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
I'm definitely down with the Jonah Hex suggestion. I think, like Sgt. Rock, he'll have his own series, seperate from Westerns, before long.
There are a couple, maybe three, stories with an ape in them; they just took the volume's title from one of those stories.
The format of the DC Finest books is an imitation (the sincerest form of flattery) of Marvel’s successful Epic format, including using the title of a single story for the volume title.
Well the Science Fiction volume fooled me. Maybe better advertising on DC's part next time?
Yeah, I remember when it came out, seeing some people who had the same reservation. There's really only two books that I think had that issue. The other one was Superboy: The Super Dog From Krypton, which only has two Krypto appearances in it. Some others have hyper-specific titles ("Blue Beetle Challenges the Red Knight") but everyone seems to take them in stride. (Although one Batman book is called "The Killing Joke and Other Stories," which seems to anticipate that confusion, but then again, the Killing Joke is almost always in print in one format or another.)
I wrapped up DC Finest: War, and am making headway through DC Finest: Super Friends and Green Arrow: The Trial of Oliver Queen.
I don't have a lot more to say about War. It's a snapshot of a very specific period of time: January through April 1957. It's a time when DC was able to profitably publish six monthly war books (or five, and a war-flavored adventure book in Blackhawk). It's hard to even wrap my mind around that. The recent Batman: Red Rain covers a full year of Batman comics, excluding The Dark Knight Returns. Think about it: DC's war books in 1957 were three times as plentiful as regular Batman books were while Dark Knight was being published! That boggles the mind.
There's another thing I noticed: There's really no suspense in these books at all. These are men -- usually lone men, somehow -- in life-and-death circumstances in which no one but the enemy ever dies. (And we don't even see that -- just, usually, an enemy helmet falling into the panel!) The comics code was at the height of its power, and it neutered the actual stakes of war. Looked at that way, with those restrictions, and it's easier to appreciate Robert Kanigher's work. He figured out how to sell war stories -- tons of them! -- where the stakes are not survival, but "how can this same soldier be saved by a mirror three times in his career?" or "How many ways can I make an infantryman go under water to fight the enemy?" As formulaic as these stories are -- and boy howdy, are they! -- they also represent an exceedingly clever solution to a problem that shouldn't exist. These aren't war stories, so much as puzzle stories written to resemble war stories.
Super Friends, on the other hand, is pure joy. These comics have had a rep as "kiddie books" for years, because of their cartoon roots, and they are -- but reading them, it's clear that they're no more kiddie books than most of their contemporary superhero books. Are these significantly less series than most late-1970s Superman or Flash stories? Not really. And they're tons of fun, often with little mysteries for the Wonder Twins (and the reader) to figure out. I've just gotten to the three-parter where Zan and Jayna arrive (and eventually replace Wendy and Marvin), and it's packed with heroes -- the entire Justice League, the Global Guardians, and two sets of sidekick pairs and their pets!
Also: Does anyone know why Zan and Jayna are named for Tarzan and Jane? I feel like I'm just discovering a 50-year-old in-joke.
I haven't gotten far into the new Green Arrow volume, but I've read the first Black Canary serial from Action Comics Weekly -- about as far from a kiddie book as you can imagine in 1987. This story, by Sharon Wright and Randy duBurke, depends in certain ways on being opaque, and having readers put the pieces together as they slowly reveal themselves duBurke's layouts are more impressionistic than most American comics of the time, using montage rather than establishing shots to set a scene -- a trick used in manga more than superhero comics. He's got a slick style reminiscent of Paul Gulacy. There's a supporting character from Grell's Green Arrow that appears in this story. It's followed up by a 4-parter in GA, then another Black Canary Action Comics serial, then a crossover of several Action features... and then back to Green Arrow proper for the rest, with a Question crossover (and a Secret Origins issue) thrown in.
I've got last year's Superman Family book on deck, and I've heard some distributor catalogs are scheduled to be released this week, so hopefully we'll get some news soon!
It's a time when DC was able to profitably publish six monthly war books (or five, and a war-flavored adventure book in Blackhawk). It's hard to even wrap my mind around that.
I know the answer. This was before the industry was forced to rely on comic shops. The little kids, the teens and the adults who bought comics back then saw them (whether they were looking for them or not) displayed on magazine racks and newsstands. The covers weren’t boring posters. They were scenes that grabbed the eye. They weren’t 95% superhero, because the general public was the audience. This is the impulse purchase that Starbucks depends upon today. They were priced way under what they should have been, which eventually worked against their staying that visible.
Going by their contents, in the period "Superman" and "Batman" were aimed young, and the war comics and police/crime comics older. DC was also doing romance, funny animals, teen humour, famous comedian titles, SF, "mystery" (=Code horror), Westerns.
Batman appeared eight times a year. Detective Comics and Batman both carried three items, but the titles were split differently, so the longest "Batman" stories appeared in Detective Comics (12pp; the ones in Batman were 6, 8 or 10). On the other hand, the stories weren't continued, so there were 36 "Batman" stories a year, plus 6 Superman/Batman team-ups in the bimonthly World's Finest Comics.
Some number of the era's war stories were credited to Bill Finger when they were reprinted in the 1970s. Also instalments of "Viking Prince" and "Robin Hood". So it might be some of the war material credited to Kanigher is really Finger's. (The last Wonder Woman story before the Mike Sekowsky era, in #177, was written by Finger. That might indicate he'd had a history with that feature too.)
Bob Haney also worked for Kanigher. The GCD credits Hank Chapman with stories in the war comics from 1959.
While I wait for the new DC Finests to be announced (and for my Flash and Demon volumes to arrive), I've been reading Green Arrow: The Trial of Oliver Queen and Super Friends: The Fury of the Super Foes. I'll highlight two notable stories:
First up in Green Arrow is "Seattle and Die" -- in which Ollie comes face to face with Jake Moses, a vigilante with more than a few similarities to Grell's Jon Sable. His wife and child were killed by African poachers, like Sable's wife was. Moses was also an olympian -- a long jumper, rather than a decathlete like Sable. He's a guy Ollie definitely has mixed feelings about bringing in to the authorities. It's followed by "The Horseman," a Dan Jurgens-drawn story about sex trafficking, whose first issue ends with a very graphic image of a crucified stripper. I think I've heard Mike Gold or Mike Grell say that this was the image that most riled DC's upper brass more than anything else they did during the run.
MEANWHILE...IN THE HALL OF JUSTICE...! E. Nelson Bridwell does one thing with Super Friends stories that's a lot more modern than it would seem. Unlike so many other Bronze Age comics, there are plenty of references that go unremarked upon by editorial notes. For instance, in issue 12's "Kingslayer" -- and man, that title has a different ring post-Game of Thrones -- the heroes have to guard different royal figures from an assassin sent by the Overmaster. They include:
Prince Mark of Sardonia
King Vulko of Atlantis
Princess Evalina of Valdana
Prince Ali of Kaliph
Chief Solovar of Gorilla City
Queen Astrid of Graustania
There are some clues to their previous appearances in the story itself -- Superman has met Mark before, and Robin says he and Batgirl helped princess Evalina, and Batman says he's heard of Prince Ali and he's a good man -- but ENB and the editor don't send the kiddoes into the back issue stacks. Instead, they're just part of the grand tapestry of the DC Universe (long before it was ever called such a thing). It's a great approach, keeping kids who probably weren't born when Superman met Mark (I assume) from feeling left out, but letting older fans dig around to follow the hints that the characters appeared before. (And, given that I supplies a list of them I'm guessing one of the intrepid readers of this site can name where these characters originally appeared, probably from memory.)
Also, two issues later, the Super Friends fight an immortal giant mole -- one of the stories I fondly remember from childhood.
Well, Vulko and Solovar are easy, of course!
I remembered Prince Mark from Adventure Comics #303(D'62) where he met Superboy. It was reprinted in Four Star Spectacular #5 (D'76), a series edited by...E. Nelson Bridwell.
Queen Astrid of Graustania first appeared as Princess Astrid in Secret Six #5 (Ja'69), a series created and written by...E. Nelson Bridwell!
Princess Evalina appeared in The Batman Family #5 (Ju'76) where her life was saved by the Dynamite Duo in a book whose associate editor was...E. Nelson Bridwell!
Prince Ali of Kaliph first appeared in Superman's Girlfriend Lois Lane #58 (Jl'65) where he wanted to marry the Girl Reporter. Apparently he was considered the world's richest man! That series was edited by Mort Weisinger whose assistant was...E. Nelson Bridwell!
Insert [MIND BLOWN] gif of your choice here. Fox Mulder couldn't have said it better.
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