DC 100 Page Super Spectacular
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The DC 100 Page Super Spectacular was a comic book series published by DC Comics from 1971 through 1975, featuring solely reprints initially and then including new stories later on. The "100 Page" count included both sides of the front and back covers as pages. Each numbered issue appearing under this title featured a wrap-around cover with all editorial content (no advertisements). Versions after late 1973 included advertisements.
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[edit] History
The DC 100 Page Super Spectacular series was the "next wave" of DC "Giant" comics featuring reprint stories in DC's vast trove of tales during the 1971 "rebirth" of DC Comics, when the Superman titles were taken over by Julius Schwartz after the retirement of Mort Weisinger, who had overseen all Superman-related comics since the early 1950s. The first DC Giant was the "80 Page Giant", which ran as an annual and then alternately as its own title and as part of regular, ongoing titles throughout the 1960s. As page count dropped to accommodate the 25¢ price, they became simply "Giant" comics and were phased out a month or so prior to the appearance of the DC 100 Page Super Spectacular series.
[edit] Editorial
This comic series is another E. Nelson Bridwell contribution to DC's history and its growing array of characters. As DC acquired the rights to Quality Comics characters, Fawcett Comics characters and other folded comics companies' characters, a quick way to secure their rights was by publishing reprints featuring these characters. Further, third-tier DC characters (like Johnny Quick) made reappearances in these reprints and sometimes gained some popularity among readers. These are stand-alone stories, all written to capture any first-time reader when they were originally published, so the reader needs no real introduction to many of these characters. There are, however, brief synopses provided on the inside cover, identifying and giving background to the characters shown on the wraparound cover. Also, there is a table of contents that usually provides any information you'd need on Golden Age characters that hadn't been seen in a while. Johnny Quick makes the first of what will turn out to be numerous appearances in many of the 100 Pagers and later became a main character in the 1980s comic "All-Star Squadron". Quality Comics characters such as Max Mercury (known in the Golden Age as "Quicksilver (comics)", and named such on the wraparound cover of DC-11), the Black Condor, The Ray and Dollman also made their first DC Comics appearances in these books.
[edit] Collectibility
While the books languished in relative obscurity in the collector's market for the first 20-odd years of their existence (their Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide estimated value from 1973-1995 did not exceed $3.00), these books - particularly the first three issues - have become some of the most sought-after Bronze Age books during the past 10 years (their Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide estimated value has increased from approximately $45.00 to hundreds of dollars each in the 1997-2006 editions). The first three issues were published in relatively small numbers and were entirely editorial content. DC-5, which was a romance comic and, therefore, published in very small numbers, has been heralded as the "rarest of all Bronze Age books" by the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide. The first issue to feature Super-Heroes was DC-6, and had a wraparound cover by none other than Neal Adams, featuring the Justice League of America and Justice Society of America, spotlighting Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman (the Earth 2 version, as the Earth 1 version had lost her powers and no longer wore the costume) on the front cover. This issue also listed every comic book character that DC owned in all of the spaces that otherwise would have been occupied by house ads. For the remainder of the series, Super-Heroes would dominate the title.
[edit] Numbering
The series is numbered oddly. There was no DC-1, DC-2 or DC-3. The first three issues (DC-4, DC-5 and DC-6) had subtitles - the first two of which were later used for ongoing comics series and the third became the title of a series of Mego figures based on comics super-heroes - they were: DC-4 "Weird Mystery", DC-5 "Love Stories", and DC-6 "World's Greatest Super-Heroes".
The title then became the replacement for the "Giant" comics series (its progenitor was the "80 Page Giant") which ran as part of regular, ongoing series titles (i.e., DC-7 also known as Superman #245, DC-8 aka Batman #238, DC-9 aka Our Army at War #242, DC-10 aka Adventure #416, DC-11 aka Flash #214, DC-12 aka Superboy #185 and DC-13 aka Superman #252) for six issues.
Then, even later on, it reverted back to its own title again (DC-14 through DC-22, utilizing as cover titles the existing titles of regular, ongoing series, but not being part of those regular series' numbering - in other words, no corresponding, ongoing series issue numbers for DC-14 featuring Batman, DC-15 featuring Superboy, DC-16 featuring Sgt. Rock, DC-17 featuring the Justice League of America, DC-18 featuring Superman, DC-19 featuring Tarzan, DC-20 featuring Batman, DC-21 featuring Superboy and DC-22 featuring the Flash).
A planned "DC-23" was mentioned in the letters column of DC-22 by editor E. Nelson Bridwell, but it became Shazam! #8 and the Super Spectacular's own numbering disappeared, while advertisements were added. The "DC 100 Page Super Spectacular" title itself was used on another 96 issues of varying regular, ongoing titles through 1975. It began to become a regular version of selected ongoing titles for about a year and then increased its cost to 60¢ with the publishing date of May 1974 and continued this pricing until its end. The last 100-Pager was the Brave & the Bold #117, published with a cover date of February 1976 (but actually reached newsstands 4 months earlier, in 1975).
[edit] Price Increases
Later, DC's "Giants" reappeared after an absence of about 8 months with a decreased page count (48 Pages) and regular advertisements in order to overcome increasing printing costs and come in at a 50¢ price again in order to provide a value to buyers.
[edit] External links
- DC 100 Page Super Spectaculars - Features a complete listing of all the myriad titles, publishing dates and issue numbers of all 100-Pagers, along with further history and examples of covers and cover indexes.
