Came across a circulation statement in Batman #335 - from 1980 - that listed that title with an average monthly circulation of 275,000 - almost triple what the market-leading X-Men titles sell today.

I know there's been a lot of speculation about the accuracy of these circulation statements - which publishers had to include to secure certain mailing privileges - but does that # seem even remotely accurate, given the retail environment of 20 years ago?

In general, comics circulation numbers have steadily declined for 40 years or more. Since 1980, there has been an explosion of titles and publishers, as well as a huge growth in the total revenue generated by the comics field.

The price paid for more selection is that most titles sell fewer copies, though they provide better incomes for the people who create and sell them. Unless I miss my guess, that Batman carried a cover price of 40¢. At that price, DC had to sell a lot more copies than they do at $2.25. In fact, they probably weren't profitable at that price. In 1980, the DC Implosion had reduced DC to publishing a much truncated line compared to the years immedialtely preceding. DC's were then only shipped twice a month and the total number of titles they put out was around 25.

Despite the reduced per-title circulations we see today, comics are much healthier and more vital today than they were in 1980.

If my math is correct and using the numbers provided - 40 cent comic at 275 thousand copies a month - a $2.25 comic would have to sell 48,888 issues just to generate the same revenue. Factor in higher costs and the huge number of books which sell far below that, and I'm not sure you can call the comic industry healthier. More creatively vital is a completely different matter.

Anyway, it's not the revenue generated which ultimately matters. It's the number of readers. An industry which charges an ever increasing price to an ever shrinking audience is on the road to extinction.

Your cost analysis is incomplete.
It costs much more (even ignoring the difference between 1980 dollars ans 2002 dollars) to print and distribute 275,000 comics than it does for 48,000. The smaller number of copies generating the same gross revenue will always be more profitable.

You are, however, correct to be concerned that the reader base is shrinking.

Good point. Hadn't thought of that.

OK, I didn't show all work there. As the esteemed Mr. Friel pointed out, the printing & shipping costs are an issue. The big one, though, is returns. In 1980, 80% or more of DC's sales came from newsstand distribution where 80% of your copies are destroyed (or stolen and reported as destroyed) and you call it good sell-through.

The reason that the field is healthier is that the publishers don't have to print and ship 5 copies for every one they get paid for.

No one can say that there are fewer readers of comics today than in 1980 without making a number of big assumptions. Among them is the idea that the number of copies sold by your biggest selling title represents the high water mark for comics' readership. Did everybody who read comics in 1980, read X-Men? Is that true today? Other than by pulling the answer ot of the air, neither question is even debatable (except in the "angels dancing on the head of a pin" sense.)

If there are 15-20 times as many comics being published today (a reasonable estimate), and by most accounts more good (whatever your definition of the word) comics being published, I'd say that the field is demonstrably healthier today.

Unless your idea of health is 5 publishers, 4 of them 40 or more years old producing fewer than 100 titles a month in aggregate, no graphic novels or collected editions, and who argue that their readership is totally turned over every three years.

I have long been a public doomsayer about the state of comics, but that doesn't mean that I want to go back to 1980, of all years. 1952, might be nice, but even then the decline of comics as a mass medium was mostly complete.

Close: 50 cents.

Nat, off the topic, I got my copy of Panel One!

Actually, it's not "dancing on the head of a pin". We may not know the exact numbers but some things are known.

First - Just about everybody with access to the numbers seems to agree comics sell far fewer copies than in the past. Maybe all these people are engaged in some gigantic practical joke when they bemoan today's sales levels, but I doubt it. Even considering inflation in the rise in comic prices, if today's sales aren't substantially lower than they the 80s, comic companies would be more financially successful than they've ever been. I don't see the evidence of that.

Secondly - Since the vast majority of comic sales are through the direct market, we have somewhat reliable numbers on sales today. For instance, SPIDER-GIRL, seems to have settled into a plateau of about 20 to 22 thousand readers. There are, I think, 280 million people in the U.S. 1% of that is 2.8 million. Half of that is 1.4 million. Half of that is 700 thousand. Half of that is 350 thousand. Half of that is 175 thousand. Half of that is 87,500. Half of that is 43,750. Which means SPIDER-GIRL is read by one-half of one-half of one-half of one-half of one-half of one-half of one-half of one percent of Americans. Even if that's financially viable in the short term, an audience that small will be almost impossible to maintain over the long run.

Thirdly - This may just be my opinion, but I believe very few people today buy just one or two comics. My experience is comic fans buy serveral titles a week, not just a month. If NEW X-MEN sells 100 thousand copies and AMAZING SPIDER-MAN sells 90 thousand copies, that's not 190 thousand separate readers. Thousands, if not tens of thousands, are reading both books. I also imagine that's true of all varieties of books.

Fourthly - I'm not sure there really are more books being published today. But even if there are, the vast majority of them are selling at subsistance levels, depending on the higher selling books to maintain the industry's infrastructure. The diversity in comics today is more paresitical than symbiotic. (Which has more to do with the unavailability of comics to non-comic readers than the quality of the books)

To say comics aren't a bad off as they have been or could be is one thing, to claim they're healthier overall is quite another.

Well, let's look at these questions one at a time.

1) Comics average sales per title has clearly gone down over the years. In fact, the sales levels in 1980 were considered anemic compared to the 1960s. The example I remember from a Dick Giordano interview was that his Aquaman was canceled because its sales had declined below 300,000.

But as I thought I had made clear above, the sales of individual titles aren't the key indicator of total comics sales. When DC was publishing 20 titles a month, Marvel 40, Archie 15, Harvey 10, and Warren 3, they indeed sold more copies of each issue. As I also pointed out, they had to. They had to cover the cost of producing 5 copies for every one they sold.

You don't see the evidence of comics companies doing better financially than they did then because it's none of your business. Just as you don't send your W-2 to Paul Levitz, he doesn't send you DC's financial statements. We can infer, though, from the fact that DC publishes many more titles, has larger offices, and employs a larger staff that they are doing better than they were in 1980.

2) I appreciate your attempt to show the miniscule percentage of the US population that buys Spider-Girl every month, but that's hardly relevant to the total sales of comics by the publishers. And I would point out that getting people to start reading Spider-Girl as the current readers drop off or die is a less challenging task than replacing readership for Sports Illustrated specifically because there are so few readers to replace. And Spider-Girl readers pay virtually the entire cost of producing the comics. SI's readers mostly pay Publisher's Clearing House while advertising pays the rest.

3) The number of people who buy just one or two comics has always been small, in my own humble opinion. It is likely that shoppers at comics stores buy more comics per visit than newsstand buyers of yore, but this is not a question to which there can ever be a definitive answer, because there's just no data. Another pin dancing exercise.

4) If you are not "sure there really are more books being published today", you haven't been paying attention. I recommend that you seek out copies of The Comic Reader circa 1980 and count up the titles being published then and compare that number to the Previews Order form. That most titles are break-even, at best, is a good point, but that's partly the nature of small press publishing. The fact that there is the possibilty for a publisher to enter the field with virtually no capital and prosper in a more telling fact than that most who try don't succeed. What was the last time you heard of a book publishing start-up that became successful without millions of dollars to invest? In every entertainment field, there are blockbusters that finance less successful entries. In comics, we have that and the phenomenon of one title publishers hitting it big.

Marvel, in the 1990s, viewed Image and all publishers further down the food chain as barnacles on the good ship Marvel. Their attempts to dislodge them were an unmitigated disaster for comics and for Marvel. I would argue that Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly are just as important to comics survival as Marvel or DC.

I agree that comics' relative unavailability is the most pressing issue we face. It's just that no one has figured a way to overcome it, yet. The Comics Distribution thread I started a few years ago and recently brought back up to the surface asks just that question.

This thread seems to me to be about how comics are faring today vs. 1980. If, instead we are discussing our state compared to all possible eras, I might have a different response.