Batman Sales Figures

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

Batman had first appeared in Detective Comics #27 in May 1939 — but it wasn't until 1940 that the Caped Crusader had a title under his own name. Batman thrived, entering the 1960s as one of the higher-selling titles — although Superman's titles, from the same publisher, regularly did better.

That changed in 1966 when ABC-TV aired the first season of the Batman TV show, launching the comics series to the top of the sales charts in 1967. It would remain in the top ten for the duration of the program's run.

By 1970 "Batmania" was on the wane (no pun intended), with sales a third of what they had been four years earlier. The frequency had increased to monthly by the early 1970s, and the title included a number of larger-sized issues (including 100-page specials) in the period. The trend continued downward except for bumps in 1976 and 1979.

Finally, in the last two years in which postal sales were reported in the title, sales increased, thanks to attention drawn to the character by Frank Miller in The Dark Knight Returns. Average reported sales for 1987 shot up dramatically due to the "Year One" storyline Miller ran in the Batman series itself.

After DC stopped shipping Second Class in 1987 — eliminating its need to file postal reports — the title saw some of its loftiest sales, including following the release of the 1989 film and in the 1990s during the "Knightfall" storyline. Even after those huge-number days, there were periodic returns to the top of the charts in storylines like 2003's "Hush." In 2011, DC ended the main series at #713 to reboot the title as part of its "New 52" — which lasted 52 issues before another restart in 2016 with "Rebirth." By that time, Batman was regularly DC's top seller, just as it had been in the late 1960s.

For later years, some information is available in the monthly reports.

—John Jackson Miller

Statement history
Statements of Ownership ran in Batman long before 1960, when the government began requiring them to report circulation figures. DC published those figures in the Statements from 1960 to 1962, rounding figures off to the nearest thousand. But in 1963 and 1964, as it did with much of its line, DC ran statements in Batman without sales figures again. (These appeared in #161 and #170. This happened again in 1965, only for DC to return in the August cover-dated issue of the year with a revised Statement including sales figures.

Statements then appeared consistently in the title until 1987. Thereafter, DC switched from mailing subscription copies Second Class to mailing them First Class, exempting the publisher from the need to publish the statements. Thus, less than half the run of the title includes postal circulation information.

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.

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