In 1984, First Comics surveyed their readers to learn more about them, and the results were published in Starslayer #20, Sept. 1984 (and probably other First Comics published that month). First Comics was one of the early success stories of the independent comics renaissance of the 1980s, whose publications were only available via the direct-sale market (i.e., the growing number of comics shops) that had an older customer base than the spinner rack at the local convenience store.
At the time, these poll results may have been quite encouraging, revealing the average age of their readership to be around 25 years old. (Of course, to many of us older folks now, those numbers sound young indeed.) A closer look at the data shows that only 11.6% was older than 34.
In 1984, a 35 year old would have been born around 1949, and thus the right age (early teenage years) to have become a comics fan in the 1960s during the rise of comics fandom and the field of comics collecting.
These results might be interesting to compare to the results of the Comic Buyer's Guide survey that same year, which were published in the May 17, 1985 issue of CBG. (The image below is taken from a 1985 issue of Comics Collector magazine.) They found that "The most common age was 14 years; the age with an equal number above and below it was 17, and the arithmetical average age was 19.3."
Of the almost 6,000 votes that were received, the majority were from teenagers. (I have underlined & circled the results below to make it easier to see this.) Of those who provided their ages, only 36 voters were over the age of 40.
In case you may have trouble reading the info as shown in the image above, I have written out the numbers below. The age breakdown of the comics fans who answered the CBG survey are as follows:
5 years old: 1 person
6 years old: 1 person
7 years old: 1 person
8 years old: 10 people
9 years old: 16 people
10 years old: 55 people
11 years old: 115 people
12 years old: 237 people
13 years old: 472 people
14 years old: 646 people
(This was the largest age group.
I was 14 years old myself when the results were published in May 1985.)
15 years old: 596 people
16 years old: 501 people
17 years old: 295 people
18 years old: 271 people
19 years old: 245 people
20 years old: 242 people
21 years old: 213 people
22 years old: 153 people
23 years old: 143 people
24 years old: 144 people
25 years old: 145 people
26 years old: 130 people
27 years old: 112 people
28 years old: 101 people
29 years old: 93 people
30 years old: 112 people
31 years old: 93 people
32 years old: 93 people
33 years old: 64 people
34 years old: 48 people
35 years old: 41 people
36 years old: 23 people
37 years old: 23 people
38 years old: 11 people
39 years old: 9 people
40 years old: 4 people
41 years old: 6 people
42 years old: 5 people
43 years old: 2 people
44 years old: 4 people
45 years old: 1 person
46 years old: 4 people
47 years old: 1 person
48 years old: 2 people
49 years old: 2 people
52 years old: 2 people
55 years old: 1 person
67 years old: 1 person
76 years old: 1 person
Although there are still many young comics readers today, especially if we include "comics" marketed as children's and YA books, it is unlikely many of those casual, non-collecting readers currently follow comics industry news outlets (like CBG was).
In 2011, DC Comics conducted a survey of people who had bought their "New 52" comics and wound up with the following results regarding their ages:
Unfortunately, a breakdown of results for each individual age was not provided, but it shows that the largest group of readers was between the ages of 25 and 34 years old, with the group between 35 and 44 years old as the second largest. Those under the age of 18 and over the age of 55 accounted for only 1% or 2% of responses.
In 2013, I did an informal survey of the ages of members of my Ditkomania Facebook group. The group is devoted to Steve Ditko, whose popularity among fans arguably peaked in the mid-1960s. Therefore it's natural that members of a group devoted to an older artist would themselves be in the older age group. I wrote the following about the results:
"Only three members in their 20s. Robert Crawford, who runs the Ditko Cultist website, is the youngest here (to reply anyway) at 23 years old. There are only 4 members in their Thirties who replied in this thread. There are 24 members in their Forties. There are 35 members in their Fifties (ten of those being age 58). There are 10 members in their Sixties, the oldest of them being 62 years old."
"Only three members in their 20s. Robert Crawford, who runs the Ditko Cultist website, is the youngest here (to reply anyway) at 23 years old. There are only 4 members in their Thirties who replied in this thread. There are 24 members in their Forties. There are 35 members in their Fifties (ten of those being age 58). There are 10 members in their Sixties, the oldest of them being 62 years old."
The most popular comic that Steve Ditko did was Spider-Man, which debuted in 1962. The oldest Ditkomania group member in 2013 (age 62) would have been around 12 years old in 1962, not yet a teenager and not yet "too old" to be reading a funnybook. The fact that there was no one older than that in the group suggests a "drop-off point," i.e., no one who was older than 12 years old in 1962 cared enough about Ditko's work in their later years to join a Facebook group about him (or at least to answer the survey question). The other cut-off point was for those under the age of 40. There were only 7 members under the age of 41. So it's apparent that Ditko's greatest impact was upon those who were born between the years 1950 and 1971. Beyond that demographic, interest in his work is more limited or even non-existent.
In the 1960s and 1970s, there were claims in the news media that the audience for comic books was getting older, and that even college students were avid readers. This claim was often made by Marvel Comics editor (and later publisher) Stan Lee at that time, when he regularly had speaking engagements on campuses extolling the virtues of Marvel and (to a lesser extent) the medium itself.
It's evident that the age of the average reader rose during this period that coincided with the birth and growth of organized comics fandom. The 1984 CBG and First survey results, however, suggest that most of those college-age fans of the 1960s and 1970s did not maintain their involvement into the 1980s -- at least not in significant numbers. (Another possibility is that the number of older fans was exaggerated to begin with.) A 21 year old adult in 1970 would have been 35 years old in 1984, and yet those who were 35 or older accounted for only 11.6% of First Comics readers.
Comics fandom grew out of the much-older and well-established science fiction fandom, whose members naturally skew older than those for comics, at least historically.
Since 1971, the science fiction magazine Locus has published an annual poll among their readers, and in 1984 they found that the most common age (and the average age) was 33 years old (i.e., nearly ten years older than the average First Comics reader).
Before 1980, the average Locus age was always under 30. (In 1971, when their polling began, it was 26.) Each year the average age in their annual poll either rose or stayed the same as the year before. The aging trend has continued. According to one site, in Locus' poll in 2010, "only 16 people under the age 30 voted."
In 2019, the Locus survey received 837 responses. "The majority are college-educated homeowners. Just over half are married. The median age is 45 years old." It's possible that the traditional age gap between science fiction fans and comics fans has finally narrowed.
Excellent article, outstanding research!
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