Who are the most popular US comic superheroes?
Without going off too far into a discussion of what popularity means we’re going to use a nice easy metric.
Sales figures.
And we’re going to see how that bears up against value.
Superheroes are intimately linked with real history.
Because who is the most collectible music artist of all time?
Easy question, I know.
It’s the Beatles.
And again, without too much drift into technicalities of how streams compare to record sales and… we’re going to say they’re also among the most popular musical artists of all time. That's uncontroversial.
Popular rarities: the collector's sweet spot
And that illustrates a sort of sweet spot for collectors: rarity within popularity.
The popularity of The Beatles brings enormous demand.
And the rarity of an item like a signed album, a withdrawn record cover or a guitar gives you value.
And the same is true within comic books.
Like pop music, these stories weren’t expected to have much long-lasting value.
No-one expected this comic to be a hit, let alone for it to sell for $6 million in the next century.
After all they were just for kids.
Before they attained collectible value, the vast majority of comic superhero material - the comics themselves, cards, toys - was cheaply produced and expendable.
The comic was read on the bus to work then chucked in a bin. Cheap, cheerful and chuckable.
That means some older items are rare because not much has survived.
But there are also rarities, special editions, errors and so on within these markets, though these tend to be of a younger vintage.
My favourite advice for collectors looking for an area to explore is the most obvious of all: collect what you love.
Any collection born out of passion will be carefully put together and well researched.
I think this is more likely to produce value - in monetary terms - than chasing undervalued items.
Of course Batman is the best superhero, played here by Adam West.
And for most of us the value of a collection is in the collection itself.
So who’s your favourite among these superheroes?
It’s Batman for me.
Most popular American superhero comics by copies sold
These figures close off a whole world.
Japanese comic sales are enormous. Here, we’re looking at the American market though, by using the sales figures for “floppy” comics, those disposable one-issues
8 - The Phantom
Sold 150 million copies of 3,00 issues between 1936 and 2016.
The phantom was born as a newspaper strip.
The Phantom pioneered the archetypal superhero look of mask and skin-tight body suit. Flying out of Bangalla, a made-up African country, he is a hero without being super - he’s very very good at stuff but has no extra abilities. Though he is mythically immortal, the Phantom is in fact a long line of father-to-son heroes.
He was created by Lee Falk and has run in newspapers, comics, on TV and film.
Most valuable Phantom: An Australian copy of the Phantom’s 1948 birth in Phantom #1 Enter the Phantom solf for A$20,000. Copies of the US version are worth over $4,000.
7 - Spawn
Sold 150 million copies of 600 issues between 1992 and 2016.
Todd McFarlane created the Spawn long before he made it into mass print. He's still going strong, and is very much not a simple Good Guy. Image Image Comics.
Al Simmons is Spawn, and he’s not super at all! Simmons was sent to hell for what he did as a mercenary, but is given a way out as the Spawn, who returns to earth to fight evil. OK.
Todd McFarlane created the character while he was still a teenager, in 1977, but he didn’t find a publication home until 1992, when he was a launch character for McFarlane’s Image Comics.
McFarlane is still drawing Spawn, and has added a number of spin-off and cross over title. When Spawn was filmed in 1997, he was the most popular comic book character in the world. Another movie is said to be in the pipeline.
Most valuable Spawn: Some Spawn comics had relatively small print runs, so crate diggers can find some real value. A copy of Spawn #185 with a rare sketch cover has sold for over $17,000 in 2023.
6 - Diabolik
Sold 150 million copies of 862 issues between 1962 and 2016.
Diabolik's film career is loved by collectors of posters. This is from 1968.
An Italian hero joins us!
Diabolik is also unusual in being created by women, the Giussani sisters, Angela and Luciana.
Diabolik, as the name suggests, is kind of a villain and may be based on Fantomas, the French pulp novel hero beloved of the surrealists. Diabolik was a thief, but over the series starts to become slightly less naughty.
He’s been on large and small screens and is now in video games.
Most valuable Diabolik: the most valuable items I can find are posters for the 1968 Paramount movie, Danger: Diabolik that can go for up to around $1,000.
5 - Captain America
Sold 210 million copies of 9,000 issues between 1941 and 2016.
Stay out of the way of this shield.
The Captain America story is very well known now, thanks to the Marvel movies series, with Chris Evans playing the character.
He was born in 1940 and first published in 1941, when Steve Rogers signs up for the US Army and gets injected with a serum that gives him super powers.
Initially a major WWII propaganda character, Captain America was designed to promote America’s entry into the war, and battling Nazis has been his signature. He was created by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon and helped launch Marvel Comics.
Most valuable Captain America: A near-mint copy of Captain America Comics No. 1 printed in 1941
A near-mint copy of 1941's Captain America Comics No. 1 sold for $3,120,000 in 2022.
4 - The X-Men
Sold 260 million copies of 12,000 issues from 1963 to 2016.
The original team get together. Image Marvel Comics.
Enter Stan Lee, probably the most famous real-life character in comic book history. Lee teamed up with Jack Kirby to make a team of fighters who are now one of Marvel’s biggest hits.
Covering every X person, spin off, series, movie, or game would take forever, but the original team is: Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Beast, Angel, and Iceman and Magneto was their nemesis, as he has largely remained.
Most Valuable X-Men: A copy of X-Men #1 was sold for $872,000 in 2022, the same copy had been sold for $70,000 less just a year earlie.
3 - Spider Man
Sold 387 million copies of 13,500 issues from 1963 to 2016.
Spider-Man wasn't even worth his own title when he was born.
Stan Lee again, with his most famous creation, brought to life with artist Steve Ditko.
Spider-Man didn’t get his own title when he was born in 1962, but Peter Parker has webbed his way to glory across mediums and around the world since then.
Parker was perfectly timed to be a hit - the first teenager in a superhero story to take a leading role, just as the world went teen mad.
He’s a central part of the Marvel Universe and has most recently been played on screen by Tom Holland, who’s due back on big screens and streams in a new film next year.
Most valuable Spider-Man: Spider-Man’s debut in Amazing Fantasy #15 sold for $3.6 million in 2021. His own series, The Amazing Spider-Man #1 has sold for $1.38 million.
2 - Batman
Sold 484 million copies of 18,732 issues between 1938 and 2016.
A moment of birth as Thomas Wayne is murdered in Gotham.
The Dark Knight arrives.
A DC standout in a list of Marvel heroes, Batman was created in 1939 and through comics, TV and movies his origin story and identity, billionaire Bruce Wayne from Gotham City, are deeply woven into our popular culture.
Batman has been reimagined and repurposed many times: he has a dark side that makes him fascinating to writers.
And he’s not super, relying only on his own efforts and enormous amounts of money.
Bob Kane and Bill Finger created the man bat for Detective Comics #27 and he went on to fly and fight through a plethora of series.
Batman, currently portrayed by Robert Pattinson in movies, is the first superhero to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Most valuable Batman: Detective Comics no 27 sold for $1.82 million in 2024. His solo debut, in Batman no. 1 made $2.22 million in 2021.
1 - Superman
Sold 600 million copies of 18,732 issues from 1938 to 2016.
Jerry Siegel, who invented Superman and annoyed the Nazis in the process.
The man who fell to earth is usually cited as the first modern superhero.
Is he? Probably not, but that’s an argument for another place, and he was the first to become a major cultural phenomenon in the world’s biggest media market, so he gets the crown.
Superman, born Kal-El on Krypton, was created by Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster for Action Comics #1.
He’s wholesome to the point of being somewhat one-dimensional, but was a hit as soon as he hit the newsstands of an America looking at a looming war with horror.
Siegel and Shuster were Jewish, and Nazi propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels made a point of condemning both Superman and Siegel for their Jewishness.
The Superman films of the early 1980s helped to kick off the modern cycle of big-budget special effects movies that are still with us now. Christopher Reeve was that Superman, he’s currently Henry Cavill.
Superman went solo in 1939.
Most valuable Superman: Action Comics No. 1 is legendary and is the most valuable comic book in history. It’s rare, in part because no-one knew Superman would be an enormous hit, and the cover is fantastic. There are multiple record-breaking, million dollar-plus sales of both that title and Superman’s own series debut. In 2024 an Action Comics No. 1 realised a record $6 million at auction. In 2022, Superman #1 sold for a reported $5.3 million in a private sale.
Superheroes, movies, toys
The superhero world now extends well beyond the comic books they were born in.
Movies, video games, action figures (a name specially invented so boys wouldn’t have to ask for “dolls”), collecting cards and much much more slakes our unconscionable thirst for super glory.
As the world’s largest collectibles dealer we often handle exciting superhero items.
