When I was a kid in the 1970s and early '80s, DC's digest line was a great way to get a lot of comics stories for a cheap price. The reason was that Golden and Silver Age stories were included along with more recent or even a little new material. the pages were obviously reduced and occasionally hard to read, but I loved the variety of characters I discovered therein. I got a similar feeling reading these black-and-white full-siuze reprints as an adult, but the fun isn't discovering new characters, but old storytelling techniques and references to decades-old Western culture.
DC launched its new Showcase reprint line -- clearly designed to compete with Marvel's successful Essentials line -- this week with Superman and Green Lantern volumes, and the publisher did so with a reduced price ($9.99 US per book instead of the originally announced $16.99 US). At those prices, you can't beat the value. The book design is sharp, and their thickness reinforces the reader's impression of the great value.
The Silver Age stories in the Superman book are particularly campy and will no doubt elicit a groan or two as one makes his or her way through the thick volume. It's clear that the writers were desperate for ideas for new Superman stories, so the gimmick was to throw him into unlikely scenarios (old age, the army, the Presidency) with hard-to-swallow gimmicks that would be accepted more easily by young kids. The experience here isn't to enjoy the story, but to appreciate thre retrospective. The campiness of the storytelling, given its dated origins, is actually rather charming and opens the modern audience's eyes to how the property has evolved.
I actually learned a little about the early vision of the character of Hal Jordan/Green Lantern. Early on in the Showcase Presents Green Lantern Vol. 1, we see the masked hero enjoying the life of a celebrity. He takes starlets to shows, gets his picture snapped by paparazzi. One doesn't think of one of these Silver Age selfless hero-types being in it for the glory, but that's what we see here. I was also struck by how similarly the culture of celebrity portrayed in the late 1950s compares to its modern-day equivalent.
The scripting of the Silver Age was pretty clunky, but it ends up serving this black-and-white reprint material pretty well. We're constantly reminded that GL's ring doesn't work on objects that are yellow, but there's no visual cue for yellow in this basic reprint. Fortunately, the narration and dialogue is constantly telling the reader what should be plain but isn't, thanks to the black-and-white approach used here.
If there's one aspect of the book design I'd change, it would be the adoption of a clearly layout and descriptions for the contents pages. However, I have to give the reprint editors credit for ensuring that writers and artists are credited for each story.
Since the Superman book includes material from two different titles, and because Superman comics seemed to be more like anthologies, there's a wider array of talent included in that volume. It's interesting to compare the two books. Showcase Presents Superman is more scattered, and it's meant to be reasd in shorter spurts. Green Lantern has a more focused vision for the character, it seems, but the reason is clear. With the Superman material, the creators were just continuing what had been going on since 1938. With Hal Jordan, writer John Broome and artist Gil Kane was starting from the ground up. Superman had run out of momentum, while GL was just beginning and building up speed.
The initial two Showcase volumes are not only excellent historical references at a great price, but they're entertaining bits of diversion as well. 7/10
