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Spider-Man No Longer America’s Favorite Superhero

Despite the U.S. of A's noted love of spiders and men, it seems Spider-Man has been usurped as America's favorite superhero.

Most of you probably know of Spider-Man. Wimpy teenager bitten by a radioactive (or genetically engineered depending on the decade) spider and gets all the cool powers of a spider without any of the horrifying physical attributes? Becomes wimpy teenager who puts on a costume and becomes the wise cracking in control hero he secretly wishes he was? Fights goblins and alien suits and all manner of animal themed villains? Well you'd know him if you saw him.
 

Spider-Man swinging (not like that)Nothing?


So how does one judge something as intangible as a character's popularity? Money, that's how! The good folks over at the Guardian estimated on the total sales of all the books, taking into account number of titles and such, and it seems that Spider-Man has been overtaken by DC Comic's Batman. 

But before you burn your copies of Spider-Man: Reign, just listen to these exceptions:

"The data is drawn from comic book artist John Jackson Miller's estimates of overall sales based on Diamond Comic Distributors deliveries to comic book stores, so it does not include subscribers.

We used only the top 300 for each month so superheroes may have made extra sales that did not chart. It is also worth bearing in mind, that printing plays a role; there are, for example, far more Spider-man comics produced than Buffy the Vampire Slayer comics."
 


That's just the picture. For the full interactive experience you'll have to head on over the Guardian article.

So despite a 2 and a half good movies and 3 more on the way before the next reboot, it seems this slouch in popularity has not affected Web Head's staying power with everyone. And with great power... comes great readership. Hmm. Eh, I'll work on it, come back to me.
 

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