Man v. Superman

Superman and Batman are the two basic superhero archetypes. Superman is gifted with abilities that mere mortals do not possess: flight, strength, x-ray vision, heat vision, invulnerability, and super-human senses. Batman, on the other hand, is made, not born. Circumstances and training have made him the crusader for law and order that he is. In theory, anybody with time, patience, training, and cash could be the Batman, but most people missed out on the chance to become Superman when Krypton exploded.

So which type of superhero do readers actually prefer? This has provided endless fodder for debate in comic book shops across this land for ages. However, as far as I know, nobody has ever actually crunched the numbers to see how people vote on this particular question with their wallets.



I looked at the sales figures for eight (8) different superheroes over the course of sixteen (16) months, and learned that readers prefer the Superman archetype, but with some caveats. These are the total number of copies each title sold over the course of 14 months:



Even when two most popular examples of each archetype (Spiderman and Batman, respectively) are removed from the equation, the superman archetype still dominates:



The grand-daddy of the archetype is the least popular title amongst his super-powered peers. In fact, Superman lags behind Spiderman, Hulk, and Green Lantern in terms of sales, and has seen a steady drop in sales over the last fourteen (14) months.

I think the easiest explanation is that readers want some limits placed on their heroes. Spiderman, the Hulk, and Green Lantern are all very powerful, however, they aren’t omnipotent in quite the same fashion that Superman is.



Two interesting things became apparent while I was looking at the sales data. The first was that nice guys don’t finish last – they trounce the competition. Batman, a character known for not carrying a gun or killing bad guys, outsells the Punisher by a factor of two. Daredevil has an ethic not all that dissimilar from Batman and has a somewhat erratic publishing schedule - Marvel publishes fewer issues per year of Daredevil than Punisher. Daredevil still managed to out sell the gun-toting, homicidal badass by roughly 35,000 copies over a fourteen month period.



The second was the sharp decline in sales experienced by both Superman and Punisher during 2009, and which show no signs of reversal in 2010.



This isn’t the first time that the Punisher has experienced an overall decline in his fortunes, but I’m surprised heads haven’t rolled for the marked decline in sales for Superman – the character is almost synonymous with its publisher, DC comics.



In the contest of man versus superman, superman might be the clear winner, but Superman alone won’t win the battle. For that, he is going to need a little help from his ring wearing and web spinning friends.

Nota Bene As with previous posts, all sales figures can be found here. Please keep in mind that all the sales figures pulled from this website represent estimates from independent comic book shops, and do not take into account sales figures from online retailers like Amazon, independent bookstores, news stands, or big box retailers like Borders.