A while back, DC announced a new line of reprints, called DC Finest, that packages about 500 pages of comics from various eras into a $40 softcover. From all appearances, it looks to be an attempt to mimic Marvel's successful Epic Collections line, in which complete runs of their books are reprinted in similar paperbacks, but often out of order. So you might get Fantastic Four volume 3 (The Coming of Galactus) before volume 1 (the early stuff), but the volumes have all been mapped out, and gaps get filled in as time goes on.
DC announced a bunch of collections, ranging from the Golden Age (All-Star Comics, Superman) to the 2000s (Wonder Woman), with plenty in between. In October's solicitations, they've finally nailed down the contents for most of the announced books. Here's what's been announced so far.
DC FINEST: WONDER WOMAN: ORIGINS & OMENS
ON SALE 10/8/24
DC Finest: Wonder Woman: Origins & Omens collects these Wonder Woman issues from October 2007 to 2009: Wonder Woman (vol. 3) #14-35, Outsiders: Five of a Kind – Wonder Woman/Grace #1, and The Brave and the Bold #7.
DC FINEST: SUPERMAN: THE FIRST SUPERHERO
ON SALE 11/5/24
The First Superhero covers Summer 1938 to Fall 1940 and reprints classic stories from Action Comics #1-25, Superman #1-5, and New York World’s Fair #1.
DC FINEST: BATMAN: BATMAN: YEAR ONE & TWO
$39.99 US | 592 pages | 6 5/8″ x 10 3/16″ | Softcover | ISBN: 978-1-77952-835-3
ON SALE 11/5/24
Collects Batman #404-414, Batman Annual #11, and Detective Comics #571-581.
DC FINEST: CATWOMAN: LIFE LINES
ON SALE 12/17/24
Collects Catwoman (vol. 1) #1-4, Catwoman (vol. 2) #1-12, Catwoman Annual #1, Batman/Catwoman: Defiant #1, and stories from Action Comics Weekly #611-614 and Showcase ’93 #1-4.
DC FINEST: JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA: THE BRIDGE BETWEEN EARTHS
ON SALE 11/19/24
Collects Justice League of America #45-72 from July 1966 to June 1969.
DC FINEST: GREEN LANTERN: THE DEFEAT OF GREEN LANTERN
ON SALE 12/3/24
Featuring works from revered comics writers and artists such as John Broome, Gardner Fox, and Gil Kane, this volume collects classic stories from Green Lantern #19-39, The Flash #143, and The Brave and the Bold #59.
DC FINEST: EVENTS: ZERO HOUR PART ONE
ON SALE 12/10/24
This first of two collections features Superman #93, The Flash #94, L.E.G.I.O.N. #70, Green Lantern #55, Super-man: The Man of Steel #37, Team Titans #24, The Darkstars #24, Valor #23, Batman #511, Batman: Shadow of the Bat #31, Detective Comics #678, Legionnaires #18, Hawkman #13, Showcase ‘94 #8-9, Steel #8, Superboy #8, Outsiders #11, and Zero Hour: Crisis in Time #3-4.
DC FINEST: LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES: ZAP GOES THE LEGION
ON SALE 12/10/24
This first collection starring the greatest heroes of the 30th century features stories pulled from the pages of Action Comics #378-387 and #389-392, Adventure Comics #374-380 and #403, and Superboy #172-173, #176, #183-184, #188, #190-191, #193, #195, and #197-203.
DC FINEST: THE FLASH: THE HUMAN THUNDERBOLT
ON SALE 11/26/24
Collects Showcase #4, #8, and #13-14, and The Flash #105-123.
DC FINEST: JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA: FOR AMERICA AND DEMOCRACY
ON SALE 12/3/24
Collects All-Star Comics #3-12.
DC has also announced three more for January, although the exact contents aren’t announced yet:
DC Finest: Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters – 21st of January, 2025
The most iconic stories starring Green Arrow! (From the cover, it looks like it’s the start of the Grell run, starting with The Longbow Hunters miniseries.)
DC Finest: Supergirl: The Girl of Steel – 14th of January, 2025
The earliest stories starring Supergirl! (Looks like Supergirl, from the beginning.)
DC Finest: Aquaman: The King of Atlantis – 7th of January, 2025
The earliest stories starring the King of the Seas: Aquaman! (Silver Age Aquaman, with Jack Miller, Robert Bernstein, and Ramona Fradon listed as creators.)
So for the purposes of discussion... which ones of these interest you the most? And looking forward, where would you go for the second volumes of these titles?
Replies
In 1973, DC reprinted all the stories of Zatanna's Search for Zatara in several titles, mostly 100 Page Super-Spectaculars.
That's where I read them (some of them, anyway). That's also an example of why I often refer to myself as a "bastard son of the Silver Age." While most of the rest of y'all read these stories when you were of "a certain age" in the '60s, I read them when I was that same age in the the '70s. Same thing with Spider-Man reprinted in Marvel Tales and the Fantastic Four reprinted in Marvel's Greatest Comics.
I can envision a Zatanna DC finest, featuring everything in that trade paperback collection, plus her induction into the JLA and her big storyline at that time (searching for her mother Sindella, IIRC), any DCCP and B&B teamups she's had, the 1993 miniseries and more. It'd be one of those volumes like Peacemaker that follows one character over a long chunk of time.
As for why we're talking about the DC Finest books rather than the Epic collections... didn't we talk about the Epic Collections when they were new? That was a dozen years ago, so I don't really remember. But Marvel bulit something really amazing with them, and (as primarily a DC fan) it excites me to see what DC can build using that model. It's trickier for DC since they've got much more material from the golden age to account for. But we're at the ground floor of this project, and being at the ground floor is always exciting. And it's easier to speculate on it since we've already seen the shape of it at Marvel.
Cap wrote:
And now I wonder if, like Rob, my appreciation for Blood Syndicate would increase on a re-read.
I should clarify, so you don't get your hopes up. In my re-read of Milestone's big four books (well, now mostly a read, as I think I'd dropped all of them by the point I'm at), I'm really enjoying Blood Syndicate. But part of that is it's bringing me back to what we don't get nowadays: Serial team comics with no overarching grand plan. Blood Syndicate seems to me to be the book with the least seasoned creators on it (although I could be wrong about that), and it's definitely the book with the most characters to juggle. So some of them get short shrift, and in many issues there's a series of pages just checking in with the various characters. Stories progress in fits and starts. There are no "arcs" -- only motion and momentum. Everyone's making it up as they go along.
It's clunky, it's unfocused, and it's wonderful. There's a ton of passion on the page, with characters expressing things I didn't have the words for, or experience with, at the time (and, to be honest, in a lot of ways, still). This team -- no, this gang -- operates differently from most comics superteams. Their values are different. They measure loyalty differently, and test it, and test it again. Their leader, Wise Son, is a hardass, but also so insecure in his leadership...he always feels it hanging by a thread. Characters speak frankly -- and often harshly -- about racial, sexual orientation, and mutation differences. They sometimes don't cut each other the slack you might find in other books. It's a book trying to be woke as it could be in the early 90s, and yet not PC at all. It's fascinating.
And it's a mix of from-the-heart moments and I've-written-myself-into-a-corner-and-the-deadline's-tomorrow cheats. It's kind of a mess, and it gets messier as it goes. But I'm enjoying the hell out of it.
I bought the DCF Peacemaker today. I am primarily interested in the original Charlton material from the '60s (about 18% of the page count); the more recent stuff, not so much ("recent" being a relative terms meaning 30-40 years ago). Let's face it: if I were interested in Peacemaker, I would have all this stuff already. OTOH, all of this is new to me, and I love these kind of minor character retrospecives (especially when I don't have to do the legwork myself). I will get around to reading it someday. for anyone else who bought this volume, may I recommend that you supplement it with The Pacemaker from Source Point Press (basically the "MST3K" version)?
That sounds like a lot of fun!
Today I got the DC FINEST Plastic Man and Team-Ups Volumes. I ordered the Suicide Squad too but it's apparently out of stock. Hopefully I'll get it soon.
On the briefest of scans, the printing on Team-Ups is fine.
With Plastic Man, I noticed three things quickly:
-Plas took over the cover spot very quickly
-they removed the Spirit from the covers he shared with Plas however awkward it looks
-it took over a year for Woozy Winks to get featured on the cover!
I also got the Legion of Super-Heroes: The Great Darkness Saga: Deluxe Edition as it fits perfectly with the new Legion hardcovers. Though the Legion is not spotlighted on the covers, Darkseid IS!
The last two volumes were subtitled "Before the Darkness"; will the next be "After the Darkness"?
I think the B&B printing is a little muddy, but it doesn't bother me too much. The linework is definitely thicker than in the DCCP stories.
That's wild that they took the Spirit off of the Police Comics covers. He was included in the Archives printings, but that was while DC had an agreement with the Eisner estate to produce the Spirit Archives.
As for the LSH volumes, there's a volume after the hardcover of The Great Darkness that I have that's called The Curse -- it takes the series up to issue 313, I think.
My most recent purcases were Harley Quinn and Team-Ups, but I haven't gotten too deep into either of them, as I'm still alternating them with Aquaman. But it was weird to fast-forward to the Aquaman appearance in Brave & Bold today, so many years in the future from the Silver Age Aquaman I'm reading now! (I feel like the book-length tales are a real downturn for him -- they don't feel as clever or as fun as the 6-page stories in Adventure Comics. Even though they got repetetive, they've got a charm the longer stories lack.)
My next purchases might be Peacemaker and Batgirl. But I might be tired of 90s batbooks after Harley, and might pick up Superman Family or Superboy instead.
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