Mad Sales Figures

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

A part of American pop culture for more than half a century, William Gaines' humor periodical Mad began as a comic book in 1952, before switching to magazine format with #24 (at right, June 1955). That act had the dual results of protecting the publication from the oversight of the Comics Code Authority, while also giving it a better position than the comics shelves, where newsstand sales of those books were declining. But while Mad is not generally considered a comic book due to its size, the fact that most issues contained majority-comics content has included it among those titles Comichron tracks. And the numbers connected to it dwarf any other comics series: counting copies just of the main title beginning in 1960, Mad sold more than 400 million copies. The overall figure since 1952, reprints included, is probably past half a billion.

Mad had already run several years' worth of Statement of Ownership filings when the U.S. Postal Service changed the rules in 1960, requiring actual sales data. On reading the form in issue #61, the world of comics readers discovered that Mad was selling in excess of a million copies an issue, just slightly more than the top-selling comic book, Uncle Scrooge. But the sales figures thereafter went in opposite directions, with no American comic book topping a million copies sold until Star Wars #1 in 1977 — whereas Mad's sales went upward, nearly steadily, through the 1960s.

An on-ramp to the counterculture for younger readers, the title became a staple of Baby Boomer life in the 1960s; it topped 100,000 subscribers in 1969, a number never seen for any other comics periodical. The title reached its peak circulation in 1974, the culminating year for Watergate, with average sales per issue of 2,132,655 copies. (Perhaps the title's most controversial cover, #166's upraised middle finger, thus landed at the absolute height of the magazine's popularity; many retailers refused to stock it.) Mad's imitators were many over the years, three of which — Cracked, Crazy, and Sick — ran postal circulation statements, but none was in Mad's league when it came to sales.

But even though Mad's position on magazine racks gave it a relatively safer position than comic books had in the newsstand market, the channel was in overall decline. The last year the title had sales over 1 million copies was 1982, perhaps not coincidentally when coin-operated and home video games were dominating youth culture. The growing comics shop market didn't do much business in Mad, which was largely seen still as a newsstand and subscriber-targeted product. Still, sales hovered near three quarters of a million copies through the second half of the 1980s, with a six-year peak of 784,206 copies in 1989. That year saw the title buoyed in part by an issue and a special parodying Batman, a property owned by its then-parent company, Warner.

A television show added to Mad's brand in the 1990s, and the publication moved from its longtime eight-a-year schedule to monthly. But the decade saw the magazine's circulation drop down below 300,000 copies, more than 100,000 of which were by subscription. Subscription sales would pass dealer copies in 2005, and they would continue to be the largest portion of sales until 2014.

By that time, sales of the now-bimonthly issues were below 140,000 copies, only slightly exceeding that number in 2018 when Mad moved its production from New York City to the West Coast and rebooted its numbering in 2018. That iteration was reported in July 2019 to be eliminating new content, except for specials, and also ending newsstand distribution. Special editions continue to appear on newsstands.



Mad is the last majority-comics periodical still publishing Statement of Ownership reports, as seen below. It was the only one to report, only occasionally, digital circulation in its forms. Should either the magazine or its Periodical Class subscriptions end, that would bring to a close (possibly temporarily) a data source that had first become available in 1960.

—John Jackson Miller
Updated: Jan. 10, 2023

Statement history
Starting with #10 in April 1953, Mad had run Statements of Ownership, Management, and Circulation for years before the postal rules changed in 1960, requiring publishers to print average circulation numbers. Mad wasn't required to run subscriber counts yet in 1960 but did so anyway. It would begin regularly doing so once that data was required in 1963.

There are some errors in the filings. There was a math error in the 2000 dealer sales that we've fixed; Mad's math in the free-copy numbers in 2004 doesn't add up, and those we didn't fix. Mad didn't run the correct subscriber numbers in 2013 and 2014; the correct figures have been calculated and printed above. Returns were not included in the 2018 form; those have also been calculated.

Mad never missed publishing a single filing, and was the only majority-comics publication to run the forms after Archie stopped publishing data in 2016. It was the only title to include the later-mandated digital sales; these smallish numbers appeared in 2016 and 2017.

Something's definitely amiss in the data in the filings from 2020 through 2022, as shop sales are reported as zero despite the fact that comics shops still carry the title. And quite a few copies are unaccounted for from 2022's average print run — probably more than could be accounted for by comics shops.

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.