January 13, 2017
1973
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 1973, 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 1973, 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 1973. You can also drill down and see the top 50 Marvel comics of 1973, top 50 D.C. comics of 1973, and more key comic books of 1973 from other publishers.
Key Comics From 1973:
(Census data as of year-end 2016)
| Rank | CGC Count | Issue | Date | Publisher |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | 3,747 | Amazing Spider-Man #121 | 6/73 | Marvel Comics |
| 2. | 3,293 | Amazing Spider-Man #122 | 7/73 | Marvel Comics |
| 3. | 2,518 | Iron Man #55 | 2/73 | Marvel Comics |
| 4. | 1,656 | Ghost Rider #1 | 9/73 | Marvel Comics |
| 5. | 1,508 | Shazam #1 | 2/73 | D.C. Comics |
| 6. | 1,326 | Tomb of Dracula #10 | 7/73 | Marvel Comics |
| 7. | 1,156 | Batman #251 | 9/73 | D.C. Comics |
| 8. | 1,064 | Special Marvel Edition #15 | 12/73 | Marvel Comics |
| 9. | 896 | Amazing Spider-Man #119 | 4/73 | Marvel Comics |
| 10. | 729 | Shadow #1 | 10-11/73 | D.C. Comics |
| 11. | 720 | Amazing Spider-Man #120 | 5/73 | Marvel Comics |
| 12. | 656 | Conan the Barbarian #24 | 3/73 | Marvel Comics |
| 13. | 651 | Amazing Spider-Man #125 | 10/73 | Marvel Comics |
| 14. | 626 | Defenders #10 | 11/73 | Marvel Comics |
| 15. | 608 | Amazing Spider-Man #127 | 12/73 | Marvel Comics |
| 16. | 565 | Amazing Spider-Man #126 | 11/73 | Marvel Comics |
| 17. | 504 | Amazing Spider-Man #123 | 8/73 | Marvel Comics |
| 18. | 498 | Conan the Barbarian #23 | 2/73 | Marvel Comics |
| 19. | 469 | Amazing Spider-Man #117 | 2/73 | Marvel Comics |
| 20. | 467 | Swamp Thing #7 | 11-12/73 | D.C. Comics |
| 21. | 441 | Amazing Spider-Man #124 | 9/73 | Marvel Comics |
| 22. | 423 | Frankenstein #1 | 1/73 | Marvel Comics |
| 23. | 414 | Amazing Spider-Man #116 | 1/73 | Marvel Comics |
| 24. | 388 | Fear #19 | 12/73 | Marvel Comics |
| 25. | 342 | Ghost Rider #2 | 10/73 | Marvel Comics |
| 26. | 338 | Amazing Spider-Man #118 | 3/73 | Marvel Comics |
| 27. | 334 | Incredible Hulk #162 | 4/73 | Marvel Comics |
| 28. | 296 | Strange Tales #169 | 9/73 | Marvel Comics |
| 29. | 277 | Captain Marvel #26 | 5/73 | Marvel Comics |
| 30. | 277 | Swamp Thing #2 | 12/72-1/73 | D.C. Comics |
| 31. | 266 | Swamp Thing #3 | 2-3/73 | D.C. Comics |
| 32. | 259 | Captain Marvel #25 | 3/73 | Marvel Comics |
| 33. | 233 | Supernatural Thrillers #5 | 8/73 | Marvel Comics |
| 34. | 224 | Avengers #110 | 4/73 | Marvel Comics |
| 35. | 219 | Marvel Feature #11 | 9/73 | Marvel Comics |
| 36. | 213 | Avengers #112 | 6/73 | Marvel Comics |
| 37. | 210 | Incredible Hulk #161 | 3/73 | Marvel Comics |
| 38. | 206 | Iron Man #54 | 1/73 | Marvel Comics |
| 39. | 204 | Avengers #116 | 10/73 | Marvel Comics |
| 40. | 203 | Swamp Thing #6 | 9-10/73 | D.C. Comics |
| 41. | 203 | Tomb of Dracula #13 | 10/73 | Marvel Comics |
| 42. | 192 | Swamp Thing #4 | 4-5/73 | D.C. Comics |
| 43. | 190 | Swamp Thing #5 | 7-8/73 | D.C. Comics |
| 44. | 188 | Avengers #117 | 11/73 | Marvel Comics |
| 45. | 179 | Marvel Feature #12 | 11/73 | Marvel Comics |
| 46. | 177 | Marvel Spotlight #12 | 10/73 | Marvel Comics |
| 47. | 172 | Conan the Barbarian Annual #1 | 1973 | Marvel Comics |
| 48. | 172 | Marvel Spotlight #9 | 4/73 | Marvel Comics |
| 49. | 170 | Marvel Team-Up #15 | 11/73 | Marvel Comics |
| 50. | 169 | Ghost Rider #3 | 12/73 | Marvel Comics |
| « 1972 | 1974 » | |||
More Key Comics From 1973
Also see: top 50 Marvel comics of 1973, top 50 D.C. comics of 1973, more key comic books of 1973 outside of Marvel and DC, all key comics from 1973, 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! 🙂
