.
Mad 740,442
X-Men 438,000 (est.)
G. I. Joe 331,475
Transformers 300,000 (est.)
Amazing Spider-Man 276,064
Fantastic Four 251,083
West Coast Avengers 244,958
Alpha Flight 239,584
Web of Spider-Man 239,225
Avengers 237,241
Spectacular Spider-Man 231,000 (est.)
Incredible Hulk 196,933
Iron Man 190,516
Daredevil 189,959
Thor 188,474
Conan the Barbarian 151,351
Captain America 139,482
Savage Sword of Conan 135,883
Groo the Wanderer 109,675
Tales of the Teen Titans 107,015
Conan the King 106,734
Marvel Tales 101,832
Superman 98,443
Green Lantern Corps 96,488
Batman 89,747
Justice League of America 82,569
Warlord 71,752
Detective Comics 70,483
Archie's Girls Betty and Veronica 69,111
Archie 67,059
Action Comics 61,157
Archie's Pals 'n' Gals 60,774
Laugh 59,804
Jughead 58,859
Life with Archie 57,286
Betty and Me 56,551
Everything's Archie 53,550
Sgt. Rock 53,434
Marvel continued to demonstrate that the newsstand market should not be underestimated. Two of its top three sellers among continuing titles--G. I. Joe and Transformers--had most of their sales in the newsstand market. The sell-through for individual issues was often high enough for Marvel to take the unusual step of issuing multiple printings.
Overall, Marvel had at least ten continuing titles with per-issue average sales of more than 200,000 copies. At least one other, New Mutants, likely had similarly high sales. This does not take into consideration the sales of the bevy of limited series and new titles that Marvel published during the sales year. The numbers for these titles were not publicly reported.
According to Mile High Comics proprietor Chuck Rozanski, one of the North America's largest comics retailers, Marvel executives credited the non-returnable "direct" market with approximately 50 percent of Marvel's gross sales for the year.
DC's ongoing newsstand-distributed titles continued their downward spiral. Only one series, Tales of the Teen Titans, had a reported per-issue average of more than 100,000. The company was largely treading water until it could launch revamps of their core titles, including, but not limited to Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman, during the 1986-1987 sales year. The coming year would also see the debut of the Watchmen limited series, whose publication in various formats led to it eventually becoming DC's most successful acquisition since the early 1940s.
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.
Adventures of the Outsiders
American Flagg!
Fury of Firestorm
Grimjack
Jon Sable, Freelance
New Mutants
Power Pack
Star Trek
Swamp Thing
Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes
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
--1986-1987
--1987-1988
--1988-1989
No comments:
Post a Comment