The first group is of titles for which U. S. Postal Service Statement of Ownership forms were filed in late 1989. The forms were published in early 1990 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 784,206
X-Men 408,925
Excalibur 317,320
Wolverine 308,675
X-Factor 297,575
Amazing Spider-Man 266,100
New Mutants 210,335
Spectacular Spider-Man 205,425
Avengers 201,600
Iron Man 199,100
Web of Spider-Man 192,800
Daredevil 190,358
Punisher 184,265
Thor 183,720
Avengers West Coast 181,165
Classic X-Men 181,090
Fantastic Four 180,000
Captain America 178,800
Silver Surfer 165,725
Marvel Comics Presents 163,525
Incredible Hulk 157,892
G. I. Joe 152,785
Savage Sword of Conan 122,965
Avengers Spotlight 113,425
Alf 108,600
Conan the Barbarian 98,917
Transformers 96,380
Marvel Tales 93,892
Groo the Wanderer 90,830
Alpha Flight 89,640
The 'Nam 80,000
Betty and Veronica 69,626
Archie 67,423
Power Pack 65,350
Archie's Pals 'n' Gals 59,255
Betty and Me 58,484
Betty's Diary 56,808
Jughead 56,648
Everything's Archie 56,307
Laugh 55,872
Life with Archie 54,506
Heathcliff 38,090
DC Comics shifted the delivery of subscription copies to a different class of mailing that didn't require them to disclose sales information. As such, no titles from the publisher are listed. The company had a few high-profile projects, such as the North American serialization of Alan Moore and David Lloyd's V for Vendetta, the first two-thirds of which had been originally published in Great Britain's Warrior magazine. The sales year also saw the launch of the Sandman series, scripted by Neil Gaiman, which would become one of the company's top sellers in the 1990s. But their only blockbuster for the year was "A Death in the Family," a four-part story in the monthly Batman series. DC set up pay-per-call telephone numbers for readers to vote on whether the story would end with the death of Robin, Batman's teenage sidekick. This received a fair amount of coverage in the national news media. The issues featuring the story quickly sold out. DC published a trade-paperback collection two weeks after the last issue was released.
Marvel was still stuck in the doldrums in which it found itself after the departure of Jim Shooter as editor-in-chief in April of 1987. Almost all of its titles saw sales declines from the previous year. The silver lining was that the various X-Men and Spider-Man titles were still the backbone of the industry's sales. Five series--X-Men, Excalibur, Wolverine, X-Factor, and Amazing Spider-Man--are believed to have had a higher per-issue average than Batman, DC's top-seller. Apart from the "A Death in the Family" issues, Batman was reputed to have per-issue sales in the low two-hundred-thousands.
The following group are titles that had 20 or more issues published by early 1990, but had no Statement of Ownership filed in 1989. 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.
Conan Saga
New Archies
Other Comics Sales Posts
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