When growing up in the 80s and 90s, X Men and Teen Titans are two of the most popular teams from both Marvel and DC. Beyond this, there are actually many similarities between the two titles. For one, both started in the silver age but had a major revamp in the Bronze age. The new team introduced in Giant Sized X Men #1 became the catalyst to rocket the X Men back to one of the popular comics published. In the early 1980s alone, sales of the X Men series routinely broke the 250-300k per month mark.

Similar thing happen to the New Titans. A new team was introduced in DC Comics Presents #26. According to the sales report below, this new team of Teen Titans was definitely popular among the DC titles, although its absolute sales is dwarf by the X Men. Nevertheless, it is obvious how both the X Men and the Teen Titan become more popular after their reintroduction.

Another interesting similarity between the two teams is how they were introduced. Both teams make their first appearances in books that were not part of their regular run, i.e. Giant Sized X-Men #1 and DC Comics Present #26. Both then went straight into their own titles: X Men #94 and New Teen Titans #1, which then went on to become popular series.

In this regard, you can see why both pairs books are quite significant in the history of these two teams.

Price and supply comparison

Now, let’s look at the pricing of these two pairs of key books. Again, there are some interesting parallels.

For one, you will noticed from the table below that X Men #94 is priced about half of GSX #1. This is almost identical to the relationship between DCP #26 and NTT #1.  Using this pattern, you can always look at the prices of GSX #1 and DCP #26 to determine if X-Men #94 and/or NTT #1 is under or over valued.

Are New Teen Titans undervalued?

Based on the above, it is obvious that there is a big gap in pricing between GSX #1 and DCP #26. For a fairer comparison, I have already used 9.0 and 8.5 as the benchmark grade of GSX #1 against the 9.8 and 9.6 of DCP #26. In this comparison, you can see supply is not a factor here as there are more copies of the X-Men books, relative to the Teen Titans books. Even with that, the gap is still pretty big.

Currently, I wouldn’t say the Teen Titans books are undervalued from current popularity. Marvel also has more collectors and X-Men in particular have lots of fans. It doesn’t help that GSX #1 has been the top 3 bronze age book so it has its historical significance.

However, all is not lost with Teen Titans. They are still being published and current sales figure of the new Titans title shows a number of around 70k copies. Not only that, the team doesn’t have any real big media exposure except for some cartoon series, which is not as impactful as a TV series or movie appearance. All these points that the potential for the team is there but has not been exploited yet.

In the event that DCP #26 does take off because of the Teen Titans, then NTT #1 is an even more undervalued book. It is not only the new team’s first #1 issue, it is also their first cover appearance and the new characters’ second appearance. With their current pricing, it is cheap to pick them up at near mint condition and hold.

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