What Is The Top Selling Comic Book Issue Of All Times?
I have been around comics for many years and I know comics as well as the next guy but this question got me thinking for a while. What single issue comic sold the most issues of all times. I thought of the Death of Superman in Superman #75, The Amazing Spider-Man #583 (the Obama issue) went into I think six printings, and the Death of Robin in Batman #428 one of the first comic events to make mainstream news. Then I remembered the comic event by Marvel of the 1991 the new release of X-Men #1 in 5 new covers written by Chris Claremont and drawn by Jim Lee. Shipping with four variant covers priced at $1.50, and a special gatefold cover combining all four and printed on higher quality paper selling for $3.95, X-Men #1 sold nearly 8.1 million copies with the combined sales of all five editions. That gave Marvel’s 1991 X-Men #1 The Guinness World Record Best Selling Comic Of All Time.
The comic sales of the 90’s as I remember them was fueled by speculation, not necessarily comic fans. When I sold comics back then young people would ask me what comic I thought would go up in value. I would tell the young person there are lots of reasons comics and other collectibles go up in value the most important being popularity and low print runs and how rare an issue is. It is simply supply and demand. Then I would recommend they buy comic books because they liked the story and artwork not because it might put them through college someday or make them rich. Sometimes they would listen and be wiser for it.
Comic books are a form of Entertainment and unless you have some money and want to speculate on old classic comics you should realize they should be enjoyed as such. That is what we are about at Comics Talk to make the most of the entertainment and pleasure of reading this visual media. So to put this in perspective I have a list of the most popular comic book issues of the last 10 years to show what comics have sold in the real world of entertainment below this post. Keep in mind I don’t think the record of X-Men #1 will ever or should ever be broken. If it is ever broken I hope it is from comic readers who want to read not speculate on its future value. But such is the world we live in. We are here for you with Comics Talk news and information, stay tuned comic faithful for more. 🙂 Walt
PS; The top-selling comic book Issue of the last 10 years was the Obama Inauguration Day Issue: 530,500 Unit Sales and check out our other posts on comics and movies plus read comics on the web free Here.
