Comic Book Sales Figures for 1964

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

This list includes only those titles which offered subscriptions via the USPS Second or Periodical Class, and which published their sales reports in their titles.

Another asterisk year as DC returned sales figures to the Statements of Ownerships in a seemingly random spattering of its titles. Sales figures appeared in the Statement for Action Comics, allowing it to take the #1 spot — but not in Superman or Superboy, which had higher reported sales both before and after 1964 and presumably would have been higher on the list. Also odd is that the Action form appeared in the August 1965 issue; DC's custom would have been to publish it earlier in a March or April issue.

There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to which DC titles had numbers in their reports for 1964 — the ones that appeared were not all in one editorial office, for example.

TV phenomenon The Flintstones gave Gold Key a much-needed boost.

Statements appeared for the first time in Treasure Chest, the religious comic book distributed in parochial schools by the Catholic Guild. There were print subscribers — the comic book wasn't free — so a Second Class permit was probably finally deemed necessary.

Of all Harvey and Dell titles, Statements with numbers has only been confirmed for Little Dot and Felix the Cat. None has been found for Fawcett titles for 1964.

No Statements were filed in 1964 for Fantastic Four and Amazing Spider-Man (they wouldn't start in the titles until 1966), but sales on the horror-turned- super-hero titles Tales to Astonish and Tales of Suspense increased.

The Outlaws of the West figure seems to be in error, but it's impossible to tell from other figures in the Statement what it was intended to be. Odds are it was probably 124,071, given the sales of the other western titles from Charlton.

Magazines with comics content (like Mad) are sorted separately at the bottom.

—John Jackson Miller

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