Tireless John Jackson Miller, ever busy peering thrugh the tomes of years past for nuggets of information, find some circulation information from 1959 on what various comics publishers sold per month:

Here’s what the 1960 edition has, which means the numbers are coming likely from the end of 1959:

American Comics Group • 650,000 copies monthly
American Romance Group • 325,000 copies monthly
Archie • 3,216,979 copies bimonthly
Charlton • 5,000,000 copies bimonthly
Dell • 9,686,424 copies monthly
Dennis the Menace • no figures cited
Harvey • 5,029,759 copies bimonthly
Marvel • 2,253,112 copies monthly
National (DC) • 6,653,485 copies monthly


We’d caution against drawing too many conclusions about current comics based on any of this, BTW — not too many businesses have the same dynamics that they did 50 years ago, after all. However it does prove, once again, that comics once sold a heck of a lot of copies in these here United States.

Although Miller cautions that Fawcett is among the publishers missing from the listing, it is an interesting note that DC was such a strong publisher at the time. Superheroes were not the dominant genre at the time — but they did hold their own, as other figures from Miller’s site show.

1 COMMENT

  1. If I’m remembering my comics history correctly, in 1959 didn’t National own the distribution system comics used? Or something like that? I could be wrong, but I remember reading somewhere that Marvel was being distributed by DC back then, and were only allowed to produce a small amount of comics every month.

    Not to be all DC versus Marvel or anything like that… Just interesting. Look how well Charlton was doing, too. Almost as good as DC. That’s craziness.

  2. It’s just interesting how its only as an art form really shrinks does it become recognized and acknowleged. I think novels used to have similar numbers and be taken much less seriously, too. When Dickens was writing, I don’t think people really thought of fiction as artistic in the way we do now during the early days of novels and print fiction, and then as it started to wane (as it is, big time) whole university departments spring up around the stuff.

    Film is more complicated, I guess, so the rule doesn’t apply 100%, but it is just unfortunate that we had to lose so much ground before the “Smart Set” took us seriously.

  3. Wow. Those numbers are wild. Just checking my spotty memory, but Dell was making Disney comics and Harvey was in full swing with their Casper line of comics. And comics went for $.10. Jeepers…

    I wonder if a valid comparison could be made to the variety of comics published then with the variety of manga published now in Japan and what sorts of conclusions one could come up with.

  4. “Superheroes were not the dominant genre at the time — but they did hold their own, as other figures from Miller’s site show. ”

    Costumed crimefighters (and their supporting casts) were the focus of sixteen of the top twenty-five titles in the list. Funny animals were still popular (four of the top nine), but super-heroes were clearly ascendant.

    “Although Miller cautions that Fawcett is among the publishers missing from the listing”

    Wasn’t Fawcett out of the comics game entirely by 1959, having sold out to Charlton?

    “If I’m remembering my comics history correctly, in 1959 didn’t National own the distribution system comics used?”

    National (more precisely, it’s wholly-owned Independent News Distributors subsidiary) distributed Atlas/Marvel for years after Goodman shuttered his own distribution network for a cut-rate deal with another outfit (one that distributed for much of the industry) that promptly closed its own doors. Other companies self-distributed (Charlton, post-1956 Dell) or caught on with other outlets.

    “Look how well Charlton was doing, too. Almost as good as DC.”

    Must be a ton of really low-selling titles from Charlton doing all that business; only one Charlton joint (Space Adventures) makes the top forty-eight.

  5. Dennis the Menace and the related books were being published in 1960 out of the Fawcett offices at 67 W. 44th St. — the same address the Ayer guide has for Fawcett. Harry Slater, editor and publisher. They had come from Pines, previously; I believe Hallden was the imprint in this year, but it would be relabeled Fawcett later on in the 1960s to the end. (And of course, Fawcett would do mass-market strip collections for years.)

    Note that the list of titles is NOT the complete list of top sellers, but the entire list of titles where Statements of Ownership with sales figures in them have come to my attention. I’ve got all the ACG there is and most of the DC and Marvel, but on Charlton and the other publishers it’s much spottier. I am adding to the list as I get them.

    Strangely, I find figures turning up in books where the publisher filed for Second Class permits without ever really bothering to sell many subscriptions — as was the case for a lot of Dell and Harvey records I have found.

    “Look how well Charlton was doing, too. Almost as good as DC.”

    Actually, Charlton was doing 5 million every two months (the monthly/bimonthly mention up there explains how they were aggregating their copies sold for advertisers. On the site I have a table which is by month, in which DC is a solid second behind Dell and Charlton is further back.