I've been whittling away at the towering stack of books I picked up a year or so back when the local chain Ollie's had a huge discount on (mostly) DC Comics collections.
How good were the deals? This Archive Edition of DC's World's Finest Comics is cover priced at $49.95 (and that was in 2001). Ollie's sold it to me for $6.99.
What a treasure at such a small price!
This book includes over 200 pages of classic stories from January 1957 to May 1959, and they're all these 13-page gems drawn by the amazing Dick Sprang and written by Edmond Hamilton (the beloved science fiction writer) and Bill Finger (all he did was create Batman - with some help from Bob Kane, maybe).
The stories all center around the team of Superman, Batman and Robin, and they showcase the difficulty of teaming the world's most powerful character with an extraordinary (if human) guy with some great hardware. It takes some clever writing to get over that hurdle!
Many of the stories involve powers being switched, or someone gaining powers unexpectedly, but they're all clever and solid little tales - oh, and Batman never takes a back seat to his much-more-powerful friend, Superman.
The art by Sprang is a delight that holds up well today, filled with amazing energy, dynamic angles and super-feats. Sprang has always been one of my all-time favorite DC artists, and these stories demonstrate why he was ahead of his time.
I don't know if Ollie's will ever have another sale like that one (it's a source of anger for some fans, especially the ones that don't have a branch nearby - and the comic shop owners who feel that DC undercut their business by dumping the back stock on a discount store) - but I'm grateful I was able to score this book (which I missed when it was first released) - it's loaded with pure gold!
Grade: A
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4 comments:
I love those pre-Mort Weisinger stories in World's Finest. Batman always looked right when drawn by Sprang, but his Superman was good, too. I paid close to full price when this came out several years ago, but it was still worth it. Thanks for the review.
Had no idea Ollie's carried DC Archive Editions. I do remember seeing DC Trade Paperback collections carried at my local store.
Ollie's usually carries some comics collections in their book section, but a couple of years ago the word went out that they had a huge pile of books for sale at rock-bottom prices. It was amazing to see these huge stacks of books for sale. I picked up dozens of books cheaply - most of the Showcase collections were $3.99 each, and there were even a handful of Archive and other nice hardback reprint books for under $10 each. It will take me years to get caught up on the stack of books I picked up. (Note: I am not complaining.)
Pretty awesome! HamiltonBook.com also had a selection of archive editions and hardback collections at similar prices. Picked up several items there!
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