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! 🙂
