In 1991, x-men #1 sold an estimated 8,186,500 copies, making it a likely candidate for the best-selling single-issue comic in history. And yes, that wiggle room matters. When it comes to pinpointing the exact rundown of the best-selling comics of all time, the data is confusing.
There are decades of comics history where industry numbers analysts only counted how many copies of Superman and Captain America the newsstands ordered, leaving historians with only concrete sales figures from 1997 onwards. And that’s without considering the apples-to-oranges comparison of America’s unique issue distribution method to, say, Japan’s weekly anthology magazines.
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If you want to base everything on confirmed numbers, you have some caveats. you end up with a list more akin to “the 10 best-selling single-issue American comics of all time for which we have solid data.”
so that’s what we did.
Our research owes much to comichron’s detailed compilations of best-selling comic book categories; the site’s post on the difficulties of naming the “best-selling comics of all time” is good and uplifting reading. We also grudgingly owe Diamond comics distributors a debt, for the company’s monopolistic takeover of the American comics shipping market, and its regular reports of comic book pre-order sales ever since.
With that in mind, here are the top 10 best-selling single-issue American comics, based on the hardest numbers in the industry’s patchy history.
10. Action Comics #1000 (2018)
copies sold: 504,200
Filling out the bottom of our list are the two youngest comics, this one commemorating the 80th anniversary of the first superhero, and the second oldest superhero comic still in operation and still standing today: superman and action comics. action comics #1000 is the first example of a trend we’ll see in the rest of the list, namely the big anniversary theme.
dc comics printed the 80-page behemoth with 11 different covers, which is on par for a book of its size and age. Aside from the milestone in comic book history it represented, and the wealth of creators DC was able to attract to fill its anthology, the #1000 Action Comics had a few other advantages to appeal to the interested collector.
superman returned to his classic costume in the issue, with his underwear sticking out, for the first time in seven years, and the issue also contained brian bendis’ first pages on superman, a big change for the legendary comic creator from marvel
9. detective comics #1000 (2019)
copies sold: 526,941
a year later (thanks to just a little editorial tweaking of the issue numbers), batman received his own 80th birthday present, with detective comics #1000, for the first four-digit issue from the oldest comic book series still in print. .
second verse, same as the first: the issue was a giant 80 page jam packed with a who’s who list of batman writers and artists. But I couldn’t claim the clout of a long-time Marvel comics writer’s first DC Comics job in years, or a costume change, to sweeten the deal.
How do you account for the fact that the book sold 22,000 more issues than the #1,000 action comics? Batman is probably more popular.
8. incredible spider-man #583 (2009)
copies sold: 530,500
Have you noticed why an otherwise uninteresting subject, Mark Waid and Barry Kitson’s Amazing Spider-Man, appeared on this list? I’ll give you a hint: it was published on January 15, 2009.
but you’ve probably already guessed. It was all about the presidency-related story and variant cover of the issue, released to coincide with Barack Obama’s inauguration as the 44th President of the United States. The issue itself contained the “Spidey Meets the President” backup story, in which the Chameleon uses his mimicry skills to try to take the place of then-Senator Obama and be sworn in as President.
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peter parker is present covering the inauguration as a photographer for the daily bugle and, as spider-man, he discovers the real obama of the chameleon by asking him a question that only the real barack obama could answer: what was his nickname? on your high school varsity basketball team? More than 530 thousand issues later, Amazing Spider-Man #853 made this list.
7. secret wars #1 (2015)
copies sold: 550,500
The Secret Wars of 2015 was the continuation of one of the first and most notorious Marvel Comics crossovers of all time, the Secret Wars of 1984.
That story featured the cosmic entity, the afterlife, sending all of Marvel’s most popular heroes and villains to an alien planet where it forced them to fight to the death. the 2015 version continued with the “everyone is here!” vibrates destroying the wondrous multiverse. leftover pieces from all the wonderful parallel lands were collected on a patchwork planet called a battleworld, and things proceeded from there.
The crossover’s promise to destroy the setting for long-running definitive wonders and end a 15-year era may have boosted sales. or… it may have been the more than four dozen variant covers.
6. amazing spider-man #1 (2014)
copies sold: 559,200
Smack in the middle of writer Dan Slott’s now-legendary Spider-Man run, The Amazing Spider-Man #1 was a happy turning point for the character. A few years earlier, Peter Parker lost control of himself when Doctor Octopus Freaky-Friday entered the body of the wall-crawler. Peter apparently died in the sick form of Otto Octavius, and his dying wish moved Otto himself to renounce villainy and fight crime as the superior Spider-Man.
but with amazing spider-man #1 (actually the third wonder of amazing spider-man #1 ever published), peter parker was back in control of his own body, and of spider-man, for that matter. first time in two years. .
Like others on this list, the issue was an anthology, with some big names in Spider-Man history returning to the character. it’s also the first issue in an ongoing series, making it a potential seller on the collectible market. all of these factors may have contributed to its overall selling quality.
The nearly 75 variant covers probably didn’t hurt either.
5. fcbd ultimate spider-man edition #1 (2002)
copies sold: 631,990
ultimate spider-man #1 is kind of weird. It’s not a big anniversary issue, it’s not an anthology, and it came with a modest four variant covers.
what ultimate spider-man is, in retrospect, is the beginning of a series that would mean massive changes for marvel comics. first, ushering in the rise of writer Brian Michael Bendis, and second, eventually creating the circumstances under which Miles Morales would become Spider-Man.
But we’re not just talking about Ultimate Spider-Man #1, released in 2000. We’re also talking about the 2002 Free Comic Book Day re-release, timed to coincide with the US release of Raimi’s Spider-Man Sam. The issue was designed to be a natural starting point for new readers, rebooting Peter Parker’s superhero story from the beginning and modernizing it as it went along.
That Hollywood appeal of potential new readers fueled pre-orders for the reissue at retailers, bolstering Ultimate Spider-Man #1’s overall sales numbers. the actual sales figures for the book are likely to be slightly higher, as the data we have on it doesn’t include any reordering that retailers have done after that initial sales cap.
4. batman: the 10 cent adventure (2002) #1
copies sold: 702,126
I can tell you firsthand that Batman: The 10 Cent Adventure achieved its goal of capturing readership at a nostalgically low price because it was the comic that convinced me to start buying comics. he had to find out what happened next, and he had to find out now.
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the 10 cent adventure kicked off the two part crossover arc bruce wayne: killer? and Bruce Wayne: Fugitive, which made our list of the best Batman comics ever made, and ended with a cliffhanger. Bruce Wayne had been framed for murder, and the only way out of it was to admit his secret alibi: he had been miles away as Batman at the time of death.
but a cliffhanger can’t sell a comic before it hits the stores. the adventure’s promotional price of 10 cents (ie, 10 red cents) probably had more to do with it.
3. Fantastic Four #60 (2002)
copies sold: 752,699
Fantastic 4 #60 combines the appeal of the 10 cent adventure and the amazing spider-man #1. The issue isn’t the first in its series, but it did mark the beginning of a new era, with writer Mark Waid stepping forward for what would become an acclaimed three-year run on the title.
The issue isn’t an anthology, but it did have a special promotional edition that sold for just nine cents, half a year after DC’s penny-more-expensive promotional gimmick. As you can see, the issue makes sure to let you know that this issue is the “cheapest comic book magazine in the world.”
2. star wars #1 (2015)
copies sold: 1,073,000
If you’ve been paying attention to the sales figures, chances are your eyes are wide open. That’s a huge jump from the 752,699 copies of the Fantastic Four #60 and the just over a million of Star Wars #1.
for that, we can look at the state of star wars in 2015. the anticipation of a new dawn for the franchise with star wars: the force awakens collided with a drifting fandom after most of its canon was declared extinct. Suddenly, there were a lot of gaps to fill in the Star Wars saga, and Marvel Comics was there to fill them, having recently re-licensed Star Wars Comics from its parent company, Disney, after Lucasfilm’s contract with Dark expired. horse comics.
As a book that tells canonical stories in the middle of the original Star Wars trilogy, Star Wars #1 hit that sweet spot of appealing to nostalgic fans of the old expanded universe and promises to show readers something new.
But that’s not the only factor at play here. The issue also had nearly 100 different variant covers to collect, and the subscription box service’s Loot Box also placed a sizable order for the comic, packing a copy of Star Wars #1 into each box of its monthly shipment. Still, according to Comichron, Loot Crate only bought “several hundred thousand” copies. Even if those orders don’t count, Star Wars #1 won’t be dethroned as the best-selling comic of the 21st century any time soon. .
1. x-men #1 (1991)
copies sold: 8,186,500
and finally, the granddaddy of them all: x-men #1, famous for being the best-selling comic for which we have hard data, with nearly eight times as many issues sold as its second-place challenger.
There has never been anything quite like the early ’90s in American comics since the early ’90s, and that’s for a lot of disparate reasons. but the most relevant here is what is known as the speculative boom. With their sights set on comic book collecting, thanks to the success of movies like Batman and books like The Dark Knight Returns, the media began reporting on comics from the juiciest angle they could find: how much you could sell your old comics.
The temptation to find a copy of the #1 action comics and sell it for over a million dollars caught many people, and comic book companies played with it, advertising big events: new costumes, first appearances , character deaths and first issues. – as not only narratively exciting but literally valuable.
of course the value in issues like #1 action comics and #15 amazing fantasy is that no one knew superman and spider-man were going to be hits, so hardly anyone took the hassle of producing, buying, or preserving many copies of their earliest appearances. those books are rare and therefore considered valuable.
and that’s what everyone thought would happen with x-men #1, which shipped in staggered deliveries over five weeks, with five different covers. four of the covers, if collected, could be placed side by side to form a single wide mural (seen at the top of this post) and the final version had no ads, cost more and had a double fold cover that could be unfolded to show the full image, drawn by fan-favorite up-and-coming young artistic superstar, jim lee.
You can already guess the result. Retailers flooded the market with an estimated 8,186,500 copies of X-Men #1 to meet demand, and collectors picked them up and kept them. it is everywhere on the collectors market. And today, you’ll be lucky enough to get a dollar for your copy of the best-selling single-issue American comic book of all time, or at least, the best-selling single-issue American comic book of all time for which we have any hard data. in.
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