Thomas: This may be the end of Superman’s reign, Jonathan.
Jonathan: I don’t agree with that conclusion, but here are the numbers. Publisher Shueisha announced on March 3, 2026 that One Piece, the manga series by Eiichiro Oda, has surpassed 600 million copies in circulation worldwide. The announcement coincided with the release of Volume 114 on March 4. Japanese readers account for roughly 450 million copies; international readers account for the remaining 150 million.
That total matches the estimated lifetime sales of Superman. DC Comics launched the character in 1938, and the series accumulated approximately 600 million copies sold over nearly 90 years and thousands of issues. One Piece reached the same number in under 30 years, since its debut in Weekly Shonen Jump in 1997.
My issue is the granularity. Superman has expanded far beyond a solo title. He appears across team books, crossovers, and shared universe storylines. I don’t know whether those are included in this figure.
Thomas: The count covers the core Superman title and related Superman comics, but not Justice League or appearances in other characters’ books. One Piece doesn’t have the same kind of extended universe, though it does have a television series and films. But the more significant point is this: Superman had a 50-year head start. He was the defining character of both the golden age and the silver age of comics, and he has already been matched. I have a full episode on this topic coming, so I’ll just offer a preview.
Go to your nearest Barnes and Noble. Find the American comics section, which is a single modest shelf. Then find the manga section, which in most locations is six to 12 times larger. Western readers are so disconnected from what Western publishers are producing that they will read a manga right to left before they will pick up a domestic title. The stories from the West no longer speak to them.
Jonathan: I still think the data is cherry-picked and the conclusions are overstated. Superman has shaped the Western conception of heroism for nearly a century. A new Superman film is a cultural event. Everyone has an opinion about who he is and what he stands for. One Piece hasn’t done that. If you want a complete picture, you also have to account for everything Superman has inspired: Invincible, The Boys, and the broader superhero genre. Comparing solo copy counts is a narrow metric that understates the cultural footprint.
Thomas: I agree Superman has deeper cultural penetration with older American audiences. Most boomers have no idea what One Piece is. Millennials are on the borderline.
Jonathan: I got genuinely annoyed when anime started showing up in the DC lineup.
Thomas: That tracks. The pattern is generational. The younger the reader, the more likely they are to consume Eastern storytelling and disengage from Western publishing. The number one Netflix film of all time is K-Pop Demon Hunters, a noble-dark story with a clear moral spectrum. It connects directly to what I’ve been discussing about the current cultural zeitgeist.
I have a full zeitgeist segment prepared on Project Hail Mary, and I’m giving everyone one week’s notice. I will be spoiling that film thoroughly next week. It feels like someone watched my sci-fi zeitgeist episode on Novel Marketing and used it as a production checklist. The film is breaking records.
The argument isn’t whether Eastern stories have definitively surpassed Western ones in all-time impact. The argument is that they are dominating the bookstore right now, selling at extraordinary volume, and resonating especially with younger readers. We do ourselves no favors by dismissing that with a shrug. Western readers want resonant stories. Right now, Eastern publishers are delivering them more consistently than Western ones.
I’ll stop there before I give away the entire upcoming episode. It features Seth Ring, it gets deeply philosophical, and I think it may be the best episode we’ve produced.
Sources:
ONE PIECE Manga Surpasses 600 Million Copies in Print
One Piece Ties Superman as the Best-Selling Comic Series of All Time
List of best-selling comic series – Wikipedia
One Piece – Wikipedia
One Piece Manga Commemorates Over 600 Million Copies Worldwide
