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I still cannot believe how many copies the best-selling Marvel Comic of all time has sold. As one of the biggest comic book publishers in North America, Marvel has had some major sales hits in their day. The early 1990s saw an uptick in sales of comic books across the board, and it would be during this era that Marvel had its biggest hit ever, a record that still stands.
The biggest seller in Marvel’s history, and indeed in American comics in general, is 1991’s X-Men #1, written by Chris Claremont and drawn by Jim Lee. The book moved 8,186,500 copies in the summer of that year, and, remarkably, that record still stands. This sales triumph came hot on the heels of X-Force #1, which debuted just a few months prior and sold an estimated five million copies. By this point, Marvel was no stranger to massive debuts: Todd McFarlane’s adjectiveless Spider-Man sold 2.5 million copies upon its release a year earlier.
X-Men #1 Is a Landmark Comic, And Was a Decade in the Making
X-Men #1 Was Of Its Time As Well As Highly Influential
X-Men #1 smashed all records when it was first published, and the effects it would have on American comics cannot be understated, as they are still being felt 30 years later. And while it may be tempting to credit X-Men #1 for the aforementioned speculator boom of the early 1990s, it was in fact the culmination of over a decade’s worth of developments in the comics field. X-Men #1 added fuel to the speculator fire to be certain, but the match was lit much earlier, in the late 1980s.
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Prior to that decade, comic books did not enjoy a good reputation among society at large. The American reading public has always had an odd and evolving relationship with comics, as they went from cheap entertainment for kids to being blamed for all the ills of their youth. After that, comics returned to being seen as “fluff” and “child-like.” Despite this perception by the mainstream, a large subculture sprung up around comics, and in time it grew into something much bigger. By the mid-1980s, comics began making inroads into the mainstream, thanks to works such as Watchmen and Maus.
Comic book publishers took notice, and began implementing “gimmicks” to boost the numbers even further, including sealing the book in a bag (Spider-Man #1) or putting a card in the bag (X-Force #1).
These seminal works, along with a handful of others, revolutionized comics, attracting unprecedented attention, leading to increased sales. This bump in sales was also attributed to the media coverage, as people also began to believe that all old comics were worth lots of money. Comic book publishers took notice, and began implementing “gimmicks” to boost the numbers even further, including sealing the book in a bag (Spider-Man #1) or putting a card in the bag (X-Force #1). The numbers on these two books proved, at least at first, there was a new interest in comics.
Marvel Knew It Had Something Special On Its Hand With X-Men #1
X-Men #1 Represented the Very Best Marvel Had to Offer
The hype for X-Men #1 began months earlier, hinting that something massive was soon coming. One of the first house ads for X-Men #1 gave a shout-out to 1990’s Spider-Man #1 for setting a new sales record, before Marvel boldly declared: “We were just warming up!” The ad also featured new and instantly iconic art by Jim Lee. Lee, who made his Marvel debut on Alpha Flight in the mid-1980s, jumped over to Uncanny X-Men, where his bold style meshed well with writer Chris Claremont’s scripts. Claremont himself was already a Marvel legend for making the X-Men into its top franchise.
By the time X-Men #1 was published, Chris Claremont had been on the title for nearly 16 years.
The combined talents of Claremont and Lee, mixed in with the rising interest in comics, ensured X-Men #1 would have a massive debut. Marvel experienced great luck with Spider-Man and X-Force’s debuts, and the publisher understood the gimmicks behind those books were the reason the numbers were so high. Marvel realized it needed to one-up the previous sales stunts, hence the variant cover was born. X-Men #1 had five different covers: Jim Lee drew one massive image, showing the team rushing into battle. Then, Marvel divided the image into four separate covers, with a fifth, premium edition featuring the whole piece.
Comics had not seen anything like X-Men #1 before. The book drew attention from the mainstream media, and made Jim Lee into something of a celebrity. X-Men #1 also ignited the speculator boom, as fans flocked to stores, many buying multiple copies, if not all five editions out right. The American public now see comic books as something to collect, something that could one day help put someone’s kids through college, a far cry from the burnings of the early 1950s. X-Men #1 signaled a change in mainstream American comics.
X-Men #1’s Record Is Likely to Never Be Broken
A Number of Factors Ensures Marvel’s Sales Record Stands
While X-Men #1 led to a new rulebook for American comics, no doubt part of its legendary status is owed to the fact no other book has outsold it since. There are a variety of reasons this is so. The same speculator boom that X-Men #1 helped inaugurate burnt out by the mid-1990s, thanks to a glut of product: some publishers were shipping hundreds of thousands of copies that later went unsold. After nearly collapsing, the industry made a rebound, but sales never again achieved the levels of X-Men #1, giving Marvel a serious one-up on all other publishers.
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