DC's Digital Backlist - Secret Society of Super Villains spotlight!

[Rob Staeger (Grodd Mod)]

A while back, I logged some week-to-week posts on DC’s digital reprint program through Comixology. It’s been a while, and their digital offerings have matured, so I thought I’d take another look at what they’re adding each week. Currently, they seem to be doing about 30 books a week. I might not list all the issue numbers going forward – if the 90s Superman titles continue moving forward at two of each a week, there’s not much value in listing each issue. But let’s take a look at this week’s, and let’s see where the patterns take us, shall we?

 

90s Superman: DC is following the 90s Superman titles (soon to be the 2000s Superman, as this week’s titles are from December 1999) pretty quickly, giving us 8 issues of the books every week. There’s a lot of material to get through, but that’s still an admirable clip. We may only have a few more weeks of this, judging by Action Comics (the one title of the bunch that doesn’t change its numbering and continues for a long while) – 761 is the most recent issue, and Action already seems to be in the digital library from 769 on. Superman, Adventures of Superman and Superman: Man of Steel have bigger gaps, though. 

Action Comics 760, 761

Adventures of Superman 574, 575

Superman 152, 153

Man of Steel 95, 96

 

Arion: 11, 12

DC has been adding two issues of Arion: Lord of Atlantis a week for the last 6 weeks. There are 35 issues and a special, so there's a way to go before the series is completed.

DC Comics Presents: 75, 76

DCCP started out at a faster pace, but has been going two a week for a little while now. There are about 20 issues to go. Bonus: More Arion this week, in issue 75!

Guy Gardner: Warrior: 33

11 issues to go.

Huntress: 19, 4-issue 1994 series

We wrap up the Cavalieri/Staton ongoing that introduced Helena Bertinelli, and then power through a Chuck Dixon mini from 1994. Will Huntress return next week, or will we move on?

Justice League America (Bwa-ha-ha) 51, 52

This one has a ways to go before having everything available.

Manhunter: 34

Four more issues till it’s all there!

Mister Miracle: 23-25

This wraps up the 70s run – Kirby and then Marshall Rogers, it’s all there! (I think DC also recently wrapped the 70s Return of the New Gods run, too.)

Superman (Bronze Age): 233

This is an interesting one. The Kryptonite Nevermore cover – I’m surprised it wasn’t available before this. Will DC continue from here? Their 70s Superman offerings on Comixology are paltry.

Wanderers: 7, 8

This 80s Legion spinoff ran 13 issues, so we’re almost there.

Wonder Woman (Silver Age): 130, 131

DC has been making silver age Wonder Woman stories available, probably wishing to expand their catalog in anticipation of the movie. At this point the silver age issues go from 112-131, with a couple of gaps.

Swamp Thing (Diggle/Dysart run): 25

4 more issues to go.

Trigger: 5

This Vertigo sci-fi series lasted 8 issues. I don’t remember it at all.

 

That’s a pretty exhaustive look at this week’s offerings. Next week, I’ll probably just note new additions (what will replace Mister Miracle? The '89 and '96 series have already been collected, so we might be in for something new. And there might be more Huntress comics that haven't been reprinted yet, but Comixology has a bunch of them listed already, and the Bat-universe is so sprawling it's tough to search), unexpected omissions, breaks from the patterns, and go forward from there. 

And to make things easy to follow:
Week 2. (April 6, 2017)

Week 3 (April 13, 2017)

Week 4 (April 20, 2017)

Week 5 (April 27, 2017)

Week 6 (May 4, 2017)

Week 7 (May 11, 2017)

Week 8 (May 18, 2017)

Week 9 (May 25, 2017)

Week 10 (June 1, 2017) -- All the golden age Wonder Woman goodness!

Week 11 (June 8, 2017)

Week 12 (June 15, 2017)

Week 13 (June 22, 2017)

Week 14 (June 29, 2017)

Week 15 (July 6, 2017)

Week 16 (July 13, 2017) -- Our Worlds at War! Underworld Unleashed!

Week 17 (July 20, 2017) -- The Great Ten! More Wonder Woman!

Week 18 (July 27, 2017) -- Batman Confidential and Deathblow? Young Heroes in Love?? Doom Patrol!

Week 19 (Aug 3, 2017) -- Some Bronze-age Batman!

Week 20 (Aug 10, 2017) -- Loeb/Sale Challengers begins!

Week 21 (Aug 17, 2017) -- Silver Age Challs!

MIDWEEK SALE BLAST (Aug 22, 2017): Wildstorm!

Week 22 (Aug 24, 2017) -- Holding pattern...

Week 23 (Aug 31, 2017) -- chugging along

Week 24 (Sept 7, 2017) -- Same old, but with newer Challengers

Week 25 (Sept 14, 2017) -- Baron/Jones Deadman debuts

Week 26 (Sept 21, 2017) -- Holding steady, with more Deadman

Week 27 (Sept 28, 2017) -- Deadman in Action Comics Weekly?

Week 28 (Oct 5, 2017) -- A slow swerve into Batman

Week 29 (Oct 5, 2017) -- Doom Patrol finishes in the smallest week ever

The Gap List: a list of unexplained or awkward skips.

[Luke Blanchard]

I've only read scattered George Papp Green Arrow stories, but my experience is the stories from the George Papp era are quite good. Of course I read most of the ones I've seen as a kid.

[Rob Staeger (Grodd Mod)]

Actually, if they touch them up, they'll likely be available to everyone who's already bought them. Comixology will just replace the inferior scans with the superior ones, and they'll be available for reading and download to anyone who has already bought the title. 

It's the incomplete issues that bother me -- if and when a complete issue takes its place, it might be listed as another product altogether. 

Detective 445 said:

I was happy to see those 80s Brave & Bold issues pop up a couple weeks ago. Unfortunately, the transfers are terrible. I don't understand why they release these. It seems inevitable that they will touch them up at some point and irritate people who bought these inferior versions.

[Detective 445]

Ah...good point.

[Wandering Sensei: Moderator Man]

I was beginning to resent the fact that the Roger Stern issues of Starman are undoubtedly starting to dwindle, but I was really happy to find that Stern also did the late 80's/early 90's run on Power of the Atom. I have a whole other run to read once this book is over!

[Rob Staeger (Grodd Mod)]

It’s another week of DC Comixology Reprints!

And…

It’s pretty much the same stuff again.

This isn’t a bad thing. We’re making progress in a lot of fun series, that I’m glad readers will have access to. But it’s not the most exciting thing to write about.

So it’s basically just a list of the usual suspects this week:

3 issues of Lobo (43-45)

3 issues of Starman (32-34)

1 issue of JLA (78)

3 issues of JLI (56-58)

4 issues of Doom Patrol (100-103)

1 issue of Mystery in Space (66)

2 issues of The Brave & the Bold (102 and 103, guest-starring the Teen Titans and the Metal Men)

2 issues of Young Heroes in Love (13-14)

And…making their Comixology debut…

Three issues of the 2004 Challengers of the Unknown. A six-issue series by Howard Chaykin, this was the second reinvention of the Challengers in a decade, after the (IMO, better) 1997 series by Steven Grant, Len Kaminski, and John Paul Leon (already available on Comixology). This one’s more espionage oriented, and stars (according to the GCD, because I sure as heck don’t remember it) “five troublemakers — a blogger, videographer, hip-hop poet, extreme athlete, and industrial saboteur.” So that pretty much screams early 2000s. Next week should conclude the series, if it gets another three issues.  

This focus on the Challs might just be a precursor to the New Challengers series coming up at the end of Metal, but the owner of my LCS suggested they’d be fine candidates for a guest-spot on Legends of Tomorrow, too! I’m actually wondering if that’s behind the slow push of Adam Strange content these last few weeks, too. You never know…

[Rob Staeger (Grodd Mod)]

Was just looking back on these listings, and it looks like April 27 was that last time a Vertigo book showed up in the DC digital reprints. And frustratingly, it was the penultimate Swamp Thing issue...

Vertigo doesn't have as deep a publishing history as DC, but it *has* been around for 25 years. Surely there are some missing books that would be worth reprinting. Then again, Vertigo also had a more generous contract for creators, and some people have regained full ownership of their work -- sometimes reprinting them at other publishers. So DC doesn't have access to its entire Vertigo catalog.

Still, maybe we'll get a little something more around Halloween.

[Rob Staeger (Grodd Mod)]

Welcome to the new week! There are a couple of deviations from the usual suspects, but for the most part, it’s business as usual again. The most troubling thing, from my perspective, is that for the third week in a row, DC is releasing closer to 20 books than to 30 (this week sees 21 classic releases). That slows things down considerably. Maybe things will pick up again now that summer vacations are winding down. And regardless, given the current pace of releases, we’ll be seeing some changes soon.

 

Here’s pretty much what we expected:

3 issues of Lobo (46-48)

3 issues of Starman (35-37) – should wrap in 3 weeks.

3 issues of JLI (59-61) – should wrap in 2 weeks.

4 issues of Doom Patrol (104-107)

1 issue of Mystery in Space (67)

2 issues of The Brave & the Bold (104 and 105, guest-starring Deadman and the Diana Prince-era Wonder Woman)

2 issues of Young Heroes in Love (15-16) – just two more issues left – should wrap next week!

 

Now for the unexpected things. For one, only one issue of the Howard Chaykin Challengers comes out this week, leaving two more to go.

Also, the two issues of Deadman: Love After Death make their debut. This was a 2-issue prestige format miniseries from Mike Baron and Kelly Jones, published in 1989. Baron had a popular run with Deadman in Action Comics Weekly, which Jones had joined him for part of; this continued their pairing.

One thing that’s missing this week is Justice League America. We’d been getting one issue a week for quite some time now, but as of now, last week’s #78 was the last one. There’s a gap before the book picks up again from 86-92, and then the rest of the series is unavailable. The gap may be intentional; issues 78-85 (and Annual 7) are collected in the recent Wonder Woman and the Justice League America trade paperback, also available on Comixology.

And once again, no Vertigo, no Wildstorm (though we got a ton during the sale a couple of weeks ago), and we haven’t seen a golden age book since the end of July.

This week’s sale is Harley Quinn. I don’t think there’s anything new available, but among the discounted books is a free copy of Batman Adventures 12 (featuring Batgirl, Harley, and Ivy). Plus, since Rebirth books don’t normally get cheaper as time goes on (as DC books previously did), it’s a good time to pick up early issues of Harley’s current series, if you’re interested.

[Rob Staeger (Grodd Mod)]

I'm thinking about what would be a good book to fill the Young Heroes in Love spot once it concludes next week. My top choice, from the same era, with a similar lighthearted feel to it, would be Hourman. Another good one, also not collected, would be Scare Tactics. 

[Rob Staeger (Grodd Mod)]

Another week – this time with a slight climb from last week’s totals, to 23 comics. Let’s look at what we’ve got:

 

The 2 final issues of Chaykin’s Challengers of the Unknown (5 & 6)

3 issues of Lobo (49-51)

3 issues of Starman (38-40) – should wrap in 2 weeks.

3 issues of JLI (62-64) – should wrap next week.

4 issues of Doom Patrol (108-111)

2 issues of Mystery in Space (68 & 69)… not just one this time!

2 issues of The Brave & the Bold (106 and 108, leapfrogging the already available 107 and guest-starring Green Arrow and Sgt. Rock)

The final 2 issues of Young Heroes in Love (17 and 1 Million)

There’s also another two issues of Deadman, this time 1992’s Deadman: Exorcism miniseries, again a 2-issue prestige format series, and again from Mike Baron and Kelly Jones. I’m not sure where Deadman will go from here if it continues. There are two teamup one-shots (The Brave and the Bald with Lobo in 1995, and Death and Glory with Batman in 1997), and there’s also his 1986 4-issue miniseries by Andy Helfer and Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez – although that’s already available in a collected edition, as are the original Drake/Adams stories, and the Wein/Garcia-Lopez shorts from Adventure Comics, along with various other teamups and odds and ends from the 70s and 80s. (I’m currently enjoying a reread of the Wein stories in volume 4, in commemoration of the writer’s passing.) There’s also a 5-issue series called Dead Again from 2001 in which Boston Brand revisits the big deaths of the DCU, which led into an ongoing solo series that lasted 9 issues in 2002. So it’s anyone’s guess.

But assuming we’re seeing the last of the Challengers this week, and knowing there’s no more Young Heroes In Love stories to reprint, we’ve got four open slots, with another 3 opening up next week with the end of JLI. So changes are afoot!

Once again, no Vertigo (though the Jones Deadman is certainly in the spirit of it), no Wildstorm, and we haven’t seen a golden age book since the end of July.

This week’s sale celebrates Batman Day, with a bunch of Batman, Batgirl, and even a Batman Beyond collection for sale. Not a lot of single issues, other than Batgirl: Year One. There are some Rebirth collections among them. Also, the first issue of Harley Quinn and Batman, by Ty Templeton and Rich Burchett, is available for free. There are three issues of this online-first comic out so far, priced at 99 cents per installment; I think by giving it away, they’re hoping to remind old-school Batman Adventures fans that it exists. I admit I’d totally forgotten it was coming out.

[Rob Staeger (Grodd Mod)]

A big surprise this week – something I didn’t see coming at all (although maybe I should have). But first, let’s look at the recurring books.

 

3 issues of Lobo (52-54) – four more weeks and it’s done, with issue 64. (There’s a 1 Million issue that should arrive next week.)

3 issues of Starman (41-43) – should wrap next week.

3 issues of JLI (65-67) – Since 68 is already available, this one is wrapped!

4 issues of Doom Patrol (112-115) – should wrap in two or three weeks if this pace keeps up.

2 issues of Mystery in Space (70 & 71)… the second two-issue week in a row. Adam Strange continues as a feature to issue 102, so there’s a while to go before we get into Ultraa the Multi-Alien territory.

Just one issue of The Brave & the Bold this time (issue 109, guest starring the Demon – an issue I picked up at a con last year)

With Young Heroes in Love, Challengers, and Deadman gone, that opens up a lot of space for…Action Comics Weekly? I’m happy to see it, but what an odd choice, especially considering it doesn’t even start in the beginning of the run, but with issue 618 continuing through 626. Or maybe the choice is not so odd, after all…issue 618 is the start of Mike Baron and Kelly Jones’s collaboration on Deadman. A previous Baron Deadman story ran from issues 601-612, with art by Dan Jurgens and Tony DeZuniga (who also inks Jones here), and featuring appearances by Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Mikhail and Raisa Gorbachev, and D.B. Cooper, if I recall correctly. I’m not sure how DC plans to market this, since there are only 8 pages of Deadman content in each issue, and he’s only rarely cover featured – if the other stories aren’t part of the draw, $2 is a lot to spend on those eight pages. And if they are part of the draw, then maybe Action Comics Weekly should expand its output in both directions to make the beginnings and ends of those other stories available. (Which is certainly what I’m hoping for.)

Regardless, Action Comics Weekly also has stories featuring Superman, Green Lantern, Nightwing & Speedy, The Phantom Stranger, The Secret Six, Black Canary, and the Blackhawks. I'd be very happy to see DC try something like this again... though I have my doubts that it'd be any more successful.

Once again, no Vertigo, no Wildstorm, and we haven’t seen a golden age book since the end of July.

This week’s sale is DC's first linewide Rebirth sale. Unlike their previous practice, with Rebirth DC stopped discounting their digital books a few months after publication. For this week, for most (all?) Rebirth books, the first several issues are priced at 99 cents, with a couple beyond that priced at the still-discounted $1.99. Even more recent Rebirth titles, like Batwoman and Justice League of America, are included in the sale. I’ll probably use it to check in on a few titles I only gave a 1-issue sample to…and also to pick up a few more issues of Blue Beetle, which now has a few more issues at 99 cents than the last time the book was on sale.

[Rob Staeger (Grodd Mod)]

Well this is an unexpected development. Instead of proceeding along with most of the continuing series they’ve been releasing on Comixology for the last few months, DC has decided to send in Batman. Only a few of the regulars make an appearance this week, a smaller one than any I’d ever seen before, with only 14 books. Maybe the prep for NYCC left the DC digital team understaffed?

Four of those regulars are Silver Age Doom Patrol comics, continuing unabated with issues 116-119. The book continues to issue 124, but the original stories end with issue 121, so this should wrap up next week. Will DC rerelease the reprints?

Surprisingly, there are also 3 new issues of Justice League America: Annuals 1-3 (at various points, titled Justice League, Justice League America, and Justice League International; it doesn’t help at all that Justice League Europe was also called Justice League International for a while). There are, to the best of my knowledge, 10 of these things, culminating in the Legends of Dead Earth annual from 1996. (The Justice League Europe version of Justice League International had 5 annuals. Sigh.)

So that’s half of the 14 comics. What about the other half?

First up are two Batman annuals, a two-part story that starts in 2011’s Batman Annual 27 and concludes in Detective Comics Annual 11. Written by Fabian Nicieza, with art by Jim Calfiore and Tom Mandrake, it co-stars Azrael, The Question (Rene Montoya), and Robin.

Then there are three issues of Detective Comics, 444-446. A couple of these are 100-page giants, reprinting plenty of older stories (Elongated Man! Star Hawkins! Kid Eternity! Roy Raymond!), but the new Batman stories here are the first three parts of the “Bat-Murderer” 5-parter, drawn by Jim Aparo and written by the late Len Wein.

It’s Wein who might be the impetus for the release of those books, as one of his Justice League of America stories (#114) is also rereleased this week, otherwise out of the blue. It’s a time-travel twister called “The Return of Anakronus” and it’s drawn by Dick Dillin. This is the first issue of a gap in JLA that runs from 114-119, although issue 112 is missing too.

Speaking of gaps, also appearing this week is Green Lantern: Our Worlds at War, the missing OWAW one-shot! I can update the Gap List!

And that’s it for this week. Again, no Wildstorm, now Vertigo, no Golden Age. And I’m honestly surprised that those 2011 annuals needed to be added to Comixology, but I guess it wasn’t until the New 52 that DC released all their books digitally as a matter of course. The annuals preceded that by a few months.

This week’s sale theme is DC #1s. I feel like there’s a greater and greater focus on collected editions digitally, and this sale is full of them, usually for $5.99 each. That’s quite a bargain for some books. Those Silver Age trade paperbacks are basically reprints of half the contents of an Omnibus…or, looked at another way, one-and-a-half times the contents of an Archives. For six bucks, that’s not a bad deal.

[Rob Staeger (Grodd Mod)]

A puny backlist this time, a real disappointment.  With only nine 12 backlist books released, it begs the question: Is this a lasting slowdown, or is this week again the result of behind-the-scenes NY Comicon efforts?

First, some good news: Doom Patrol 120 & 121 are released this week…so while these aren’t the last issues of the title, they’re the last ones with original content. I don’t expect to see the final issues, 122-124, appear anytime soon.

We don’t get any more Justice League America/International annuals this week, but we do get another two-part annual crossover from the Batman/Detective Comics Annuals: Batman Annual 28 and Detective Comics Annual 12. I was mistaken last week, thinking #s 27 and 12 were the last Batman annuals released before the New 52. But no, those are these, a two-parter that also stars Veil, The Question, and Nightrunner. I don’t think we’ve seen either the Veil or Nightrunner since the New 52 hit, and I’m also not sure if we’ve gotten anything more than oblique references to Rene Montoya, which if true, would be a shame. (Although she shows up in the future scenes in this week's Detective Comics!)

We also don’t get Detective Comics 447 and 448, the final two parts of the Wein/Aparo “Bat-Murderer” story. I’m putting it on the Gap List, but hopefully they’ll show up next week.

We do, however, get another issue of the missing run of Justice League of America, issue 115, in this case written by Denny O’Neil, with art by the ever-present Dick Dillin. It’s a 100-page giant, but Comixology lists it at only 46 pages; my suspicion, looking at the credits, is that the new JLA story and the JLA reprint are included, but not the Justice Society reprint advertised on the cover.

We also get a handful of Secret Files and Giants from the 90s and 2000s—odds and ends that would have to show up sometime. In this case its the JLA/JSA Secret Files from 2002, the Legion Secret Files 3003 from 2003 (more Legion! Yay!), and Superman 80-Page Giant #2 from 1998.

There are still a lot of Secret Files & Origins titles to go before they're all available. Likewise with the modern iteration of 80-Page Giants. It looks like 27 of them were made, but only 9 of them are available so far (plus two Batman 80-Page Giants from 2010 and 2011, which weren't included in the count of 27 I found). Strangely enough, Superman 80 Page Giant #1 isn't among the ones on Comixology; they started with #2.

Plus, there’s one more issue of Brave and the Bold. But it’s not following along in the early hundreds (the last issue reprinted was #109). Instead, it goes back to issue 65, a Flash and Doom Patrol team-up from before Batman took over the host slot. I guess DC wanted to be thorough about getting those early Doom Patrol appearances out there. 

And that’s it for this week. Again, no Wildstorm, now Vertigo, no Golden Age.  And no sign of the soon-to-wrap Starman or Lobo this week, either. But a Silver Age DC superteam has been made fully available, and that’s not nuthin’.

One thing we don't have is The Untold Legend of the Batman by Len Wein, John Byrne, and Jim Aparo. To me it’s always been the definitive origin and early years of Batman, and I was glad to see on the Comixology upcoming releases list that it would be available again. And yet as of today, the books haven't appeared on the app. Maybe they'll show up tomorrow, maybe next week, maybe they'll be held indefinitely. It's disappointing. (Edited to add: Looks like it was just a glitch: Untold Legend of the Batman 1-3 was made available a few hours later.)

This week’s DC sale theme is crossovers – lots of DC crossovers with other universes, like the Batman/TMNT and Justice League/Power Rangers comics, plus crossovers with Hellboy, the Masters of the Universe, and more. (It looks like there are none of the Marvel crossovers, nor those with IDW or Archie titles.) My two top pics (if you don’t have them yet) are the recent Batman/Elmer Fudd crossover ($2.99) and the awesome Batman/Spirit crossover from when Darwyn Cooke took over The Spirit. That one’s only 99 cents, and it’s a treat!