{"id":3917,"date":"2018-04-14T00:40:00","date_gmt":"2018-04-14T00:40:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-07-30T17:21:12","modified_gmt":"2020-07-30T22:21:12","slug":"25-years-ago-superman-rises-from-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/2018\/04\/14\/25-years-ago-superman-rises-from-dead\/","title":{"rendered":"25 years ago: Superman rises from the dead \u2014 and sparks the biggest month in comics history"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"<\/span>This slipped a lot of calendars, but Superman\u2019s rise from the dead began 25 years ago today (that\u2019s when Adventures of Superman<\/i> #500<\/a> <\/b>apparently left the warehouse; on-sale was both April 14 and April 15, as distributors were moving New Comic Book Day from Thursday to Wednesday).<\/p>\n

In observance of the event, I posted the Diamond sales charts for April 1993<\/a><\/b> \u2014 skipping back a year or so to get to them \u2014and worked up some industry-wide estimates for this very important month in the history of the business. April 1993 has long been believed by me to be as the top month in the history of the business in dollar terms \u2014 48 million copies to the Direct Market alone, totaling more than $100 million; the highest estimates for the 1950s wouldn\u2019t get to $100 million in a single month, even adjusted for inflation.<\/p>\n

Of course, many of the comics in the chart didn\u2019t come out, and many of the retailers didn\u2019t survive to pay for them.\u00a0But it was the peak month historically in sales by publishers. Click below to check out my video tour of the estimates<\/a><\/b>.<\/p>\n