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#401-414, Batman Annual #11, and Detective Comics #571- #568-581.
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
The DC, Marvel and IDW catalogs all shipped today. (I look for the Image one to show up next week.) There are two DCFs I'm interested in:
The Birth of the Demon: The Demon #1-16, The Batman Family #17, The Brave & the Bold #109 & #137, Detective Comics #482-485 and Wonder Woman #280-282. I had never been interested in The Demon... until Alan Moore used him in Swamp Thing. That sent me on a quest, and I managed to score all those as backissues. I'll be nice to have all that stuff between two covers and on nice paper. I've got the Kirby material in the Kirby omnibus and the Ditko material in the Ditko omnibus, but I have long wanted that one Michael Golden issue on nice paper. All the rest is icing. Solicited for February 24.
The Flash: Reprints #197-229, B&B #99 and World's Finest #198-199. That's a three-issue overlap with the Silver Age Flash Omnibus v3, but that's better than a three-issue gap. Solicited for March 10.
It's too bad about that '50s Superman volume is being pushed back. I'll be finishing up the Golden Age Superman v7 omnibus in about a month, and I wasn't looking forward to waiting even three months.
My hope that the Silver Age Flash Omnibus #4 would be published has faded. Omnibus #3 was published in 2018! So, I’m ordering my second DC Finest volume after the Superboy one.
I generally don't like "new" additions to Batman's rogues gallery, but I liked the "Film Freak" three-parter, and the four-part "Two Face" story that followed that was the best I read since 100-PAGE SUPER-SPECTACULAR DC-20.
The "Film Freak" story did not live up to my memory of it, but the "Two Face" story did. I didn't remember anything about the next two-parter (with the shrunken head) other than that Iliked it, but that one held up, too. And it wasn't that the Film Freak story was bad per se, it just wasn;t as good as I had remembered.
I just put in my orders for DC Finest: Super Friends and DC Finest: War -- so I better get cracking on finishing Science Fiction. At least that way I'll only have five DCF unfinished volumes sitting around when those arrive. I'll have plenty of time to catch up, though, since these will be my last ones of the year; my next purchase will likely be the Green Arrow volume in February, which I'll likely pair with this year's Batgirl, if it's still available.
I've made a lot of progress through DC Finest: Science Fiction, and have only about a hundred pages left to go. I've been enjoying it, but there's definitely a sameness to some of the stories. And some of the aliens, for that matter -- Gil Kane seems to like really fish-lipped spacemen.
I'm about 200 pages into DC Finest: The Spectre, still squarely in his late Silver Age comics. At this point, Neal Adams is the artist...and man, was he not a good pairing with Gardner Fox! Fox's scripts are super verbose, leading Adams into some super-cramped staging just to get all the captions and word balloons in. Michael Fleisher, who scripts the next one, seems a little better. And it's fun that the team-up issue with Wildcat is really a Wildcat story until about halfway through, when the Spectre takes over!
As for DC Finest: Batman: Red Skies, I've only just started. It starts out with a standoff in a harbor drawn by Klaus Janson, and then a two-part Mirror Master/Captain Boomerang story that's a lot of fun (with art by Tom Mandrake and Gene Colan). I'd forgotten that Harvey Bullock used to be such a classic film buff! They should really bring that back; he can do introduction segments for a Gotham version of TCM. I also really liked that there was a genuine sense of peril to the harbor story, even though Batman was facing pretty much just one scuba-diver with a speargun. These were the days before Batman was invincible, and they were much more exciting.
As for DC Finest: Horror, I've cracked it open and read a couple random stories -- there's a nice one with Alex Toth art -- but I've also been reading the House of Mystery treasury facsimile, and I suspect a number of those stories (includingt hat Toth one) are in the DCF volume. So I've made random progress.
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