Archie Sales Figures

Circulation as Reported in Publishers' Statements of Ownership
Filed with the United States Postal Service

Archie is one of the longest-running series reporting circulation statements annually to the postal service, doing so continuously until 2015, when the publication restarted. The statements are particularly meaningful because comics shop sales were long a relatively small portion of the title's sales, with newsstand and subscription sales accounting for the rest.

Archie had been running for 17 years when the 1960s began; the title was selling half a million copies at that point. The series reached its peak relative to the rest of the market, however, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The pop song "Sugar Sugar" by a band known as The Archies combined with the 1968-69 CBS animated Archie TV series to propel the main Archie title to #1 in the comics market.

It remained at #1 through 1973, beating sales of Superman, Batman, and all the superheroes. Finally, in 1974, The Amazing Spider-Man and Superman both passed it. During the distribution tumult of the 1970s, Archie began focusing more on digests — a market it had helped to create through its work with the Comics Magazine Association of America to establish grocery store counter dumps; as such, in 1977, the same year that Archie fell out of the top 10, its sales were surpassed by Archie Comics Digest. Betty and Veronica surpassed Archie's sales in 1980. In 1982, the title's frequency was reduced from monthly to bimonthly.

Sales recovered a little in the late 1980s thanks in part to added attention to its subscription business, but the flourishing of the comic book market helped Archie less than most publishers, given its younger target demographic. The early 1990s comics boom didn't help the title's sales at all. Editorial initiatives in the 2000s sought to raise the title's sales, with particular success in 2007. By the 2010s, however, the monthly comic book was being outsold three-to-one by its digest counterpart. Sales dropped below 10,000 copies an issue in 2014, and the series was relaunched with a new #1 in July 2015.

The new series — which helped inspire the Riverdale TV series — has, thus far, not reported circulation figures, though it probably did carry over subscribers from the initial title.

Some direct-market only information is available in the monthly reports.

—John Jackson Miller

Statement history
Archie ran postal statements for most of its run, though sales figures were not required in them until 1960. 

When the postal policy changed requiring publishers to also report their number of subscription copies sold in 1963, Archie failed to report its subscription sales (which certainly existed) until 1965.

All of Archie's titles began picking up glitches in their statements beginning around 2000. Math errors of a single copy were commonly found, particularly in the "free copies" sections of the forms. These errors have been corrected for the above table. Archie also stopped reporting its number of returned copies in several statements. Those have been calculated for the above tables based on the surrounding data.

No Statements have been found in the new 2015 Archie title, although for postal license purposes it might be considered the same title.

Understanding Statements of Ownership
The figures above are taken directly from the annual Statements of Ownership, Management, and Circulation filed by publishers with the United States Postal Service. The sales figure is the Average Paid Circulation figure and includes all copies sold through newsstands, comics shops, and postal subscription. It does not count copies the publisher gave away for free, or copies that were kept for office use.

More information can be found in the FAQ section.