Iron Man Sales Figures

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

When Marvel renegotiated its restrictive agreement with its distributor in 1968, it was suddenly able to double its number of offerings. It did so with characters in several of its "double feature" titles. Iron Man and Captain America fissioned from Tales of Suspense, with Captain America continuting the original series' numbering. 

Iron Man began with a fresh #1, only after a weird one-month gap during which the feature was paired with the Tales to Astonish orphan, Sub-Mariner, in the Iron Man and Sub-Mariner one-shot.

Marvel did not publish sales figures for the title for a very long time, but by the time it did, Iron Man was a mid-range seller along with the other Avengers titles. The series peaked above 200,000 copies in the mid-1980s during David Michelinie and Bob Layton's first run on the title; it approached that level again several times before collapsing during the market recession of the mid-1990s.

Marvel addressed the decline then — and several more times — with the same strategy: restarting the series from a new #1. The "Heroes Reborn" volume 2 and the "Heroes Return" volume 3 resuscitated sales, as did the Warren Ellis Volume 4 in 2004.     
   
That title was renamed Invincible Iron Man and then Iron Man Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. — and then a concurrent Invincible Iron Man title was started in 2008, which later assumed the original series' numbering (only after leaving out three Director of SHIELD issues starring War Machine). The long run concluded when the Marvel Now Iron Man series began. The numbering was restored in 2017 when the Legacy event merged the numbering from a large number of titles.

There have occasionally been spinoff titles, mostly in the 1990s (such as Force Works and War Machine) and 2000s (such as Ultimate Iron Man).

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

—John Jackson Miller

Statement history
The circuitious route the title took to the shelf seems to have impacted its subscription accounting. The Statement of Ownership that belonged to Tales of Suspense was continued in Captain America, apparently with all subscribers going along; and for some reason, Iron Man did not have any Statements for more than a decade, even though it was sold by subscription in that period.

And the 1983 Statement was certainly entirely in error — as it simply repeated all the data from the 1982 version. The only thing changed was the date on the form, so it does not appear that the earlier form was accidentally reprinted — the numbers were simply all the ones from 1982. There are a few more Statements where entries do not add up; the figure that is most likely correct is published here.

Subscriptions from Volume 1 were transferred to Volume 2, and then Volume 3, when those restarts happened; presumably, this happened with Volume 4, as well. Data was not published in the early years of that restart. 2009's figures come from Invincible Iron Man, which was later made part of the original title with a numbering change.

Marvel stopped publishing its forms after 2011 for all its titles, bringing the record to a close.