Thursday, August 25, 2011

Exit Stage Left: Adventure Comics #503

This one really saddens me. Adventure Comics was such a great series, and extremely important from a historical context. Sandman, Starman, Superboy, the Legion of Superheroes, Supergirl and the Spectre all called it home at one point or another. During the final few years, the series really struggled to find an identity, ultimately become a Digest sized reprint book. That's not to say they weren't quality reprints, but the writing really was on the wall. This issue features a variety of stories from 60s Legion material to a mid-70s Zatanna story to the first Guardian & Newsboy Legion appearance. Another highlight is the cover gallery, featuring three covers from the 1930s. I love the border on the front and back covers. Try to see if you can name all of the characters!

2 comments:

BenoƮt Leblanc said...

I dearly love the digest-sized Adventure, and feel sort of cheated for having bought a "Legion archive" volume that presented the same stories for a price that was orders of magnitude higher.

To this day, I am convinced that the concept of a dirt cheap reprint digest that one can buy while waiting in line at the cash register is more viable than high quality reprints targeting specialty collectors. (Obviously there's room for both, but favoring the ridiculously smaller market sounds like an odd market plan).

Dan said...

What Ben said. I'd love to know what kind of sales figures the Archie digests ring up around here at various grocery stores & comparable establishments, where they are indeed found in the check-out line. I figure the numbers have to be fairly healthy, or the digests wouldn't keep showing up year after year.