Greatest Month in Newsstand History???

[johnnyhedge-migration]

I'm a big fan of the vintage newsstand pics that are posted here from time to time. It's a trip to see books that are so rare in the hobby today in-bulk on a news rack, in their natural habitat. Wouldn't it be a sight to see a rack full of near-mint Action #1's in 1938? This got me thinking... what's the greatest singe month in comic publishing history?

 

My vote would be for March 1963. What a treat (not to mention a great investment opportunity!) for the kid who got to pick between Amazing Spider-Man #1, Tales of Suspense #39 and Fantastic Four #12!!! Silver-age bias aside, I'm sure there's other months that would rank up there as well. Anyone have any other candidates?

[Primetime]

March '63 was a great month--Hulk #6 was on the rack too

 

Also, keep in mind that the books were actually on the racks roughly 1-3 months prior to the publishing date on the actual comic (depending on the distributor in certain areas)...so March '63 comics were actually on the newsstands in Dec '62/Jan. '63, which date stamps on the comics would confirm (thumbs u

 

GA wise, here are some of my favorites...

 

Nov. 1939

Marvel Comics 1

Tec 33

 

March 1940

Tec 37

Marvel Mystery 5

 

July 1940:

Marvel Mystery 9

All American #16

 

 

 

[aardvark88]

From the Marvel zombie perspective:

Sept, 1963

Avengers 1

ASM #4 Sandman

X-men #1 (thumbs u

 

add:

FF 19, JIM 96, Sgt Fury 3 (more Kirby), Strange Tales 112, ToS 45, TTA 47.

 

 

 

[FlyingDonut]

There's a picture floating around on the forum that shows Amazing Fantasy 15 and Journey Into Mystery 83 on the same newsstand. That's not terrible.

[rodan57]

I'm a big fan of the vintage newsstand pics that are posted here from time to time. It's a trip to see books that are so rare in the hobby today in-bulk on a news rack, in their natural habitat. Wouldn't it be a sight to see a rack full of near-mint Action #1's in 1938? This got me thinking... what's the greatest singe month in comic publishing history?

 

My vote would be for March 1963. What a treat (not to mention a great investment opportunity!) for the kid who got to pick between Amazing Spider-Man #1, Tales of Suspense #39 and Fantastic Four #12!!! Silver-age bias aside, I'm sure there's other months that would rank up there as well. Anyone have any other candidates?

 

 

A Marvel perspective:

 

If we're going to borrow that time machine, we need to make sure we're traveling back to the right month as the cover dates are not the newsstand dates. And to make things even more interesting, not all books that came out the same month (i.e., shared the newsstand together) had the same 'cover' months.

 

Some good months:

 

September 1958

(Kirby, Ditko and Heck are all now at Marvel with Lee)

Tales of Suspense #1

Tales to Astonish #1

Strange Worlds #1

World of Fantasy #15

 

 

June 1962

Amazing Fantasy #15

Journey into Mystery #83

 

 

July 1962

(5 out of Marvel's 12 release this month are superhero titles.)

Fantastic Four #7

Incredible Hulk #3

Journey into Mystery #84

Starnge Tales #101

Tales to Astonish #36

 

 

December 1962

(6 out of 12 releases are superhero titles.)

Amazing Spider-Man #1

Fantastic Four #12

Journey into Mystery #89

Strange Tales #106

Tales of Suspense #39

Tales to Astonish #41

 

 

January 1963

(6 out of 10 releases are superheroes.)

Fantastic Four #13

Incredible Hulk #6

Journey into Mystery #90

Strange Tales #107

Tales of Suspense #40

Tales to Astonish #42

 

For the curious the other 4 titles were:

Gunsmoke Western #75

Love Romances #104

Patsy & Hedy #87

Rawhide Kid #33

 

 

July 1963

(10 out of 15 titles are superhero books if you include Sgt. Fury.)

Amazing Spider-Man #5

Avengers #1

Fantastic Four #19

Fantastic Four Annual #1

Journey into Mystery #96

Sgt. Fury #3

Strange Tales #113

Tales of Suspense #46

Tales to Astonish #48

X-Men #1

 

And these are just the months with a significant number of releases. August 1961 is still a good month to pick up a few copies of Fantastic Four #1.

 

The worst month to visit is December 1960 when Atlas/Marvel did not release any tiltes.

All the newsstand issues for November were released on Oct. 27th.

The newsstand issues for January were released December 29th and January 5th.

(December 1960 cannot compete with the comic book failures in 1957 but I consider that an Atlas story.)

 

 

[Icculus308win]

Pertaining to Marvel and me being quite bias since these two characters are two of my favorite Marvel creations - April 1962 is pretty neat in my eyes. Granted only two characters debut, but one made a helleva run. Granted it is nothing near as monumental or monetarily as important as those listed above.

 

But if you take 1964 March - Sept (hey there would still be a couple past month issues leftover on the newsstands) that was nice 7 month run for Marvel.

 

March Cap is back (Avengers #4)

April Black Widow Enters (TOS #52)

April Daredevil Debuts (DD #1)

July Green Goblin Appears (Spidey #14)

Sept Hawkeye Arrives (TOS #57)

[dekeuk]

 

Greatest month ever was MAY 1976 because that was the month I bought my first Batman comic which was BATMAN #278

 

 

Others may have a different opinion though

 

 

 

 

[Ringfinger]

Man, If I could go back in time.