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!