I am going to mainly focus the numbers for the years the Legion was featured in Adventure Comics.
And awayyyy we go:
For comparison purposes, I'll start off with 1961, the year preceding the Legion moving into Adventure.
1961
Title Publisher Circulation 1) Uncle Scrooge Dell 853,928 2) Superman DC 820,000 3) Superboy DC 655,000 4) Jimmy Olsen DC 520,000 5) Lois Lane DC 515,000 6) Tarzan Dell 509,355 7) Batman DC 485,000 8) Action Comics DC 485,000 9) World's Finest Comics DC 480,000 10) Adventure Comics DC 460,000
Best selling Team Book of 1961:
12) JLA DC 335,000
Best selling Marvel Title of 1961:
39) Tales to Astonish Marvel 184,895
Best selling Marvel Team Book of 1961:
None in the top 50
1962
Title Publisher Circulation 1) Superman DC 740,000 2) Superboy DC 605,000 3) Lois Lane DC 490,000 4) Jimmy Olsen DC 470,000 5) Archie Archie 457,689 6) Casper Harvey 436,153 7) Action Comics DC 435,000 8) World's Finest Comics DC 420,000 9) Adventure Comics DC 415,000 10) Batman DC 410,000
Next best selling Team Book:
11) Justice League of America DC 340,000
Best selling Marvel Title:
44) Modeling with Millie Marvel 143,476
Best selling Marvel Team Book:
None in the top 50
The Legion/DC data for the years of 63 and 64 is unavailable due to the fact that DC didn't publish any numbers with their circulation statements in those years.
But according to at least one chart I have seen...the Legion sold well over 500k copies per month during the height of the Siegel era...the highest circulation figures ever for the Legion.
1965
Title Publisher Circulation 1) Superman DC 823,829 2) Superboy DC 672,681 3) Lois Lane DC 556,091 4) Jimmy Olsen DC 554,931 5) Action Comics DC 525,254 6) Adventure Comics DC 520,440 7) Archie Archie 467,552 8) World's Finest Comics DC 465,842 9) Batman DC 453,745 10)Disney's Comics & Stories Gold Key 410,209
Next best selling Team Book:
11) Justice League of America DC 389,285
Best selling Marvel Title:
50) Journey into Mystery Marvel 232,644
Best selling Marvel Team Book:
None in the top 50
1966
Title Publisher Circulation 1) Batman DC 898,470 2) Superman DC 719,976 3) Superboy DC 608,386 4) Lois Lane DC 530,808 5) Jimmy Olsen DC 523,455 6) World's Finest Comics DC 513,201 7) Archie Archie 491,691 8) Action Comics DC 491,135 9) Adventure Comics DC 481,234 10) Justice League of America DC 408,219
The next best selling team book(after the JLA), the best selling Marvel title, and the best selling Marvel Team Title are the all the same book for this year...
19) Fantastic Four Marvel 329,379
1967
Title Publisher Circulation 1) Batman DC 805,700 2) Superman DC 649,300 3) Superboy DC 547,100 4) World's Finest Comics DC 537,200 5) Archie Archie 484,648 6) Jimmy Olsen DC 450,700 7) Lois Lane DC 448,400 8) Detective Comics DC 425,700 9) Action Comics DC 420,900 10) Adventure Comics DC 412,800
Next best selling Team Book:
12) Justice League of America DC 385,800
Best selling Marvel Title:
14) Amazing Spider-Man Marvel 361,663
Best selling Marvel Team Book:
17) Fantastic Four Marvel 329,536
1968
Title Publisher Circulation 1) Superman DC 636,400 2) Archie Archie 566,587 3) Batman DC 533,450 4) Superboy DC 532,135 5) World's Finest Comics DC 480,115 6) Lois Lane DC 461,725 7) Jimmy Olsen DC 460,560 8) Action Comics DC 423,000 9) Betty and Veronica Archie 419,544 10) Adventure Comics DC 411,200
Next best selling Team Book:
15) Fantastic Four Marvel 344,865
Best selling Marvel Title:
12) Amazing Spider-Man Marvel 373,303
And now we get to the final year of the Adventure run, 1969 when Supergirl replaced the Legion as the lead in Adventure during the early part of the year.
1969
Title Publisher Circulation 1) Archie Archie 515,356 2) Superman DC 511,984 3) Superboy DC 465,462 4) Lois Lane DC 397,346 5) Betty and Veronica Archie 384,789 6) Action Comics DC 377,535 7) Amazing Spider-Man Marvel 372,352 8) World's Finest Comics DC 366,618 9) Batman DC 355,782 10) Adventure Comics DC 354,123
Next best selling Team Title:
12) Fantastic Four Marvel 340,363
The best selling Marvel Title was Spiderman which cracked the top 10 for the first time ever this year.
[ May 23, 2008, 06:57 AM: Message edited by: Superboy ]
Registered: Mar 2006
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posted
To Lightning Lad and Nightcrawler, I'm not sure if this topic is deserving of a separate thread apart from your regular sales figures thread. I went ahead and gave it it's own thread because the data is of a little different nature than the main sales thread.
Registered: Mar 2006
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posted
Ok the first thing I want to point out is...it's pretty silly to say that being a part of the Superman Family wasn't a huge boon to the Legion.
The second thing I want to point out...the Legion was the best selling team book every year of the decade they were in publication..
That's pretty impressive considering that the JLA also featured Superman...and every other mainstream character of the DC Uni. More people were reading the Legion.
And that begs the question...why in the world did DC move them into the backup of Action?
I mean think about that...they moved their best selling team book into a backup slot in a solo character's book...
It's like Marvel moving the New X-Men into the backup slot in Spiderman 6 years into their run.
What a silly idea that was.
The only thing I can conclude is that while it dominated every team book of the decade and probably averaged out to a top 5 title for the decade...it was the worst selling title in the Superman family.
Nontheless...folks our Legion was the team of the Silver Age, and you never hear them described as such...you hear the Fantastic Four, you hear the JLA...but it was indeed the Legion.
[ May 23, 2008, 12:18 AM: Message edited by: Superboy ]
Registered: Mar 2006
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posted
The Legion was put in Action because Weisinger was told to give Supergirl her own book. Since he knew that he was leaving DC shortly anyway, he did not want to add to his workload and pulled a switch: Supergirl got Adventure, and the Legion got her spot in Action. It was a bad move for both titles, but that's why it was done.
I don't know which is more impressive: that the Legion was the best-selling super-hero team in the Silver Age, or that it was consistently outsold by Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen!
posted
I love trivia like this and look forward to seeing the other eras and whatnots...
The most surprising thing to me is that the numbers are actually lower than I thought they would be... even today some titles will sell 100-200 thousand plus copies... and this is at $3 a copy nowadays versus 10-12 cents back then. This industry isn't in so dire a shape as people have been saying.
posted
It was the Silver Age, not Golden Age. Back in the 40s, there was at least one steady million-plus seller.
It amazes me just how much DC's sales revolved around Superman.
-------------------- Tom Strong, on nostalgia: "I suppose it's a ready substitute for genuine feeling." - Tom Strong #6, Alan Moore
From: Calgary, Alberta | Registered: May 2008
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posted
Yeah I'll post some GA figures just for kicks..
I remain more surpsied by the fact that DC put it's top selling team title into a back up slot more than anything else.
Imagine Geoff Johns going into the office on Monday and finding out that the JSA has been put in the backup slot in Green Lantern...
Registered: Mar 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Triplicate Kid: It was the Silver Age, not Golden Age. Back in the 40s, there was at least one steady million-plus seller.
It amazes me just how much DC's sales revolved around Superman.
I'll go you one better...what I am amazed by is that all those top 5-7 finishes by Superman Family at the peak of the Silver Age...Jerry Siegel was more or less the main writer on every one of them.
Just as in the Golden Age he was the main writer when Supes was selling over a million per month.
Both times he left DC over financial disputes or military commitments Superman sales declined. In fact you could almost say an age ended.
Jerry Siegel just might be the greatest superhero writer...as well as the inventor of the genre.
Imagine a writer in today's market writing the top 5-7 selling books in the industry for nearly an entire decade.
There's not another writer of Superheroes in Jerry Siegel's class sales wise...no one even comes close. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby wish their titles sold as well as Jerry's....so do Alan Moore and Frank Miller.
That said...Jerry will strain his neck looking up at the top comic writer...who is probably a guy named Carl Barks...and his 3 million a month circulation figures for his Donald Duck stories during the late 40's and 50's.
[ May 23, 2008, 12:55 PM: Message edited by: Superboy ]
Registered: Mar 2006
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quote:Originally posted by MLLASH: I love trivia like this and look forward to seeing the other eras and whatnots...
The most surprising thing to me is that the numbers are actually lower than I thought they would be... even today some titles will sell 100-200 thousand plus copies... and this is at $3 a copy nowadays versus 10-12 cents back then. This industry isn't in so dire a shape as people have been saying.
Yah...you know the Golden Age and Silver Age are really defined by what the oh say top 5 titles sold, more than what the typical title sold. At least that's the way it seems to me.
Those terms also have a lot more to do with DC than they do anything else...because both of them pretty much have time frames built around when DC was the #1 company.
The Golden Age of Spiderman for instance was 92-93 when ASM sold 500K+ copies per month..by far the best sales figures for Spidey, almost doubling his peak Silver Age Sales figures.
And Archie? Archie is a top 10 comic, right now..just like he was then.
And none of the figures I will be posting are going to include Mad Magainze which was the best selling comic from about 1960 to 1990..averaging well over a million copies per month during that time frame and peaking at about 2 million per month when DC and Marvel were hemmoraging readers in the 70's.
[ May 23, 2008, 01:03 PM: Message edited by: Superboy ]
Registered: Mar 2006
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posted
There is the question of depth of the market versus the top 10 though. I'd argue there was a wider variety of genre available in say the top 100 back in the 60s versus what's in the diamond top 100 today.
Not to say you can't get western or romance even Archie isn't really a factor in the Diamond figures etc these days but the numbers today don't do those numbers justice as a lot of that stuff is sold in book form or increasingly given away as free strips over the net and collected some time later.
Its just like magazines or TV, back then the medium was treated as a mass broadcast type whereas now products can be tailored for audiences as small as several thousand readers if you use an online model.
From: Canada | Registered: Apr 2005
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This is a fascinating thread! Thanks for posting this info Superboy! I've always been aware of Superman's dominance in comics over the decades, but to see it all laid out like that...
From: If you don't want my peaches, honey... | Registered: Sep 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Cobalt Kid: This is a fascinating thread! Thanks for posting this info Superboy! I've always been aware of Superman's dominance in comics over the decades, but to see it all laid out like that...
Thank you. Part of the reason I posted those was to show just how important being a part of the Superman Family was to the Legion staying in publication for the first decade of it's existence.
And the other thing I was hoping to show was that the Legion was an extremely popular title once upon a time.
More popular than the X-Men, FF, Avengers, JLA, Titans...more popular than Spiderman. More popular than Green Lanter, or the Silver Surfer, or Thor...
More popular than that IronMan guy that just set a bunch of box office records.
More popular than the quinessential Silver Age character...the Flash.
And that was true at the end of the Silver Age...not just the beginning.
Because I see Legion Fans all the time now say that the Legion's reduced sales are more a result of the decline of the audience than a decline of the popularity of the feature.
And while it is true that the audience is smaller...
The Legion has gone from being a perennial top 10-20 seller and DC's top selling team, to being a book that barely puts up the numbers to stay in print.
We've fallen a great deal....and as I'm going to show(kinda) when I post the Bronze Age numbers, in the Bronze Age, even though the Legion's sales went down from the Silver, their sales ranking went up(at least compared to other DC titles), and the Bronze Age is arguably the peak of the Legion's popularity compared to other comics.
In fact I think I'll start posting those numbers right now :tu
[ May 24, 2008, 06:16 AM: Message edited by: Superboy ]
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