Whatever happened to the Man of Steel and the Caped Crusader and the Wallcrawler
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"Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird, it's a plane, it's S-" no it's probably a CEO of a comic publisher taking a dive out the window after viewing recent comic book sales results. Despite the blockbuster success of movie adaptations of their comics, the comic industry is suffering through a decade long recession in monthly sales. "But can the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man" save him in the nick of time
In the early 1990's, a comic boom exploded the industry to unheard of sales levels. Marvel Comics' Spider-Man #1 (written and drawn by 'Spawn' creator, Todd McFarlane) was released in 1990 and broke sales records with over two million copies sold. DC Comics stroke gold in 1993 with the much-publicized `Death of Superman' comic that sold four million copies. However that didn't eclipse Marvel's 1991 release of X-Men #1 drawn by Jim Lee, with five variant covers, that sold a record setting six million copies. Mike Wells, manager at the Torrance based Geoffrey's Comics and co-creator of the Mac Afro comic book, believes that's where the downfall of the 90's comic boom began.
"Everything in comic books at the time was event-oriented: you had the death of Superman, the return of Superman, a new Batman, a new Spider-Man and multiple covers...