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.

[Travis Herrick (Modular Mod)]

Clearly an ode to A Nightmare Before Christmas

Rob Staeger (Grodd Mod) said:

Out of nowhere, we get an eerie week on Comixology! Let's take a look:

[Rob Staeger (Grodd Mod)]

What's this? What's THIS!

[Rob Staeger (Grodd Mod)]

It's the week between the holidays, so you might expect things to be on autopilot. And in a certain sense, they are. We get continuations of the two runs we started last week:

There are 9 issues of House of Mystery: 296-304. Most of these include a chapter of the "I, Vampire" series along with the other short horror tales. But that series was sporadic in its early days, and some of these are just straight Mystery titles. DC, to its credit, is releasing them all, rather than just the issues Andrew Bennet appears in. "I, Vampire" ran through issue 319, and from here on out, there'll be a chapter in each issue.

We also get six more issues of The Demon, #7-12. More Kirby goodness! (Of course, the whole series is available in a collection on sale for $4.99 right now.)

And then we get some oddball entries.

There's Countdown Presents: The Search For Ray Palmer: Gotham By Gaslight. (Never buy any book with more than one colon in the title -- that's my motto!) This was apparently part of a mini-series tie-in to Countdown in which some of the heroes looked for Ray Palmer on various Elseworlds-style alternate worlds. Other worlds visited are Wildstorm, Earth 3, Red Rain, Red Son, and the Earth-11 gender-swapped world from Elseworld's Finest. As far as I can tell, none of the others have been digitized yet.

There's also Batman: Poison Ivy, one of several villain-focused specials from 1997. With a Brian Stelfreeze cover, it was probably meant to recall the 1992  one-shots of a similar nature (the one that comes to mind was called Batman: Penguin Triumphant). 1997 is a little late to be tied in to 1995's Batman Forever movie, but what the heck: Batman is always in season. 

And then there's Action Comics 284, in which Superman uses red K to become baby-sized, and there's also a Supergirl story. It's the second appearance of Mon-El, but other than that, nothing really stands out about this book to me. 

The same with Detective Comics 518, which leads off the a Batman vs. Deadshot story, and follows that up with a Batgirl tale. But Deadshot's been in a movie now, so that might be reason enough -- and the Don Newton and Trevor Von Eeden art is reason enough to check it out. 

Neither the Action nor the  Detective issue is part of any existing runs on Comixology -- they're little islands out on their own.

And that's it! But there's still the DC Holiday sale, where there's a ton of material on the service at discount prices. I've read all of the Cyborg Rebirth run that I've been able to get my hands on for 99 cents apiece, and they're quite fun that way -- running subplots and ridiculous villains, much like the 80s Blue Beetle series in that respect. 

[Luke Blanchard]

The lead story from Detective Comics #518 guest-starred the Human Target. It's from Gerry Conway's run, and the culmination of a storyline in which Vicki Vale put together a collection of photographs showing Bruce is Batman.

[Rob Staeger (Grodd Mod)]

Oh, nice! I always wondered how that plotline worked out... and with the Human Target involved, I can pretty much guess!

[Travis Herrick (Modular Mod)]

Wow, I don't recall any of those "Search for Ray Palmer", although I do remember there was a search for him. I'm glad they actually published something for the search.

Rob Staeger (Grodd Mod) said:

There's Countdown Presents: The Search For Ray Palmer: Gotham By Gaslight. (Never buy any book with more than one colon in the title -- that's my motto!) This was apparently part of a mini-series tie-in to Countdown in which some of the heroes looked for Ray Palmer on various Elseworlds-style alternate worlds. Other worlds visited are Wildstorm, Earth 3, Red Rain, Red Son, and the Earth-11 gender-swapped world from Elseworld's Finest. As far as I can tell, none of the others have been digitized yet.

[Rob Staeger (Grodd Mod)]

Yeah, these are all pretty much news to me; I jumped off the Countdown train early. A friend of mine even gave me a bunch of issues a few years later, and I still haven't bothered to read them.

[Rob Staeger (Grodd Mod)]

We've got 26 items in the DC "New and Noteworthy" queue today, so let's get to 'em!

First up are two Final Crisis: Aftermath miniseries: Dance and Escape. Both are 6-issue miniseries, and both appear in their entirety here. Dance featured Japan's Super Young Team, and Escape featured Nemesis (Tom Tresser). The final issue of Escape sports the cover to Dance right now, but I'm sure that'll get taken care of shortly. Judging by the preview, the interiors are correct. For a little while, DC seemed to want to name their miniseries independently of their stars, more like event books. (There were two other of these Aftermath series, Run! and Ink -- I suspect we'll get them next week.)

Following up on last week's House of Mystery run, we get issue 303 (which I thought had already been accounted for, but I guess I was mistaken) and Brave & Bold 195, which guest-stars Andrew Bennett. (There are still some House of Mystery appearances to go before we get there, however, so the timing's a little off.)

We also get two more Brave and Bold issues, from the silver age: #36, which features Hawkman, and #37, which features an appearance of the original Suicide Squad. Hawkman just had a big book come out with his Metal crossover...that might have motivated this.

And then in the spooky DC mystery book department, we get House of Secrets 93 -- the issue right after the only other House of Secrets issue DC has on the service, the first appearance of Swamp Thing. Spine-tinglers from Albano, Aragones, Shoberg and Skeates (with art by Abel, Aparo, Aragones, Cardy, and DeZuniga), all under a creepy Wrightson cover. 

Plus, we get all four issues of DC's Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love, with stories by Dorothy Woolfolk, Mary Skrenes, and  Jack Olek, with art by Don Heck and Tony DeZuniga... and, shocker, a text page in each issue written by Wes Craven! WHOA!)

We've also got an issue of Detective Comics, issue 392, starring Batman and Batgirl, written by Frank Robbins, with art on one story by Bob Brown and another by Gil Kane. Some of the issues from this era already appear, but this starts to fill in a small gap.

Also, there's Catwoman Secret Files 2002 #1, which has work from Ed Brubaker, Cliff Chiang, and Michael Lark to recommend it. 

And then there are a couple of collections that appear for the first time: Astro City Vol 4: The Tarnished Angel (my favorite collection), Astro City Vol 5: Local Heroes, and Astro City: The Dark Age Vol 2.  Maybe we'll start to see some older collections make the list from now on. 

DC's holiday sale is still going on (through today), so there's nothing new to report there -- but if you're looking for a collection at $4.99, this is a good day to score one!

[Luke Blanchard]

I haven't read the issue, but Detective Comics #392 is from shortly before Robin's departure from college. The issue had a nice Neal Adams cover. He hadn't drawn a "Batman" story yet, but he'd drawn Batman and Robin in World's Finest Comics and Batman in The Brave and the Bold.

Apparently the Batgirl story was the first appearance of Jason Bard, and the first part of a two-parter. Murphy Anderson inked.

[Rob Staeger (Grodd Mod)]

Ooh! Maybe we're about to see Jason Bard on Arrow or Gotham! Man, I loved that he was brought back for the first few issues of Birds of Prey. 

[Rob Staeger (Grodd Mod)]

Something I didn't mention last week: While its true that there are only four issues of Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love, its numbering continued with Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion, which ran for 11 more issues, from 5 to 15. We'll be seeing some of those issues this week.

[Rob Staeger (Grodd Mod)]

Here's a quick rundown of this week -- 20 books in all. 

First of all, we've got the other two Final Crisis Aftermath series, Ink (featuring the new Tattooed Man) and Run! (featuring the Human Flame, who I think was an old villain Morrison brought back for an unlikely spotlight in Final Crisis). Ink is by Eric Wallace and Fabrizio Fiorentino, Run! is by Lillah Sturges and Freddie Williams II. They're six issues each, released completely here. 

Then there are four issues of Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion, 5-8. It's a retooling of Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love, but sadly the title seems to have dropped the Wes Craven text pieces in the change. 

Then there are two more issues of House of Secrets, 94 and 95 -- 94 with a Bernie Wrightson cover, and 95 with a cover by Nick Cardy.  These continue the short run of HoS issues that began with the Swamp Thing first appearance in 92, and include work by Sergio Aragones, Alex Toth, Gerry Conway, Len Wen, Nestor Redondo, Don Heck, and others. 

Finally, there are two more issues of The Brave and the Bold -- early issues once again (38 & 39) , featuring two more appearances of the silver-age Suicide Squad, written by Robert Kanigher, and drawn by Ross Andru and Mike Esposito. Right now Comixology has the last three B&B appearances of Suicide Squad available as single issues, but if you want the first three (issues 25-27), the only recourse right now is the Silver Age Suicide Squad trade paperback, which also reprints the Squad's "War that Time Forgot" appearances from Star-Spangled War Stories (also not available in single issues at the moment). 

Digital sales-wise, DC is featuring a lot of Flashpoint material, and some early New 52 collections.  Maybe we'll get something nicer for the Legion's debut on Supergirl next week? I can hope.