The first group is of titles for which U. S. Postal Service Statement of Ownership forms were filed in late 1988. The forms were published in early 1989 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 1989. The estimate number is a rounded average of the title's sales from 1986-1987 and 1988-1989.
Mad 763,335
X-Men 420,000 (est.)
X-Factor 311,600
Amazing Spider-Man 271,100
Web of Spider-Man 238,115
New Mutants 235,160
Spectacular Spider-Man 228,340
Silver Surfer 221,585
Avengers 209,000 (est.)
Iron Man 196,095
Thor 187,000 (est.)
Fantastic Four 185,325
Daredevil 182,310
West Coast Avengers 178,125
The ‘Nam 169,655
Captain America 163,000 (est.)
Incredible Hulk 156,000 (est.)
Alpha Flight 129,540
Savage Sword of Conan 121,310
Conan the Barbarian 109,350
Action Comics 97,779
Groo the Wanderer 96,205
Power Pack 76,230
Betty & Veronica 74,370
Archie 74,223
Heathcliff 64,225
Jughead 60,565
Archie’s Pals ‘n’ Gals 59,896
Laugh 57,443
Betty's Diary 56,950
Everything's Archie 56,612
Betty and Me 54,661
With the 1987-1988 sales year, the USPS Statement of Ownership reports were no longer a metric for the performance of the field.
DC, with the exception of one title, stopped filing the documentation. They shifted the delivery of subscription copies to a different class of mailing that didn't require them to disclose sales information. Many of their top projects for the sales year--the latter issues of Watchmen, the Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters limited series, and the Batman: The Killing Joke one-shot--wouldn't have had sales publicly reported in any case.
The Archie titles that reported sales were at the bottom of the list. Mad, perennially the highest-selling comics periodical, remained at the top. Its sales were slightly better than the year before.
The main thing provided by the Statement of Ownership forms for 1987-1988 was an assessment of Marvel. The company seemed to be in a period of stagnation. Jim Shooter, the publisher's editor-in-chief since 1978, left the company early in the sales year. Shooter at his best was an editorial visionary, but he was at a low ebb near the end, and Marvel was at an even lower ebb without him. Most of the continuing titles saw declines over the sales year, and there were no new projects that generated much excitement. The most prominent new title, Silver Surfer, had a per-issue average of over 220,000 copies for the year, but those numbers declined to just over 150,000 by the sales year's end.
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 70 percent of Marvel's gross sales for the year.
The following group are titles that had 20 or more issues published by early 1989, but had no Statement of Ownership filed in 1988. 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.
Classic X-Men
Conan Saga
Conan the King
G. I. Joe
Katy Keene
Marvel Tales
Strikeforce: Morituri
Transformers
Other Comics Sales Posts
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