What the Dinosaurs Read... (part 4)

I've already looked at THE COMIC READER's Top 100 chart for March of 1979, 1980 and 1981. Unfortunately the chart didn't last until March of 1982, so I'll just look at what appears to be the last chart they ran, for September 1981 and appearing in TCR #199 (editor: Michael Tiefenbacher publisher: Jerome Sinkovec). Here's a decent list of comics published that month.

Without any big launches, X-MEN has its usual comfortable lead up top.  DC's NEW TEEN TITANS is #2.  DC also has a few more recent launches doing well, ALL-STAR SQUADRON and ARAK. Not too much of a surprise that DC's top books all have key people who had recently left Marvel.

We hit the first non-DC/Marvel book more quickly than usual, with the second issue of Jack Kirby's CAPTAIN VICTORY from Pacific at #23.

DC's turn to do the DC/Marvel crossover, with the Batman/Hulk tabloid at #34.  The $2.50 cover price, when most comics were $0.50 or $0.60, means it was probably the top book at retail. At $2 each, THE SPIRIT (published by Kitchen Sink, with the "Spirit Jam" issue) and HEAVY METAL are up there in dollar terms compared to their middle of the chart unit rankings.

At #53 we get a first issue (actually a one-shot), SPIDER-MAN AND HIS AMAZING FRIENDS, based on the cartoon of the same name. The other first issue on the chart is Whitman's CONDORMAN, adapting the Disney movie.

Not too many other notables on the list, just the usual mix of Whitman and Harvey comics, followed by Archie at the tail end of the top 100. MAD MAGAZINE does show up at #79, selling less than CRAZY a few positions above it.  That's probably one of the few markets where you could say CRAZY outsold MAD and not be accused of being cracked.

So what can we learn from these charts?  WARLORD was much more popular than I thought.  Marvel heavily dominated the market from early on, It took DC picking up some creators driven out of Marvel to begin to erode that dominance.  First issues were still infrequent at this point, but when they were published you can already see the evolution of the huge launch followed by a massive second issue drop. And of course there's the increasing value of having your most popular characters (at that time the X-Men, not yet specifically Wolverine) do guest star roles.

Anyway, the whole thing was an interesting experiment. I'm not sure when we next saw a decent sales chart for the direct market. I think AMAZING HEROES ran a similar one a few years later, but my collection of those is sketchy. If I can dig one up I'll post it.  By the mid-1980s the comic shop distribution had solidified enough that there were several big established distributors, like Capital and Diamond, and eventually they were releasing some charts about what they sold, generally using index values tied to percentages of key books. I think the COMICS BUYER'S GUIDE ran charts based on that occasionally, and their publisher had a magazine called COMICS RETAILER which I'm sure must have run those numbers. After a few years and various odd events Diamond became practically a monopoly in direct market distribution, so using its chart, with knowledge of actual sales of a few books, gives a pretty clear general picture of the direct market from the mid-1990s on.

What the Cavekids read... (part 3)

THE COMIC READER #193 had their Top 100 chart for March 1981. Here is 1979 and 1980. You can see the shape of the modern direct market slowly evolving here. About 30 stores were responding to the survey. Here's the usual mostly complete list of comics published that month.

X-MEN generally topped this chart by a wide margin back then, except for an occasional first issue.  Not this month, though, with it being narrowly edged out by WHAT IF. Which featured an alternative ending to the storyline which had just finished in X-MEN less than a year ago.

SPIDER-WOMAN jumping up to #3 shows the reason for the growing use of guest shots of popular characters, with an X-Men appearance providing a big boost. That kind of marketing became ridiculous in a few years.

WARLORD is no longer the top DC title in these markets, with NEW TEEN TITANS usually being a distant #2 to X-MEN, but dropped down to #4 with the temporary X-Boosts to other titles. One of the first mini-series TALES OF THE GREEN LANTERN CORPS does well with its second issue. WARLORD is still pretty solid at #24, and a few more DC books manage to come out just ahead of the lowest non-reprint standard format Marvel, GHOST RIDER.

FLASH GORDON, now with the Whitman imprint, is the top non-Marvel/DC book, with the third part of the classic adaptation of the not-so-classic movie.

CHARLTON BULLSEYE at #49 is the first time a first issue shows up in this or the two previous March charts. Apparently they didn't get the memo about not launching a book in March. I think this is one of if not the first non-reprint Charlton comic in several years, and features Blue Beetle and The Question.

#50 to #71 features a few of the more expensive alternative format items, DC's digests, magazines like THE SPIRIT and HEAVY METAL and the Warren titles. Mixed in there are Marvel's reprint books and DC's war and DC's various non-super-hero books. Marvel's CRAZY is their lowest seller at this section.

#72 to #84 are all Harvey books, mostly greed glorifying RICHIE RICH titles. #85 to #99 is all Archie, all the time.  Rounding out the list is another Charlton title, featuring reprints of the 1960s Hercules series.

What the Cavewomen read... (part 2)

After their inaugural Top 100 in #169, THE COMIC READER (editor: Michael Tiefenbacher publisher: Jerome Sinkovec) continued running the feature monthly.  It would be a bit much to comment on every one, so here's the chart from exactly one year after the first one, representing books on sale in March 1980, as published in TCR #181. Here's a partial list of comics released that month.

There are considerably more and different stores responding to the survey this time around, so you can't really compare the actual numbers. Remember, these are 34 year old numbers from a small self-selected sample of a small fraction of the market, so please, no wagering.

That Letterman reference is almost as old as these numbers...

As you can see, Archie and Harvey are listed this time, which had the result of knocking anything from Charlton and Gold Key off the Top 100.  All of their books are clustered at the bottom of the list, from #72 to #100 (with only Marvel black-and-white magazine CRAZY from other publishers in that range) with close to identical sales ranging from 100 to 123. That's less than half the next lowest book, Marvel's short-lived FUN AND GAMES puzzle and features publication.

Back to the top of the chart, X-MEN is pretty solidly the best selling book in these markets, over 60% higher than the #2 book. The Marvel Universe titles in general seem to have improved against the Marvel licensed books in the last year, although the launch of KING CONAN seems to have done well, at $0.75 per issue it's close to tied in retail value with X-MEN at $0.40. The launch issue a few months earlier was #1, with sales almost 150% of X-MEN, so I guess the history of big second issue drops began early in the direct market.

First non-Marvel on the book is again DC's WARLORD, this time at #27. I guess it could be seen as an improvement that this time a few of DC's super-hero books (LEGION and JLA) come in just ahead of the worst selling of Marvel's non-reprint colour comics, like GHOST  RIDER. WONDER WOMAN is DC's worst selling super-hero book, other than SUPER FRIENDS which is again in the middle of DC's western, war and mystery titles. Interestingly, TIME WARP, DC's short-lived $1 science-fiction title, was selling better in these markets than the other non-super-hero titles, and many of the super-hero titles, but was cancelled after five issues this month. Guess it wasn't doing as well in other markets.

HEAVY METAL is again the best selling non-DC/Marvel comic at #51.  The Warren magazines fall below it, in the range of the non-super-hero DC books and Marvel reprint books

And again, not a single first issue this month.  Even when they did launch new books back then, they didn't do it in March, I guess.

What the Cavemen read... (part 1)

From 1979 to 1982, THE COMIC READER, under editor Michael Tiefenbacher and publisher Jerome Sinkovec, ran a regular chart based on survey reports from comic shops on what was selling in their stores. The first one ran in #169, the June 1979 issue, and reported on books on sale in March 1979, with about 20 stores reporting (and given the tools available in that day, I give them credit for getting it done that fast). For some reason Archie and Harvey comics weren't included (they would be in later charts), so there are only 93 entries, from Marvel, DC, Gold Key, Warren, Charlton and Heavy Metal.

By the way, I think stores were responding with their sell-through numbers (actual sales to customers) and not their sell-in (their purchases from their distributors, the numbers the current Diamond charts represent), but I'm not 100% sure.

Here's a fairly complete list of books published that month.  And no, your eyes are not playing tricks, there really were that many RICHIE RICH titles published at once. In fact, since most of them were bi-monthly, there were actually almost twice as many individual titles.

There's little real value to any of the data, being a self-selected sample of stores that report, and at the time the nascent specialist comic store being just a small fraction of the market (based on most figures I've seen, this probably represents less than 1% of the sales for most of these books, far less for some of them), but they're still an interesting snapshot of that market.

As you can see, Marvel pretty much owned this section of the market.  You have to go down to #21 before you get a DC book, and I'll bet almost no one would be able to guess that that DC book would be WARLORD.  And that handily outsold the second DC book, at #29, DC COMICS PRESENTS, which puts it below every non-reprint standard sized comic Marvel was publishing (GHOST RIDER at #27 being the lowest of those).

The licensed books were tops at Marvel for this market, with four of the top six entries, with X-MEN being the top Marvel Universe book.

The DC books are pretty much ranked as you'd expect except for WARLORD up top. The main super-hero books, fairly tightly clustered with WONDER WOMAN last, followed by a mix of the western, war and mystery books, with SUPER FRIENDS mixed in with those.

HEAVY METAL at #31 is the first entry not from DC or Marvel.  And given it was $1.50 when most of the higher entries were $0.40, it might have been near the top in total dollar sales, along with the $1 SAVAGE SWORD and $1.50 MARVEL SUPER SPECIAL that placed higher. The $2 tabloid sized MARVEL TREASURY EDITIONS were probably also bringing in as much for these stores as the top sellers.

Gold Key first shows up at #47, with WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES.  There's quite a spread on their sales, not surprisingly the books likely to have Barks reprints way up on the other stuff, except the recently revived FLASH GORDON comic which also does relatively well. And, in the "things I did not know" department, there was a HAPPY DAYS comic.

The Warren black-and-white magazines are pretty tightly clustered. And very clearly this segment of the market has no interest in Charlton, which was by now pretty much entirely publishing reprints. The bottom ten entries are the Charlton line, with the top book selling less than half the next worst seller. They'll pretty much drop off the list once the Archie and Harvey titles are listed.

And one thing kind of sticks out compared to today. Check out how many first issues were published that month.  None. In fact, there are only a handful of books in single digits. It wouldn't be long before being a #1 was seen as a positive.