X-Men #1  ,186,500 copies

Without a doubt the very first issue of X-Men is the highest selling comic of all time, which is quite an accomplishment given it was released in 1990, it has so far sold 8.2 million copies! There’s no other comic which even comes close. 

So why did it sell so well? Firstly there were 5 different covers you could buy, which encouraged people to buy all of them. Also at the time X-Men was the biggest thing in comics. Jim Lee who illustrated the comic was hugely popular at the time. Lastly it was the first time in a long time that the original 5 were back together in the mansion. 

Star Wars #1 (2015) 1,073,000 copies

Next up is Star Wars but note it actually has sold 7 million less compared to X-Men#1 - it’s a huge gap! 

In 2015 Star Wars was huge, with the anticipation of the new dawn of the franchise, The Force Awakens. Suddenly there were lots of gaps to fill in the story, and Star Wars comics were there to fill them. This comic appealed to fans' nostalgia and promised to show them something new at the same time. This issue also had nearly 100 different variant covers to collect. Also Loot Crate included a copy with all its subscriptions. Even so they apparently only purchased 200,000, so Star Wars would still retain its 2nd position even if they hadn’t. 

FANTASTIC FOUR #60 (2002) 752,699 copies

This isn’t the first issue in the Fantastic Four series, like the 2 above, but it did mark the beginning of a new era with Mark Waid as the new writer, he would go on to write Fantastic Four for the next 3 years. Also a special promotion was ran where you could buy the comic for just 9c, 1c cheaper than DC’s promotional stunt, so yeah this comic didn’t make a lot of money. 

BATMAN: THE 10-CENT ADVENTURE (2002) #1 702,126 copies

And here is the second cheapest comic ever, at 10c. It encouraged many people to get into comics and then of course once they started reading they couldn’t stop and had to buy future issues of Batman. 

The cover is also considered one of the best comic covers of all time, we wrote a blog about our favourite comic covers of all time. The comic story itself was a good one, where Bruce Wayne was accused of murder, and the only way to get out of it was to admit his secret identity, as at the time he was 100’s of miles away being Batman

FCBD EDITION ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #1 (2002) 631,990 copies

This issue of Spiderman marked the first Spiderman comic by Brian Michael Bendis and was the comic which created the circumstance whereby Miles Morales would become Spiderman. This issue was designed to be a natural jumping on point for new readers, by restarting Peter Parker’s story and modernizing it. It was perfectly timed to coincide with the US premiere of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man.