The Past Is Prologue

Sometimes, you re-read something that you had read a long time ago as a child, and it looks completely different to adult eyes. And you see that editorial departments shamelessly calling a pig's ear a silk purse isn't particularly new.

Take, for example, Adventure Comics #459 (1978):

Great Aparo cover, by the way...

Adventure Comics has been through many, many permutations over the years. And in late 1978, it went through one of the odder ones. At a time when comics were 35¢, it went to a 68-page, no ads, $1 anthology title.

Now, in retrospect, there was an obvious behind the scenes reason--DC had just experienced the infamous DC Implosion, when economic woes caused DC to retrench and cancel about 30 ongoing or planned comics. They wanted to keep publishing the characters though, and they wanted to run some of the work they had already paid for. So Detective Comics "absorbed" Batman Family, and became a bi-monthly $1 book, and Adventure became an odd hodgepodge.

Of course, they couldn't come right and say that, could they? So they gave us some grand (and lengthy) text pieces to explain why we should be excited for the new format:

Now, let me emphasize, I'm not trying to be mean to Paul Levitz here. He had a job to do, and a corporate line to toe. Plus, with no ads, they had to put something inside the covers...Still, what we get is a litany of silliness, about what a bold new experiment this was.

Well, Paul, some of us loved those crazy-ass theme giants. Super-Heroes Battle Super-Gorillas was brilliant then, and is brilliant now. Dis those at your own risk.

And "no featuring supporting characters who should have stayed supporting" kind of rips on the companies existing product, doesn't it? Detective was featuring Batman Family, and the very issue you're writing this in features an Elongated Man story, and a Deadman series picking up from the cancelled Showcase!! Not to mention, in just over a year Adventure would be back to a "normal" format starring Plastic Man and Starman (the lame one nobody remembers).

Having no "tone" for all the stories, sadly, resulted in the series being a mish-mash, a collection of unrelated stories that didn't really have any reason to be published together. If you were expecting people to plop down a buck, you had to give them some clue as to what to expect every issue, and this "no domination by one star" did exactly the opposite. And eventually the readers did decide.

Actually, the New Gods story could easily have "fit within the creative confines" of another DC comic...except you guys cancelled it. These two stories were just the conclusion of the abruptly yanked Return Of The New Gods series, buried in the Implosion.

Apparently, the "uncertainty" about who would script the future Green Lantern solo stories was so great, they just dumped him after two stories and replaced him with the unpublished stories from the cancelled Aquaman series.

Oh, and they had big plans for the slots at the back of the book:

Despite the "endless litany of ideas" for the "experimental area," after the first two issues they just said "the heck with it" and just started running the JSA stories from the cancelled All-Star Comics. The Man Called Neverwhere series never appeared anywhere (as far as I can tell).

Again, I shouldn't nitpick too harshly. But then I read a signoff like this, it bugs me:

Seriously? "More than we have ever wanted any of our titles to take off??!?!" And what is the list of titles that you didn't really want to take off?? Huh?

So, big surprise, DC in 1978 puffed up a salvage job as something new and bright, and was vaguely insincere in introducing it. Big deal, right? Hardly worth blogging about...Then again, when you compare this to the excited PR Dan DiDio put out about Milestone and Red Circle, it seems that puffing up an experiment you fully plan to let crash is obviously still the DC editorial policy.