Here at Comics Price Guide, we love to track different numbers.  Obviously, we track values for comics but we also track the number of times a book is searched.  Every time someone searches for an issue like Strange Tales #168 our system keeps count.  We don’t know who searched for it but we know that someone did.  When you think about it, this can give you trends and help gauge real interest.  We see what books people want more information about or comics that people want to know the value. 

I’ve compiled some data from three separate groupings, 2020 searches, 2019 searches, 2018 and older searches.  Take a look at these quick-rising books and let me know how you decipher the data.  

Rising Fast 2020 Ranking 2019 Ranking 2018 and Older
Savage She-Hulk #1 3 6 73
Amazing Spider-man #101 4 55 45
Rai #0 7 124 Not in top 250
Venom: Lethal Protector #4 9 Not in top 250 Not in top 250
Eternals #1 13 15 114
Venom: Lethal Protector #1 18 53 28
Spider-Woman #1 20 23 130
Spectacular Spiderman #1 25 129 97
Thor #337 26 8 93
Werewolf by Night #32 32 32 92

Some of the hottest books on the 2020 list were new releases and that’s not typical.  As the year goes on these hot new releases will drop down the list unless they have some important element that keeps them on collector’s minds.  Batman #89 was the most searched for comic book of the first 2-1/2 months of 2020.  Even the variant of that book ranked in the top 50 books so far this year.  Batman #90, Year of the Villain: Hell Arisen #3, Batman Beyond #37 and Lois Lane #8 were highly searched for as well.  Marvel’s only new release that ranked in the top 60 was Donny Cates’ Thor #1, which makes sense if you’ve read Donny Cates’s other work.  He’s amazing

Amazing Spider-man 300In the category I’m naming, always highly sought after comic books, Marvel dominates.  These books don’t really need numbers after them because they are always in this same order.  Amazing Spider-man #300 is easily the most searched for book year in and year out.  To give you some perspective, ASM #300 is searched for twice as much as Uncanny X-men #266, which is high on the list.

Amazing Spider-man #300
New Mutants #98
Incredible Hulk #181
Amazing Spider-man #361
Giant-Size X-men 1
Uncanny X-men #266
Amazing Spider-man #129

The trends that we see in some of these books are very interesting.  We can see when a comic starts dropping in the rankings.  For Example, Walking Dead issue 193 was the 18th most popular search in 2019.  For 2020, it is the 124th most popular search. 

Let me know what kinds of search data you would like to see and maybe I make more of these data-heavy posts.

by Ron Cloer
https://www.instagram.com/ronbatman/

 

7 Replies to “How to Tell What Comics are Hot”

  1. I came to the forums looking to see if there was a discussion about “this very topic”, so I have a handful of ideas:
    1) It’d be great to have a constant list of the “Top N” book in each year. Tracking how those lists change over time would be interesting to some, but for most, “What might I have from that year, that people are interested in ‘now’?” will be what most are looking for.
    2) Before you said you had kept track of all searches, which is a great resource, I was thinking that something like “closed auction sales” would need to be queried from someone like eBay or ha.com
    3) This would also be an interesting resource within genres, and within ages.

    In short, I think this is a valuable resource that attracts people looking to assess their collections.

    1. I wrote this article on a whim because it was interesting to me and apparently interesting to other collectors too.
      Ron

  2. I have always wondered what the count could be used for and now I know and have a few ideas for you.
    1. I think that in your table it should not show 2020 or 2018 and older because you are comparing an incomplete data set with 1 complete data set and a data set that is a compilation of lots of complete data sets. To me that data would be better if the first set was 2019’s top 250 and then the next columns were what rank the top 250 of 2019 were in the previous years.
    2. I think that the 2020 data should be more like the top 100 comics collected each week. It would just be the top 100 comics searched this week. You could also have a this month and so far this year.
    3. I think the more data you give to use no matter how you present it is a plus.
    Thanks

  3. This topic interests me, too, and I echo Rob’s comments. I’m a 73 year old owner of a collection of several thousand comics i amassed between 1964 and 1999, with only a handful from the early 2000’s. I’m now getting serious about selling it so my son and grandkids won’t toss it, so knowing of “Hot” issues in that time frame is essential. I’ve returned to CPC after 3 years of not checking in, so am exploring the changes in the web site. Your discussions in this section are terrific!!

  4. I am very interested in this topic. I would like to see search data for different publishers. I know Marvel is tops and has been for what seems like decades, but I would like to see a DC list. Frankly, I would like to see a lot more than that. A Gold Key/Whitman List, Image List, Charlton LIst and maybe a more generic Independent List would all be helpful information!

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