January 13, 2017
1971
There are two main ways I’ve seen online lists of key comics presented by year: (1) personalized lists based upon judgment calls of what is “key” (thereby omitting any comics the particular writer doesn’t happen to consider key — or doesn’t know about), and (2) lists based upon high sales price data (also a flawed method because high prices can just as easily be caused by a non-key book happening to grade a 10 at CGC).
The top 50 list you’re about to see is neither of those other types.
Instead, to briefly repeat the introduction I gave on the main 1970’s page, the list I’m about to present is essentially “crowd-sourced”… by the crowd of collectors sending comics to CGC. All I’ve done here is to rank the universe of comic books published in 1971, according to how many copies of each issue have passed through CGC’s doors to date to reveal the comics with the highest census counts — that’s it!
This exercise should “tease out” a very interesting list of important and/or key comics from 1971, but this will not necessarily be an all-encompassing list (if very few copies were created for a given key, for example, that restricted supply could keep the count of CGC submissions low even though the comic is very important — this exercise will unfortunately see such comics sort themselves off of the bottom through no fault of their own). So essentially, you should think of this list as just one more tool in your tool-belt of researching key comics from 1971. You can also drill down and see the top 50 Marvel comics of 1971, top 50 D.C. comics of 1971, and more key comic books of 1971 from other publishers.
Key Comics From 1971:
(Census data as of year-end 2016)
| Rank | CGC Count | Issue | Date | Publisher |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | 2,390 | Amazing Spider-Man #100 | 9/71 | Marvel Comics |
| 2. | 1,557 | Batman #232 | 6/71 | D.C. Comics |
| 3. | 1,446 | Amazing Spider-Man #101 | 10/71 | Marvel Comics |
| 4. | 1,388 | House of Secrets #92 | 6-7/71 | D.C. Comics |
| 5. | 1,144 | Amazing Spider-Man #97 | 6/71 | Marvel Comics |
| 6. | 1,136 | Amazing Spider-Man #98 | 7/71 | Marvel Comics |
| 7. | 964 | Marvel Feature #1 | 12/71 | Marvel Comics |
| 8. | 899 | Fantastic Four #112 | 7/71 | Marvel Comics |
| 9. | 884 | New Gods #1 | 2-3/71 | D.C. Comics |
| 10. | 845 | Forever People #1 | 2-3/71 | D.C. Comics |
| 11. | 803 | Conan the Barbarian #3 | 2/71 | Marvel Comics |
| 12. | 794 | Amazing Spider-Man #102 | 11/71 | Marvel Comics |
| 13. | 717 | Green Lantern #85 | 8-9/71 | D.C. Comics |
| 14. | 694 | Amazing Spider-Man #96 | 5/71 | Marvel Comics |
| 15. | 679 | Batman #234 | 8/71 | D.C. Comics |
| 16. | 592 | Amazing Spider-Man #94 | 3/71 | Marvel Comics |
| 17. | 559 | Green Lantern #86 | 10-11/71 | D.C. Comics |
| 18. | 544 | Amazing Spider-Man #99 | 8/71 | Marvel Comics |
| 19. | 529 | Amazing Spider-Man #95 | 4/71 | Marvel Comics |
| 20. | 519 | Incredible Hulk #141 | 7/71 | Marvel Comics |
| 21. | 457 | Amazing Spider-Man #92 | 1/71 | Marvel Comics |
| 22. | 432 | Amazing Spider-Man #93 | 2/71 | Marvel Comics |
| 23. | 421 | Superman #233 | 1/71 | D.C. Comics |
| 24. | 402 | Batman #237 | 12/71 | D.C. Comics |
| 25. | 401 | Avengers #93 | 11/71 | Marvel Comics |
| 26. | 385 | Mister Miracle #1 | 3-4/71 | D.C. Comics |
| 27. | 370 | Conan the Barbarian #4 | 4/71 | Marvel Comics |
| 28. | 345 | Amazing Spider-Man #103 | 12/71 | Marvel Comics |
| 29. | 336 | Conan the Barbarian #5 | 5/71 | Marvel Comics |
| 30. | 330 | Conan the Barbarian #9 | 9/71 | Marvel Comics |
| 31. | 327 | Conan the Barbarian #7 | 7/71 | Marvel Comics |
| 32. | 314 | Kull the Conqueror #1 | 6/71 | Marvel Comics |
| 33. | 308 | Avengers #87 | 4/71 | Marvel Comics |
| 34. | 296 | Conan the Barbarian #10 | 10/71 | Marvel Comics |
| 35. | 290 | Detective Comics #411 | 5/71 | D.C. Comics |
| 36. | 288 | Conan the Barbarian #8 | 8/71 | Marvel Comics |
| 37. | 262 | Conan the Barbarian #6 | 6/71 | Marvel Comics |
| 38. | 260 | Weird War Tales #1 | 9-10/71 | D.C. Comics |
| 39. | 259 | Avengers #92 | 9/71 | Marvel Comics |
| 40. | 241 | Savage Tales #1 | 5/71 | Marvel Comics |
| 41. | 239 | Thor #193 | 11/71 | Marvel Comics |
| 42. | 238 | Marvel Spotlight #1 | 11/71 | Marvel Comics |
| 43. | 231 | Fantastic Four #108 | 3/71 | Marvel Comics |
| 44. | 224 | Green Lantern #82 | 2-3/71 | D.C. Comics |
| 45. | 223 | Avengers #88 | 5/71 | Marvel Comics |
| 46. | 219 | Sub-Mariner #34 | 2/71 | Marvel Comics |
| 47. | 212 | Creatures on the Loose #10 | 3/71 | Marvel Comics |
| 48. | 205 | Green Lantern #84 | 6-7/71 | D.C. Comics |
| 49. | 201 | Daredevil #77 | 6/71 | Marvel Comics |
| 50. | 183 | Green Lantern #83 | 4-5/71 | D.C. Comics |
| « 1970 | 1972 » | |||
More Key Comics From 1971
Also see: top 50 Marvel comics of 1971, top 50 D.C. comics of 1971, more key comic books of 1971 outside of Marvel and DC, all key comics from 1971, or jump to this list of important comics from the 1970s. Or explore Lists of Key Comic Books by Year. Or jump to my blog’s home page.
Happy Collecting! 🙂
