5

Action Comics #1000 was first published in the US earlier this year.

I got the impression that this seemed to be an unheard of before milestone. Most likely due to the fact that such a daunting number might prevent newcomers from getting involved in a comic book series, publishers use retcons, reboots and restarts to wipe the slate clean and also restart the numbering (and of course you can sell a new issue #1).

So it might actually have been a rarity.

This discussion - rather rude in places, imho - seems not to be clear on how to go with having an answer to this question:

Problems seem to be:

  • Are Japanese Manga comic books?

  • Is 2000AD a comic book? (currently on issue #2086 - its wikipedia article calls it a comic magazine, which in turn is a less fancy term for a comics anthology, which both Action Comics and Detective Comics at least started out as.)

  • Are The Beano (currently on issue #3949) and similar publications comic books?

To me, they all seem to be comic books (or at least anthologies, which Action Comics started out as, too), but maybe my intuition is wrong there. My own subjective defintion would be:

  • Cover (with Artwork)
  • One or more stories
  • Misc stuff: e.g. letters to the editor, advertisement, maybe an editorial or an interview with one of the artists etc

But that could be wrong and an official definition might actually exist (maybe back in the day, due to the US censorship laws one was made?).

After all that preface, here it is:

Which comic book series did indeed go from #1-#X and which X is the highest?

Improve this question
  • 1
    Wow, I came here to suggest this ought to be migrated to scifi! – Matt Thrower Sep 17 '18 at 12:20
  • 4
    This is a better fit here. Not all comics are SFF. – Skooba Sep 17 '18 at 12:45
  • 1
    Note: by naturally, I assume you mean (as you later state) running from issue #1 to issue #X, sequentially. Action comics itself doesn't qualify here, as it was relaunched in 2011 with Action Comics #1. the numbering was restored with #957 in 2016, as if issues 1-52 of the 2011 series were actually issues 905-956, but I still assume that violates the requirements of the question. – RDFozz Sep 17 '18 at 16:58
  • 1
    I believe that, technically, the first comic to reach 1000 was Dell's Four Color. This acted as an umbrella title for one-shots featuring various characters, some of whom went on to have their own continuing books. As such, there may have been multiple issues of the title released in the same month, with little indication on the covers as to the umbrella title. The official last issue of this was #1354, so it still falls beneath any number of non-US comics. – RDFozz Sep 17 '18 at 17:05
  • 1
    @RDFozz Huh, i didn't know that. But yes, I intended it to mean an uninterrupted sequential numbering (maybe with the exception of leaving out specific singular numbers #13 or #616 or #666 because of some form of superstition). – BMWurm Sep 17 '18 at 17:05

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy

Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.