DC doesn't Care about its past via other heroes of Action and Detective comics..

[Cmbmool]

With the cancellation of the Detective Comics Before Batman collection and the lack of showcasing the heroes that came within Action Comics #1 besides Superman: It feels that DC doesn't care about the OTHER HEROES that came before/after their Shining stars.

I mean it's like they do not want to go back to their history of OTHER DC heroes.

As fans of these other heroes: What do you think of this ?

[Jody Garland]

The 80 Years of Action Comics hardcover DID collect appearances of the other debut heroes, so they have showcased other Action Comics stars. The truth is, most fans don't care about Congo Bill, Slam Bradley or the Whip. Time has simply moved on, doubly so in the case of the early Detective stories that were pretty racist.

[Robanker]

While it would be a fun nod to see the likes of Zatara in Action #1000, we're fooling ourselves if we pretend Action/Detective #1000 happened for any other reason than Superman and Batman respectively.

I'm pretty sure most Zatanna fans now don't really know much about Giovanni other than he was her dad, and he was right there in Action Comics #1. If perhaps Slam Bradley gets a name drop in Detective #1000, I'd be surprised. Simply put, most those other characters do not compare in sales or public interest. Zatara, for example, is mostly an accessory to stories about his daughter and Slam Bradley was a supporting character in Catwoman for a short time.

I'm not sure a "'Tec before Batman" book was actually going to do all that well outside of comics historians and the most dedicated of fans. It may have had horrible advance sales which lead to cancellation. I know it can be easy to forget since these characters have become so ingrained in pop culture, but comic publication is a business and DC should focus on turning a profit while building a healthier line. I understand taking a hit to push the lesser-used or appreciated properties in interest of developing them, but DC will unlikely ever use those characters again outside a supporting cast member or--maybe-- a mini.

Zatanna's solo series was pretty fun, had some great talent on it and still didn't sell. I doubt her dad's going to inspire much more confidence. Any Slam Bradley story is likely going to get retooled for another more marketable character.

For the amount of people it would amuse to have stories in those landmark issues featuring those characters or properties (and I count myself among them), most will think it should have had another short story about Superman or Batman by all-star creators who may not even be working currently.

[Air Wave]

With the cancellation of the Detective Comics Before Batman collection and the lack of showcasing the heroes that came within Action Comics #1 besides Superman: It feels that DC doesn't care about the OTHER HEROES that came before/after their Shining stars.

I mean it's like they do not want to go back to their history of OTHER DC heroes.

As fans of these other heroes: What do you think of this ?

They CANCELLED it???

[MajorHoy]

Like others have said, as annoying as the idea may be to some of us, how many of today's typical comic book consumers in general would be buying Detective Comics #1000 ONLY FOR THE BATMAN (and maybe his supporting family members)?

[DevilBat66]

I've been reading DC since I was a kid in the 70's and I don't care to see anything in the anniversary books besides Batman and Superman.

That stuff was old in the 70's and I didn't want to see it then, let alone now.

[md62]

Why would they publish something that wouldn't sell? If advance orders are too low to support printing it... it doesn't make sense for them to lose money.

[Jim Kelly]

Like others have said, as annoying as the idea may be to some of us, how many of today's typical comic book consumers in general would be buying Detective Comics #1000 ONLY FOR THE BATMAN (and maybe his supporting family members)?

Back in the early 1970s, DC put out a lot of comics (including DETECTIVE COMICS for a time) that would have a new story, but then the rest of the comic had reprints from various DC books going back as far as the late 1930s and as recent as the late 1960s. Thus I was exposed to a lot of stories and characters I would never have read otherwise. And I was just as fascinated by the crude and exotic stories from the early days as I was by what I considered the high water mark of DC, the very polished stories from the 1960s. But if DC hadn't packaged those reprints in that way, it seems unlikely I would have gained an interest in them.

This is the way to open up readers to the larger world of DC characters. If they collected all the Slam Bradley stories in an Omnibus--well that would make me happy, but no one else would buy it--but if they select even just one story to put in a comic book that has mass appeal because of its lead character, then a lot more people will discover the character. And who knows, maybe down the road there will be enough interest in Slam to give him some kind of reprint volume.

Lucky for me I have scanned from microfiche copies of all the early 'TEC issues. At least I hope I do--they're on a CD and I copied them onto my old computer, but I haven't had reason to look at them in the last few months--hopefully they're still there and some glitch hasn't erased the files. That's the problem with digital copies--you can easily lose them. That's why I like to have hard copies to give me some security. Of course, then I have to worry about a fire or flood wiping out my entire collection--which has happened to some of our friends here on the forums--that's the kind of nightmare scenario that keeps me up at night.

[skyvolt2000]

Why would they publish something that wouldn't sell? If advance orders are too low to support printing it... it doesn't make sense for them to lose money.

How do you know it wouldn't sell?

They did public a Cyborg book that even Moon Girl had higher orders than.

Nothing is wrong with doing an affordable trade of those guys stories for one time.

[Jody Garland]

It wasn't an affordable trade, it was a $125 slipcase hardcover set. It's also been more or less confirmed it wasn't cancelled for pre-orders, but concerns over content.

[Flash Gordon]

Zatara is not the reason ACTION COMICS hit #1000.

When I drop 10 bucks on ACTION COMICS #1,000 I want SUPERMAN stories.

[Vampire Savior]

DC doesn't care about them because they aren't profitable characters. That is why DC eventually forced them out of the titles and decided to dedicate Action Comics and Detectives Comics to focusing specifically on Superman and Batman respectively. And they aren't profitable characters because the audience largely doesn't care about them.

[Noodle]

Everyone knows Action reached 1000 due to Superman, but I still think it would have been a neat nod if the issue had stories of Superman teaming up with the other characters from #1. The issue was kind of "meh" anyway so it's not like it could have made it worse.

Detective on the other hand is a whole other can of worms. While I'd probably drop the money on that hardcover, I'm also a history nerd with that kind of stuff. But it's very obvious why that thing was dropped and why DC never mentions pre-Batman detective. The fact that it was cancelled not far after the Captain Marvel one kind of gives more evidence to it.

[Jim Kelly]

DC doesn't care about them because they aren't profitable characters. That is why DC eventually forced them out of the titles and decided to dedicate Action Comics and Detectives Comics to focusing specifically on Superman and Batman respectively. And they aren't profitable characters because the audience largely doesn't care about them.

You're doing a neat job of compressing time. Back in 1937 when comics were 64 pages for a dime and most comics (that weren't reprints of newspaper strips) had several features in one comic, DETECTIVE COMICS emerged on the scene with a twist in focusing on detective stories.

A couple years later, Batman began to be featured but a lot of other characters had significant runs in DETECTIVE: Slam Bradley (152 issues, 12 years), the Crimson Avenger (60 issues, 6 years), Air Wave (78 issues, 7 years), the Boy Commandos (97 issues, 8 years), Robotman (65 issues, 6 years), Pow Wow Smith (52 issues, 5 years), Roy Raymond (140 issues, 11 years), John Jones (102 issues, 9 years), Elongated Man (57 issues, 6 years).

DETECTIVE COMICS continued to have other features into the 1980s, but with comics shrinking down to 32 pages, increasing ad copy and decompressed stories, it got harder and harder to squeeze in more than one story per issue. So they defaulted to Batman stories most of the time--although Kate Kane, Jean-Paul Valley and Dick Grayson held the lead sometimes and the Question served as a back-up feature towards the end--before Flashpoint killed the original 74 year run.

If publishers gave up on characters when they start to lose their readership, then most of the DC and Marvel characters wouldn't be around anymore. In the 1950s, most super-heroes were not viable with only Superman from DC still being a big seller. The sales of Batman were weak--but by appearing in team-ups with Superman, he held on until better days. In the 1970s, Marvel might have decided, given the popularity of Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four, they might as well not bother with second bananas like Iron Man and Daredevil--they cancelled books like X-MEN and DR. STRANGE.

I could see today's DC/Warner deciding that the only character worth saving is Batman and retiring every other character from their vault. But then they would be betting that Batman is going to continue to do well--and they would have nothing else to fall back on if sales of Batman comics dropped off and Batman movies fell out of favour.

[CaptCleghorn]

Zatara is not the reason ACTION COMICS hit #1000.

When I drop 10 bucks on ACTION COMICS #1,000 I want SUPERMAN stories.

Pretty much. I'd personally love to have seen the Vigilante's 150+ issue run in Action, or even Congo Bill's 220+ issue run mentioned somehow, but I believe I am well within the minority and although I'd like to see the historical significance of the other features, the fact that for the last 2/3 or so of the run, Action has been all (well mostly) Superman is the selling point.