Sales: Over 270 million The strangest superheroes of all turned up relatively late in the cycle of Marvel superheroes, and they didn't even make much of a dent at first. Several times in the early years the series was on the brink of cancellation, and it's only with a drastic reboot of the team in the seventies, principally guided by writer Chris Claremont, that saw them finally stick. And boy, did they stick. It's hard to imagine the X-Men ever being unpopular, since they're so bloomin' ubiquitous now, with numerous spin-offs, a long-running movie series and Wolverine appearing as a guest star in any title that will have him. The X-Men also have the distinction of owning the Guinness World Record for the biggest-selling single issue of a comic, 1991's renumbered X-Men #1, which had pre-order sales of a staggering 8.1 million.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
