Comic Book Research Forum
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[originally posted 8/29/2007]
Thank you for the research you are doing on/for this site! It is fascinating. I am writing a dissertation about superhero comics, and I am trying to develop a reasonable assumption about their cultural impact. To do this, I am making the following claims:
(1965, for example)
- The US Census reports the population of the United States in 1965 as 194,303,000
- Although specific data for age distribution is not available for 1965, patterns for later years suggest that boys aged 10-19 tend to make up approximately 8% of the US population, making their population 15,544,240.
- The majority of comics readers during the 1960s were boys in this age range.
In trying to then leap to the next step, which is what percentage of this target population actually read comics, I seek any advice anyone would like to offer. I realize that circulation numbers cannot represent actual reader numbers, because kids shared their comic books. But a very basic low-end estimate is what I am looking for, and circulation numbers would help with that.
You have posted 1965 Comic Book Sales Figures, and you note that the figures are "average paid circulations for the year." So if, for instance, I were to take Superman's circulation numbers at 823,829, does that represent the average number of comic books sold *per issue* released during a certain year? Or were 823,829 Superman comics sold in total during 1965? Assuming the former, I could then extrapolate that:
- approximately 6% of boys aged 10-19 read Superman comic books in 1965.
Comments? Criticisms? Suggestions? The results that the formula yields is lower than I'd hoped, but if it is what it is, I'll take it.
Best,
Laura |
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[originally presented 9/6/2007]
That 824,000 number is per issue, which means that the total number of people buying any issue of Superman at all in 1965 was probably over 1 million and perhaps closer to 2 million. Unfortunately, there isn't a good way to really say.
While young males were probably Superman's largest demographic in 1965, I would shy away from saying they were 100% of his sales. Their share was certainly larger in 1975 than in 1965 -- in 1965, there still were a lot of comics targeting girls, and Superman's Girlfriend Lois Lane attests to their presence in Supes' demographic.
Hope this helps -- sorry for the delay in responding!
Best, John Jackson Miller • Curator, The Comics Chronicles |
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[originally posted 9/29/2007]
Laura, I've done some research on historical readership, and the figures seem to be much higher than you're expecting.
Coulton Waugh, in his 1947 book "The Comics", writes: "Between the ages of 6 and 11, 95% of boys and 91% of girls buy comic books for a steady reading diet. Between 12 and 17, the figure falls to 87% of boys and 81% of girls. Between 18 and 30, the figure is 41% of men and 28% of women; after 30, it is down to 16 and 12. But remember, these are steady readers. To estimate the occasionals, add another 13% of men and 10% of women. A startling tribute to the infiltration of the habit among adults was that in the recent war, at the post exchanges, the combined sales of Life, Readers' Digest and Saturday Evening Post were exceeded by comic books by a ratio of ten to one." (p.334)
There's a very extensive survey of 84,500 senior high school students reported in detail in "Senior Scholastic", 17 May 1948, in an article entitled "Who Reads the Comics?" Do look this one up. In response to the question "Do you read comic books?" these are the figures:
Boys: Never 22.41, Occasionally 60.30, Frequently 17.29
Girls: Never 30.68, Occasionally 58.73, Frequently 12.59
Total: Never 26.65, Occasionally 58.47, Frequently 14.88
The conclusions: the figures "show definitely: (a) that boys read, on the whole, more comics than girls; (b) that children read them most during the 5th to 8th grades, when they are about 10-14 years old; (c) that as they grow older and more mature, their interest declines; (d) that by the time they reach the junior or senior year, more than half stop reading comics entirely, or read them only occasionally." (p.3)
In 1955, the Times Literary Supplement claimed "98% of American children and adolescents read the comics, and about 75% read nothing else" (Times Literary Supplement, 25 Feb 1955, p.114).
(By the way, the TLS article is a great read -- seek it out if you can. It's a front-page article titled "Marijuana of the Nursery" which begins as a review of Wertham's "Seduction of the Innocent". It is very concerned about the influence of comics: "Anything a child occupies himself with for a few hours a day, for year after year, cannot fail to act as a character-forming influence." It goes on: "Small children, adolescents, illiterates and various people of very low intelligence can and do read as many as 100 comics a week, but even 200 is no record. The comics are the literature of the illiterate...". It argues that comics are "an obnoxious and pernicious form of literature" and act as "primers in crime" -- very much the tone that Wertham took. The TLS article was part of a widespread outcry in the UK against the excesses of American "horror" comics which in fact led to a ban on their importation into Britain.)
In 1974, in "The Comic Book Book," Don Thompson and Richard A. Lupoff wrote: "There is statistical evidence that even in this latter day of dominance by television, well over 90% of American children still read comic books, and -- perhaps more surprisingly -- approximately 50% of American adults do the same."
Also in 1974, in "Americana in Four Colors: twenty years of self-regulation by the comics magazine industry", published by the Comics Magazine Association of America, John L. Goldwater wrote: "While the heaviest readership of comics is in the 7 to 14 age group, broad readership extends from pre-school age through high school, and exists among many thousands of adults. In recent years, broad readership has developed among college students. Comics fan clubs exist on many campuses. Current sales of comics magazines average about 300 million annually. The fact that there is a 'pass-on' readership of at least three of each copy sold indicates the scope and immense popularity of the medium."
Hope that helps! |
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