October 1987 Comic Book Sales to Comics Shops

Estimated Comics Preordered by North American Comics Shops
Based on Reports from Diamond Comic Distributors

Crossovers dominated the fall of 1987, with "The Fall of the Mutants" taking place at Marvel while "Millennium" was underway at DC. There weren't many first issues in the month, but the number of "event" comics more than made up for that.

The weekly issues of the Millennium series from DC took the fifth through eighth slots in the Top 100, with the final issue outselling the others. The sprawling event took in seventeen other cross-over issues in October: Adventures of Superman #437, Blue Beetle #21, Booster Gold #25, Firestorm: The Nuclear Man #68, Flash #9, Green Lantern Corps #221, Infinity Inc. #47, Justice League International #10, Legion of Super-Heroes #43, Outsiders #28, Secret Origins #23, Spectre #11, Suicide Squad #10, Superman #14, Teen Titans Spotlight #19, Wonder Woman #13, and Young All-Stars #9.

Fresh from the Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters miniseries, the Emerald Archer began a long run with a regular series with Green Arrow #1.

Another series debut was Star Trek: The Next Generation #1; the six-issue miniseries saw its first issue go on sale the first week of November. The TV series had premiered in syndication on Sept. 28.

No graphic novels appeared in the Top 100, but the leader was probably Daredevil: Born Again by Frank Miller and Dave Mazzucchelli, which came out on Oct. 13 and was priced at $8.95.

The top dollar book at Capital — and likely at Diamond — was the History of the DC Universe limited edition, a 128-page book; it was solicited for Oct. 27 and received preorders accordingly, but it didn't ship until 1988.

The raw version of the chart below was presumably published in the September 1987 Diamond Dialogue newsletter; it was reprinted in Comics Values Monthly #21, where we found it. We've added publishers and ship dates. Diamond did not yet report market shares; Capital City this month found Marvel with a dollar share of 35.07%, DC with a dollar share of 34.54%, and Eclipse at 5.71%. DC had passed Marvel in the two months previous, but "Fall of the Mutants" helped the publisher move back atop the charts.

The dates shown below are the dates the comics shipped from the printer, according to Capital City's Orderpak (October 1989) and subsequently reported in Amazing Heroes #127 and #128 (Oct. 15 and Nov. 1, 1987). Marvel Age's shipping date comes from Marvel Age #58 (Jan. 1988). Capital reported almost all dates as Tuesdays, which corresponded to when the printer Ronald's released its comics — but World Color Press wasn't releasing its books until 12:01 a.m. on Thursdays. It's not clear which books came from that printer, however, so we've kept everything on Tuesday unless the dates said otherwise.

Further, in this era, distributor catalog dates for all publishers did not synch up exactly with the calendar month, so Diamond's October charts include one week's worth of DC comics from November — and are missing the first week's comics, which would have appeared in Diamond's September charts. This would continue until March 1995, when DC would realign its solicitations with the Direct Market's calendar month (that chart only included three weeks of DC sales). Because Diamond did not report indexed sales, there is no way to know where those comics would have landed in this month's chart.

—John Jackson Miller

This list includes all items on Diamond's Top 100 chart.
Distributor charts are regional commodity reports, not measures of a work's total reach. Read our FAQ.
The links lead to current listings for each item on eBay. You can also find the books at your comics shop.