1970 Top Sales Comics from Statement of Publication - Total Paid Circulation 1970 1 1

[Prince Namor]

1970's TOP COMICS from Statement of Publication - Total Paid Circulation - these numbers tell us a LOT. Let's do the the entire decade if we can...

If anyone deserves recognition for rising to the top, it’s Archie Comics, as its flagship title reigns again for the 2nd year in a row as the #1 seller in America. Betty & Veronica places a respectable 6th.

DC takes up 7 of the other Top 10 spots, but only Superman has the numbers to challenge Archie.

Marvel has Amazing Spider-man at #9, dropping 2 places from 1969, as Romita is stretched thin from Kirby leaving the company (Romita begins drawing the FF as the reporting period begins), and ASM goes through an assortment of artists contributing to keep the book on schedule. (roughly #78 - #90, besides Romita art here and there or at least ‘embelishing’, we get Jim Mooney, John Buscema, Don Heck and Gil Kane over the 12 issues).

The Fantastic Four minus Kirby drops 55,000 copies a month from #12 to #16. Thor without Kirby loses 34,000 copies per month and drops from #17 to #24. Both books will decline in sales for the entire decade.

Marvel is mostly MIA in 11-20, as only the FF shows up, with Archie Comics absolutely dominating sales - EIGHT of the Ten spots.

Marvel finally makes its mark in 21-30, taking 7 of the 10 spots (24-30). Of interest is that Millie the Model is keeping sales pace with Captain America, Hulk and Sgt. Fury and outright beating the Avengers, and Daredevil. JLA and Brave and the Bold is out selling all of them.

I thought Marvel was dominating the market by this time? Apparently not. Realistically, they’d gone from being on the verge of out of business to being a competent publisher - though without Kirby they’d struggle in the 70’s - with only a glut of reprints (many of Kirby’s work) and a Star Wars comic there to save them.

I wish there were Statement’s for ALL the books but… this sure does give a pretty good picture of things….

How in the heck is O’Neil and Adams Green Lantern the WORST selling comic of 1970???

Well, we actually KNOW the answer to that….

 

 

Edited May 14 by Prince Namor

[Prince Namor]

For those who DON'T believe there was affidavit fraud... Charlton's Cheyenne Kid outsold a Neal Adams Green Lantern...

Edited May 13 by Prince Namor

[namisgr]

Copies sold, or copies printed?  And if the former, how were sales tracked?

[Dr. Haydn]

On 5/11/2024 at 10:10 PM, Prince Namor said:

1970's TOP COMICS from Statement of Publication - Total Paid Circulation - these numbers tell us a LOT. Let's do the the entire decade if we can...

If anyone deserves recognition for rising to the top, it’s Archie Comics, as its flagship title reigns again for the 2nd year in a row as the #1 seller in America. Betty & Veronica places a respectable 6th.

DC takes up 7 of the other Top 10 spots, but only Superman has the numbers to challenge Archie.

Marvel has Amazing Spider-man at #9, dropping 2 places from 1969, as Romita is stretched thin from Kirby leaving the company (Romita begins drawing the FF as the reporting period begins), and ASM goes through an assortment of artists contributing to keep the book on schedule. (roughly #78 - #90, besides Romita art here and there or at least ‘embelishing’, we get Jim Mooney, John Buscema, Don Heck and Gil Kane over the 12 issues).

The Fantastic Four minus Kirby drops 55,000 copies a month from #12 to #16. Thor without Kirby loses 34,000 copies per month and drops from #17 to #24. Both books will decline in sales for the entire decade.

Marvel is mostly MIA in 11-20, as only the FF shows up, with Archie Comics absolutely dominating sales - EIGHT of the Ten spots.

Marvel finally makes its mark in 21-30, taking 7 of the 10 spots (24-30). Of interest is that Millie the Model is keeping sales pace with Captain America, Hulk and Sgt. Fury and outright beating the Avengers, and Daredevil. JLA and Brave and the Bold is out selling all of them.

I thought Marvel was dominating the market by this time? Apparently not. Realistically, they’d gone from being on the verge of out of business to being a competent publisher - though without Kirby they’d struggle in the 70’s - with only a glut of reprints (many of Kirby’s work) and a Star Wars comic there to save them.

I wish there were Statement’s for ALL the books but… this sure does give a pretty good picture of things….

How in the heck is O’Neil and Adams Green Lantern the WORST selling comic of 1970???

Well, we actually KNOW the answer to that….

So, is this the 1970 report on 1969's numbers? (Dr. Strange was cancelled in 1969. Also, X-men was all reprint by 1970, which makes its relatively high circulation numbers a bit suspicious.)

[shadroch]

Richard Giordano is on record as saying he made up the Charlton numbers out of thin air when he was in charge.  Who is to say what he did when he took over at DC.

These numbers should be taken with a grain of salt, especially the ones before 1975.

[shadroch]

These numbers tell me that there was a huge non-superhero market for newsstand comics that was lost when the hobby switched to the direct market. 

[kimik]

On 5/13/2024 at 9:14 AM, shadroch said:

These numbers tell me that there was a huge non-superhero market for newsstand comics that was lost when the hobby switched to the direct market. 

Agreed. There was still a healthy newsstand market in the 1980s. That is how I started with comics. I bought my first book at 11 years old (UXM 211) from the spinner rack and they were always full of new issues at the two local grocery stores in my small home town. 

[shadroch]

Most first-generation comic shops were run by superhero fans, many with limited budgets. In my case, every copy of a new Marvel I bought meant one less DC or Indy I could afford. I tried to go with newsstand copies of some of the slower DCs, but the volume wasn't enough to be worthwhile. I think we messed up badly by making the shops so superhero-oriented, although it seemed like a good idea at the time.

[The humble Watcher lurking]

On 5/11/2024 at 11:10 PM, Prince Namor said:

1970's TOP COMICS from Statement of Publication - Total Paid Circulation - these numbers tell us a LOT. Let's do the the entire decade if we can...

If anyone deserves recognition for rising to the top, it’s Archie Comics, as its flagship title reigns again for the 2nd year in a row as the #1 seller in America. Betty & Veronica places a respectable 6th.

DC takes up 7 of the other Top 10 spots, but only Superman has the numbers to challenge Archie.

Marvel has Amazing Spider-man at #9, dropping 2 places from 1969, as Romita is stretched thin from Kirby leaving the company (Romita begins drawing the FF as the reporting period begins), and ASM goes through an assortment of artists contributing to keep the book on schedule. (roughly #78 - #90, besides Romita art here and there or at least ‘embelishing’, we get Jim Mooney, John Buscema, Don Heck and Gil Kane over the 12 issues).

The Fantastic Four minus Kirby drops 55,000 copies a month from #12 to #16. Thor without Kirby loses 34,000 copies per month and drops from #17 to #24. Both books will decline in sales for the entire decade.

Marvel is mostly MIA in 11-20, as only the FF shows up, with Archie Comics absolutely dominating sales - EIGHT of the Ten spots.

Marvel finally makes its mark in 21-30, taking 7 of the 10 spots (24-30). Of interest is that Millie the Model is keeping sales pace with Captain America, Hulk and Sgt. Fury and outright beating the Avengers, and Daredevil. JLA and Brave and the Bold is out selling all of them.

I thought Marvel was dominating the market by this time? Apparently not. Realistically, they’d gone from being on the verge of out of business to being a competent publisher - though without Kirby they’d struggle in the 70’s - with only a glut of reprints (many of Kirby’s work) and a Star Wars comic there to save them.

I wish there were Statement’s for ALL the books but… this sure does give a pretty good picture of things….

How in the heck is O’Neil and Adams Green Lantern the WORST selling comic of 1970???

Well, we actually KNOW the answer to that….

Good old Sad Sack selling well. I haven`t read that in years.  I wonder who owns the IP now?

[shadroch]

D.C., as the company would later be called, was owned by some sketchy people in the late 1960s.  Kinney was formed by merging two mobbed-up businesses that concentrated on cash businesses.  Eventually, Nixon's Justice Department forced the company to be broken up, with DC Comics being part of a new company that eventually became Time Warner.  Kinney was price-fixing and keeping multiple sets of books for money laundering purposes.  I'm not aware of any investigation into DC, but if one division of a company is falsifying records, it isn't a giant leap to think others were as well.  Recording an extra 300,000 copies a month, spread over thirty titles, does wonders for the bottom line. 

[Zonker]

On 5/13/2024 at 10:46 AM, Dr. Haydn said:

So, is this the 1970 report on 1969's numbers? (Dr. Strange was cancelled in 1969. Also, X-men was all reprint by 1970, which makes its relatively high circulation numbers a bit suspicious.)

Dr. Strange is a mystery, maybe @Prince Namor can clear that up.  But the X-Men numbers for 1970 come by way of the circulation statement published in X-Men #69 (April 1971).  Or at least that's what my copy of the Standard Guide indicates. The equivalent 1969 numbers are 235,811, by way of reference.  And 1970 was the transition year for X-Men: 3 new issues were published (including one with Neal Adams art), then a 9-month hiatus, with the return as an all-reprint mag for the December 1970 issue.  (All months/years are cover dates here, not publication months).

[shadroch]

On 5/12/2024 at 3:27 AM, Prince Namor said:

For those who DON'T believe there was affidavit fraud... Charlton's Cheyenne Kid outsold a Neal Adams Green Lantern...

The 1970 circulation report is from issue 75. Adams took over with issue 76. Denny and Neal were given so much leeway because GL was selling so poorly before they took over. 

[HouseofComics.Com]

This list is really interesting. I note that the titles at the bottom all get canceled except DC war which seems impervious for another ten years. Maybe they had a higher sell through percentage. Or maybe Kanigher still had some sway or something.

I think it's generally thought that Marvel takes over #1 from DC in 1971 after the price change. I don't have my Standard Catalog handy to see if sales started to grow a bit or just the decline was less compared to DC.

 

 

[shadroch]

I don't remember Marvel doing a circulation report for its many reprint books of that era. It would have been interesting to compare sales of Marvel Tales with those of Spider-Man. I can tell you that demand for Marvel back issues dwarfed the interest in DCs at every show I attended from 1974 on.

[Zonker]

On 5/13/2024 at 5:16 PM, shadroch said:

The 1970 circulation report is from issue 75. Adams took over with issue 76. Denny and Neal were given so much leeway because GL was selling so poorly before they took over. 

Actually, I think the numbers reported above for GL in 1970 come from the circulation statement published in GL #83.  I think what the Standard Catalog does is take the circulation statement published in this example in the April 1971 issue, reporting a circulation statement filed on October 1 1970, and then applies that average monthly circulation figure to each issue cover-dated 1970, in this case from GL #74 to GL #81.  Then the cover-dated 1971 issues are assigned the circulation figures published in GL #89 (the last issue of the original run).

Here is the trend for the Silver Age GL series, as reported in the Standard Guide.

1965 #34-41 273,527
1966 #42-49 245.699 
1967 #50-57 201,700
1968 #58-65 211,750
1969 #66-73 160,423
1970 #74-81 134,150
1971 #82-86 142,657

1972 N/A due to title's cancellation at mid-year. 

[shadroch]

I'm going by the 1970 circulation statement. You are using the 1971 statement, which may be more accurate. I think using either is acceptable as long as you consistently use the same measure.

[Larryw7]

It’s amazing that Detective Comics isn’t even on that list. 

[kimik]

On 5/13/2024 at 6:28 PM, Larryw7 said:

It’s amazing that Detective Comics isn’t even on that list. 

It looks like Detective got as much respect back then as it does today. It is the main Batman title only for most collectors for some reason. 

[Prince Namor]

Not sure about the Doctor Strange, but as I edit these things I'm making my corrections. Detective has been added, but yeah, sales weren't so great.

Couple of notes: This is from Total Paid Circulation

There'd be no reason to INFLATE numbers, as that would open a business up to being audited if it didn't match up. It is a FELONY to falsify postal records. 

These are from books printed that came out in January/February 1971. Date of report October 1st, 1970. So for books released, roughly, from August of 1969 to August of 1970, which would include Green Lantern #72 to Green Lantern #81 (4 issues without and 6 issues WITH Adams). Yes, the report is from Green Lantern #83.

It would be very interesting to see what Marvel's reprint book numbers were. Haven't seen a single one yet, other than when Sgt. Fury was every other reprint and it's numbers were strong.

As far as the validity of these numbers, Giordano wasn't the person making these reports - for Charlton, it was John Santangelo and his son, the owner and publisher. So if he was falsifying records, that would've been on him. Charlton, by this time, had such a small impact in the market, they only did a handful of reports any way, so it doesn't make much difference. 

At DC, again, it wouldn't have been Giordano who had anything to do with filing these reports. You can read who it is: in this case Bernard Kashdan, who'd been in the accounting department at DC Comics since the 40's. (He was the brother of editor/writer George Kashdan. 

Having dealt with these numbers over a period of two decades - 1960 to 1979 - there are certain consistencies you can see that wipe out any number polishing - these people had no idea these numbers would be viewed side to side and examined in a way to see if they hold up... when the price of comics goes up, you can see the numbers sag evenly across the board - when a John Byrne takes over the FF, you can see the numbers go up... so across the board, with a sample size this big - the validity of most of these numbers stands up really well.

And the idea that DC would fudge their numbers and someone like Stan Lee WOULDN'T is just typical 'my team is better' nonsense. If one publisher was doing it, they all would've. It was only a FELONY. 

 

But as for how they stack up overall across the history of them being posted... hey, I'll let the expert answer that (John Jackson Miller) from his web site comichron.com: 

Q: How valid is the information in comic book Statements of Ownership? 

A: Validity differs from reliability in that it answers the question, "is this statistic really reporting what it says it is?" And whether Statements are telling the real sales truth has been a subject of debate for many years, since fans started collecting them in the 1960s as a means of figuring out which comics were selling the best. It's a federal crime to falsify the numbers — so, in theory, you might expect the information to be accurate. But there have been cases where negligence or misunderstanding led to errors in the Statements — and there have been many occasions where computational errors have crept in. (Easily rectified errors have been corrected for the Comics Chronicles reports.) 

While there have been suspicions from time to time of publishers fiddling with their Statements to improve their numbers or because of apathy — MR. Giordano said that Charlton simply "made them up" during his editorship in the late 1960s — little evidence has been found of it being widespread, especially as other sources of comics circulation figures have become available for comparison. Gross exaggeration would have to be done uniformly across time and across several information channels not to be seen.

And, the filing of Statements is, again, a postal obligation, usually more of a bookkeeping afterthought than an opportunity to market a publisher's sales story. It's the advertisers who care most about how many copies publishers are selling — and those people are getting their information from audit bureaus, not the backs of comic books! 

Edited May 14 by Prince Namor

[shadroch]

On 5/13/2024 at 5:28 PM, Larryw7 said:

It’s amazing that Detective Comics isn’t even on that list. 

Neither Batman Book sold very well by the late 1970s. Detective came close to being canceled or turned into a digest, ala Adventure.