Key Comics From 1977

January 13, 2017

1977 —35 cent variants exist!

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 1977, 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 1977, 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 1977. You can also drill down and see the top 50 Marvel comics of 1977, top 50 D.C. comics of 1977, and more key comic books of 1977 from other publishers.

Key Comics From 1977:

(Census data as of year-end 2016)

Rank	CGC Count	Issue	Date	Publisher
1.	5,921	Star Wars #1 Rare CGC-recognized cover price variant is confirmed to exist	7/77	Marvel Comics
2.	3,129	Iron Fist #14 Rare CGC-recognized cover price variant is confirmed to exist	8/77	Marvel Comics
3.	2,370	Ms. Marvel #1	1/77	Marvel Comics
4.	1,638	Black Panther #1	1/77	Marvel Comics
5.	1,288	Marvel Spotlight #32	2/77	Marvel Comics
6.	1,205	X-Men #108	12/77	Marvel Comics
7.	977	Godzilla #1 Rare CGC-recognized cover price variant is confirmed to exist	8/77	Marvel Comics
8.	951	X-Men #105 Rare CGC-recognized cover price variant is confirmed to exist	6/77	Marvel Comics
9.	904	X-Men #104	4/77	Marvel Comics
10.	835	X-Men #106 Rare CGC-recognized cover price variant is confirmed to exist	8/77	Marvel Comics
11.	831	Star Wars #2 Rare CGC-recognized cover price variant is confirmed to exist	8/77	Marvel Comics
12.	751	X-Men #103	2/77	Marvel Comics
13.	729	Iron Fist #15 Rare CGC-recognized cover price variant is confirmed to exist	9/77	Marvel Comics
14.	715	What If? #1	2/77	Marvel Comics
15.	677	Red Sonja #1	1/77	Marvel Comics
16.	668	Star Wars #3 Rare CGC-recognized cover price variant is confirmed to exist	9/77	Marvel Comics
17.	658	X-Men #107 Rare CGC-recognized cover price variant is confirmed to exist	10/77	Marvel Comics
18.	574	Star Wars #4 Rare CGC-recognized cover price variant is confirmed to exist	10/77	Marvel Comics
19.	573	Jonah Hex #1	3-4/77	D.C. Comics
20.	542	Marvel Two-In-One Annual #2	1977	Marvel Comics
21.	527	Avengers Annual #7	1977	Marvel Comics
22.	524	Amazing Spider-Man #175	12/77	Marvel Comics
23.	486	Amazing Spider-Man #168	5/77	Marvel Comics
24.	467	Star Wars #5	11/77	Marvel Comics
25.	452	Star Wars #6	12/77	Marvel Comics
26.	432	Amazing Spider-Man #174	11/77	Marvel Comics
27.	432	Amazing Spider-Man #170 Rare CGC-recognized cover price variant is confirmed to exist	7/77	Marvel Comics
28.	427	Amazing Spider-Man #167	4/77	Marvel Comics
29.	414	Logan’s Run #6 Rare CGC-recognized cover price variant is confirmed to exist	6/77	Marvel Comics
30.	413	Howard the Duck #13 Rare CGC-recognized cover price variant is confirmed to exist	6/77	Marvel Comics
31.	400	John Carter, Warlord of Mars #1	6/77	Marvel Comics
32.	397	Iron Man #100 Rare CGC-recognized cover price variant is confirmed to exist	7/77	Marvel Comics
33.	394	Marvel Comics Super Special #1	9/77	Marvel Comics
34.	364	Detective Comics #474	12/77	D.C. Comics
35.	342	Marvel Team-Up #53	1/77	Marvel Comics
36.	339	Amazing Spider-Man #166	3/77	Marvel Comics
37.	323	Spectacular Spider-Man #3	2/77	Marvel Comics
38.	313	Amazing Spider-Man #171 Rare CGC-recognized cover price variant is confirmed to exist	8/77	Marvel Comics
39.	307	Logan’s Run #1	1/77	Marvel Comics
40.	306	Amazing Spider-Man #172 Rare CGC-recognized cover price variant is confirmed to exist	9/77	Marvel Comics
41.	301	2001: A Space Odyssey #8 Rare CGC-recognized cover price variant is confirmed to exist	7/77	Marvel Comics
42.	299	Tarzan #1 Rare CGC-recognized cover price variant is confirmed to exist	6/77	Marvel Comics
43.	286	Amazing Spider-Man #169 Rare CGC-recognized cover price variant is confirmed to exist	6/77	Marvel Comics
44.	283	Howard the Duck #12	5/77	Marvel Comics
45.	280	Spectacular Spider-Man #2	1/77	Marvel Comics
46.	275	Human Fly #1 Rare CGC-recognized cover price variant is confirmed to exist	9/77	Marvel Comics
47.	266	Shazam #28	3-4/77	D.C. Comics
48.	265	Ms. Marvel #2	2/77	Marvel Comics
49.	247	DC Super-Stars #17	11-12/77	D.C. Comics
50.	243	Spectacular Spider-Man #4	3/77	Marvel Comics
« 1976			1978 »

More Key Comics From 1977

Also see: top 50 Marvel comics of 1977, top 50 D.C. comics of 1977, more key comic books of 1977 outside of Marvel and DC, all key comics from 1977, 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! 🙂