Knowledge Waits is a feature where I just share some bit of comic book history that interests me.

Late last year, I did a legend about whether DC Comics canceled Brave and the Bold despite it being the best-selling Batman title at the time. I noted that that was not true. However, there was an interesting twist to it (one that my pal, Glen Cadigan, picked up as well when I posted that first legend).

Team-up series were a popular kind of book back in the days when comic books were sold almost entirely on newsstands. Brave and the Bold was not originally a team-up book, but with Brave and the Bold #50, the book became a team-up series...

Around #67, in the midst of the mania from the Batman TV series, Batman became the permanent co-star of the book...

Before comic books started being sold in comic book stores, the main approach for comics was to hook in people who weren't necessarily at the newsstand to buy a comic book (while the direct market's business model was that you were in a comic book store because you wanted a comic book). So stuff like "Two heroes for the price of one!" was once a major sales point.

Thus, Brave and the Bold used to be a strong-seller. I did a Comic Book Legends Revealed a couple of months ago where Carmine Infantino confirmed that at one point, Brave and the Bold was the top-selling Batman title. I didn't know WHEN it was the top-selling book. I thought it was sometime around 1973, after the main Batman books had come back down to Earth from their high sales driven by the hit Batman TV series.

Well, reader Damian Hospital wrote in with sales numbers for each of the titles from 1966-1982 and it turns out that I was off by a couple of years and that it was 1975 that saw Brave and the Bold at the top of the heap.

Here are the sales numbers Damian provided...

1966

Batman 898,470

Detective Comics 404,339

Brave & Bold 279,406

1967

Batman 805,700

Detective Comics 425,700

Brave & Bold: 342,400

1968

Batman 533,450

Detective Comics 309,850

Brave & Bold 290,900

1969

Batman 355,782

Brave & Bold 242,501

Detective Comics 221,267

1970

Batman 293,897

Brave & Bold 211,266

Detective Comics 209,630

1971

Batman 244,488

Brave & Bold: 210,708

Detective Comics: 199,112

1972

Batman 185,283

Brave & Bold 179,819

Detective Comics 158,638

1973

Batman 200,574

Brave & Bold 190,047

Detective Comics 153,942

1974

Batman 193,223

Brave & Bold 191,722

Detective Comics 145,832

1975

Brave & Bold 160,000

Batman 154,000

Detective Comics 146,000

1976

Batman 178,000

Brave & Bold 153,000

Detective Comics 148,800

1977

Batman 168,164

Brave & Bold 149,791

Detective Comics 125,743

1978

Detective Comics 129,792

Batman 125,421

Brave & Bold 121,563

1979

Batman 166,640

Brave & Bold 153,034

Detective Comics 79,872

1980

Batman 129,299

Brave & Bold 109,180

Detective Comics 64,635

1981

Batman 110,997

Brave & Bold 92,847

Detective Comics 89,710

1982

Batman 108,234

Brave & Bold 91,097

Detective Comics 85,049

Thanks, Damian!

If anyone has any interesting comic book related story that you'd like to see me feature in a future Knowledge Waits (or if they have some cool info like Damian that they'd like to share), feel free to drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!