 By that measure, a sell-through percentage of a print run of roughly 50% was considered break-even by the standard fiscal measures of the comic book market.When Marvel Comics came to prominence under Stan Lee's new artistic direction in the early 1960s, his publishing line by title quantity was highly restricted because their distributor was Independent News, owned by National Periodical Publications (Now DC Comics).However, although Marvel's titles could not compete with National in absolute volume of sales due to that restriction, the company's sell-through percentage soon caught National's attention in a way it could not ignore