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.

[Rob Staeger (Grodd Mod)]

26 items, and nothing new!

By which I mean no new series were started -- it's all continuations.  That doesn't mean there weren't surprises. For one thing, Guy Gardner: Warrior and Justice League America, which had both been chugging along at a steady (if slow) clip, are both missing from this week's releases. 

For another, DC Comics Presents put the pedal to the metal and released the final two issues of the run and all four Annuals. So that puts a cap in DCCP, other than issues 70, 71, and 74, which were inexplicably skipped and still at large.

Superman, Adventures of Superman, and Superman: The Man of Steel all get three consecutive issues, as predicted. So do Hawk and Dove and the Abnett/Lanning/Copiel Legion. The Bronze Age Superboy & the Legion of Super-Heroes gets two more issues, as does Arion. Lobo gets one new issue of his original mini. 

And that's it! Still no sign of the last issue of Swamp Thing (#29).

[Detective 445]

All of those Legion books have my eye.  And of course the DCCP Annual I mentioned before. I noticed that the first two Lobo miniseries have already been digitized in trade form so I may go ahead and grab that as well.

[Detective 445]

I was picking up the Byrne issues of New Gods(1995) and I noticed that they didn't continue into Byrne's run on Jack Kirby's Fourth World. I'd love to see those added some time soon. I'd also like to see all of Byrne's Superman/Batman Generations books made available. (Come to think of it, I wouldn't mind seeing his Marvel: The Lost Generation added as well.)

[Rob Staeger (Grodd Mod)]

Oh, yeah -- those would be great books to add. I'm surprised those Byrne New Gods books haven't been added yet, since DC has done a lot of New Gods stuff lately, including the Return of the New Gods & Mister Miracle revival books from the 70s, and the late 80s New Gods and Forever People.

For some reason I can't reach Comixology as I type this, but is Takion up yet? Or the Simonson Orion series that followed Byrne's JK4W? I think the late 80s Mister Miracle title published in the JLI heyday is up already. 

[Detective 445]

I can't access it either but I'm pretty sure I've seen the Orion issues but not Takion.

[Travis Herrick (Modular Mod)]

'Tec is right they have Simonson's Orion, but no Takion

[Rob Staeger (Grodd Mod)]

I doubt there's a great clamor for it; they'll get to it eventually, I suppose.

[Rob Staeger (Grodd Mod)]

With DC finished with the digitization of DC Comics Presents, it'll be interesting to see where they go if they want to continue on with team-up books -- a big assumption, but team-up books do have the advantage of tending to be done-in-one superhero stories, which a segment of their customer base presumably values. The Brave & the Bold is the next obvious choice -- there are only 18 issues of that title's 200-issue run on Comixology so far. Well, as single issues, at least. What complicates things is that there are a lot more issues of B&B available in the two Legends of the Dark Knight: Jim Aparo collections.It's possible that DC is using the title as a way to gauge whether things are best introduced as collections rather than single issues. But if they do get around to releasing them as singles, most of the work has already been done.

Another possibility is World's Finest, which for a string of issues in the early 70s was a Superman team-up comic, rather than a showcase for the joint adventures of Superman and Batman. The only two issues from that run on Comixology are 198 and 199, a two-parter race with the Flash. 

There are some other titles -- the awkwardly named Super-Team Family did a string of team-ups in the 70s, too, and there's the regular team-ups in Green Lantern/Green Arrow (there are plenty of the post-Neal Adams issues left) and The Atom and Hawkman (nada so far), but I think if DC is going to run with a team-up in that slot, Brave & Bold will be the way they'll go.

Which is a long-winded way of saying something you already know.

[Detective 445]

The way they choose the books is kind of mystifying. There are a few Brave & the Bold issues available but it seems like they were all digitized as part of trade collections. But then why digitize all of the DC Comics Presents issues? Most of those will probably never be part of trade collections unless we see an actual DCCP trade collection which seems unlikely.

[Rob Staeger (Grodd Mod)]

Yeah -- there were a handful of them collected behind a shorter Superman story a while ago. A clever use of the material, I thought, and since the reprinted issues were drawn by Garcia-Lopez, they looked modern and gorgeous and perfectly at home with the new story (a Kurt Busiek-written 3-part Superman team-up with a bunch of lesser known heroes, IIRC).  

[Luke Blanchard]

Possibly the DC Comics Presents digital reprints protect the trademarks. As I understand it, to hold a trademark on an element you have to use it on the outside of a product, so just using a character in a story wouldn't do that.

[Rob Staeger (Grodd Mod)]

It’s Thursday, and that means there are 26 more DC back issues up on Comixology. Let’s see what’s up this week, shall we?

First up, DC continues its Modern Superman books with 3 more issues each of Adventures of Superman (592-594), Superman (170-172), and Superman: The Man of Steel (113-115). These books bring us into the Our Worlds at War crossover of 2001. There are 20 more issues to go for Man of Steel.

We get 2 more issues of Arion, Lord of Atlantis, as usual. These are issues 25 and 26, so we’re closing in on the conclusion. The series ran until issue 35, followed up by a Special.

After skipping last week, we now get 2 issues of Guy Gardner: Warror, 39 and 40. We’re 4 issues away from the conclusion. Maybe this week is an aberration, or maybe they’re doubling up now that we’re so close to the end.

We get 3 more issues of the 1989 Hawk & Dove series, issues 7-9.

Lobo wraps up his original miniseries with issue 4, then ignores his subsequent minseries and one-shots and jumps straight into his 1993 ongoing, which lasted 66 issues (including a 0 issue – already available -- and a DC 1 Million issue). We get the first 3 here…including an obsolete chromium enhancement joke on the cover of issue 1 that doesn’t quite work on the digital edition. Also, while the Lobo’s Back miniseries isn’t available in digital singles, it’s available as part of Lobo: Portrait of a Bastich, which reprints his first two minis. (Also of note: The Lobo Paramilitary Christmas Special is already available. With all his minis and one-shots, this is a character that’s harder to track than others. This unofficial chronology helps a lot.)

Next up is The Legion. We get 3 issues of the 2001 Abnett/Lanning/Copiel run (although Copiel drops away soon; A/L continue until nearly the end, with a 4-part story by Gail Simone and Dan Jurgens capping off the run at 38).

Also, we get 3 issues of Bronze Age Legion, 230-232. According to the indicia (and Comixology) the title officially changed its name from Superboy to Superboy and the Legion with issue 231, which the covers had been saying for a while. Thankfully Comixology is keeping them all under the same title. And as a bonus, we were just discussing 232’s “The Disease That Wouldn’t Die” earlier this week in the “DC’s Omnimbus Line” thread…so you can hop on over there to read more about it! The first mention is here.

Once again, no Swamp Thing 29, and no Vertigo whatsoever. Also, there was no doubling back for those skipped issues of DC Comics Presents. That's no big surprise. 

One thing to look for next week: Will Comixology keep on releasing these Bronze Age Legion tales, when there's a hardcover of issues 234-240 coming out next month? Or will they hold back on them and go in another direction.