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I have really enjoyed picking up the Superman and Batman Chronicles series that DC has been putting out. If you don't know what they are, DC has the ingenious idea of releasing Superman and Batman comics in order from their first appearances. So, for example, Batman Chronicles #1 starts with Detective Comics #27 and the stories are printed in order, with Detective Comics and Batman titles thrown in, as well as other titles they have appeared in (World's Fair Comic Book and World's Finest in the most recent volume). These collections are all softcover so it's only $15 per trade. Batman Volume 4 was released this past week and I just finished reading Superman Volume 3. This collection includes Action Comics #'s 21-25, Superman #'s 4-5 (misprinted in the back as #'s 3-4) and New York World's Fair 1940. If you haven't read any Golden Age Superman you will be in for a shock. It is vastly different from what we know and love now. Superman cracks silly one-liners, he can't fly yet, he has no real weaknesses and no major villains to battle. The first main one he had was Ultra-Humanite, a great scientist. She makes an appearance here. Also making his first appearance is a man by the name of Luthor. Here is just a normal guy who wants to overthrow the US government and way of thinking. Superman and his abilities haven't been all fleshed out yet (he can't fly) and sometimes it seems the powers are being made up as he goes along (Super-hearing, changing facial features to impersonate other men) and Lois Lane was just a rival reporter for the Planet. The work of Shuster and Siegel is still enjoyable. You can tell the artwork and storytelling progresses as the issues go on and the stuff later in the collection is more interesting than the usual stories they were doing before. The artwork was progressing as well. It wasn't the usual 8 box panels of the same shape and size but they started mixing it up in the last few stories. The restoration has been amazing. I have seen some reprints of material from a similar time that has been awful but DC did their best to restore this to its original color and feel. These are great collections and for $15 no real Superman fan (or comics fan for that matter) should pass these up.
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Questions? Comments? Shoot me an email.
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