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Circulation figures for 1983 & 1984

Started by Sal,

23 posts in this topic

Sal

Sal

Posted
Posted

Was poring through the Fall 1984 Comics Collector mag, and came across this chart. Thought some might also find it interesting. Apologies if it has been posted before.

 

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Point Five

Point Five

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Wow, DC sucked hind tit.

Yep. Mind-boggling that second-stringer Marvel titles like Rom were blowing away all of DC's mainstays (Batman, Supe etc)!

 

Though in fairness, Crisis and the major reboots of Superman, JLA, WW etc were right around the corner. I remember suddenly buying a lot more DCs in '85-'87. Have to imagine the sales figures got a jolt right around then.

 

Yeah, Titans should be here somewhere. (shrug)

 

Thanks for the post, Sal!

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the blob

the blob

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criminey, Rom was beating Captain America. And Red Sonja, which I think was cancelled shortly thereafter, was beating both of them. I'm pretty sure a bunch of titles are missing from this list given that Dazzler was supposedly outselling Superman at this time.

 

Conan was selling almost half a million copies a month between his titles. I guess spidey was probably more between ASM, PPSS and MTU and Marvel Tales (I can't believe that was outselling the bulk of the DC books. I hardly even see 60 cent cover price Marvel Tales, did they all get pulped???)

 

I'm also curious what NTT was selling at, as well as Omega Men, which seems to have a vast number of copies out there.

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MutantKeys

MutantKeys

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Archie was doing well too considering they dont sell close to that much anymore

 

100K these days seem to be "good" only the popular titles and comic events such as Civil War ever go over that

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kc120us

kc120us

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Archie was doing well too considering they dont sell close to that much anymore

 

100K these days seem to be "good" only the popular titles and comic events such as Civil War ever go over that

 

What I found interesting was that there was only one X-Men title. I really miss those days. :cloud9:

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Point Five

Point Five

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Fair enough, but Tales of the New Teen Titans (the original NTT title) ought to be here, and with very strong numbers. Not sure why it was omitted here, unless there was for some reason a "skip month" of TNTT before the launch of the new title.

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Point Five

Point Five

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You know, I just noticed the paragraph stating that these are 12-month averages for each title. Maybe they omitted NTT because of its change to a different title over the 12-month period (still seems odd, but that would explain it). (shrug)

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Zonker

Zonker

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Plus, they rebooted the Legion series at exactly the same time, continuing the older one as Tales of the Legion. And the Legion numbers made the article. (shrug)

 

Probably the author of the original article was just missing that piece of data for some reason. (Maybe DC found a loophole that let them hold back their top-seller's circulation figures?)

 

In any event, it doesn't invalidate the general truth that during this period of time, Marvel was cleaning DC's clock commercially.

 

Though I do have to note this was also the time when Alan Moore was starting his run on Saga of the Swamp Thing, so there was some good stuff coming out and signs of better things to come.

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the blob

the blob

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Actually, I don't find Warlord being "popular" at the time all that shocking. I see a ton of issues in like the 30-60 range in bargain boxes, which I guess corresponds to 1983/84. It was a bit different from other DC titles and had decent art, so maybe Conan types and D&D types might pick up a copy.

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Sal

Sal

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To me, the most interesting thing is why so many DC titles were left off. I'm not talking about the obvious Direct Sales-only books like Vigilante or Legion of Superheroes (vol 3, iirc), either.

 

DC either didn't submit circulation for the missing titles, or the guy who put the chart together couldn't find the stats. I lean towards the former. Circulation reports are required by the Post Office, so if they didn't report books it was because they had to be Direct Sales. Or free.

 

When exactly did DC get heavily involved in Direct Sales? I'm too lazy to look it up

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