January 1988 Comic Book Sales to Comics Shops
Estimated Comics Preordered by North American Comics Shops
Based on Reports from Diamond Comic Distributors
No sales chart for Diamond Comic Distributors for January 1988 has yet been located. It would have appeared in the distributor's Diamond Dialogue newsletter. Comics Values Monthly magazine, which had started reprinting Diamond's charts with the June 1987 table, skipped this month. But Amazing Heroes #134 (Feb. 1, 1988) did run an article which listed both the Top 10 and the bottom five items from Diamond's chart, and those appear below.
Just as at rival Capital City Distribution, Uncanny X-Men #229 was in first place, followed by X-Factor in second, and the Todd McFarlane Amazing Spider-Man #300 in third. Fifth at Capital City, New Mutants was fourth at Diamond.
DC filled out the Top Five with Action Comics #600, an 80-Page Giant and the final issue of the series before its ill-fated experiment with weekly releases. Because of its price it would likely have been the top dollar comic book.
Capital City's top graphic novel was Marvel's Savage Land trade paperback (unless you count Superman: The Earth Stealers, but that was only 48 pages). The book could well have led at Diamond too.
We'll update this page should an official version of the Diamond charts come in. If you have a copy of the Diamond Dialogue for this month, contact us at the address at right.
—John Jackson Miller
This list includes all the known 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.
| Units | Comic-book Title | Issue | Price | Shipped | Publisher |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Uncanny X-Men | 229 | $1.00 | 01/21/88 | Marvel |
| 2 | X-Factor | 28 | $1.00 | 01/28/88 | Marvel |
| 3 | Amazing Spider-Man | 300 | $1.50 | 01/14/88 | Marvel |
| 4 | New Mutants | 63 | $1.00 | 01/07/88 | Marvel |
| 5 | Action Comics | 600 | $2.50 | 02/02/88 | DC |
| 6 | Justice League International | 13 | $0.75 | 01/12/88 | DC |
| 7 | Punisher | 8 | $1.00 | 01/07/88 | Marvel |
| 8 | Green Arrow | 4 | $1.00 | 01/19/88 | DC |
| 9 | Silver Surfer | 11 | $1.00 | 01/21/88 | Marvel |
| 10 | Superman | 17 | $0.75 | 02/11/88 | DC |
| 96 | Concrete | 6 | $1.75 | Dark Horse | |
| 97 | Nexus | 44 | $1.75 | 12/31/87 | First |
| 98 | Visionaries | 4 | $1.00 | 01/21/88 | Marvel |
| 99 | Speed Racer | 8 | $1.75 | Now | |
| 100 | Airboy | 35 | $1.75 | 01/05/88 | Eclipse |
Diamond did not release separate graphic novel charts in this era.
