The Answers Man's Wrongest Answer EVER!!

From the Ask The Answer Man column in Adventure Comics #455 (1978):

I love you, Bob Rozakis, but this is so wrong!

Leaving aside all of the economic issues--sure, I know they couldn't continue to produce 100 pages monsters for 50¢ or 60¢--I'm really not sure you can say "contains no reprints" as a positive, and not a negative.

Nothing against new stories, but for a comics fan of the right age, those reprints were a godsend.

Recall, if you will, in that mid-70s era, these old stories were nowhere as nearly accessible as they are today. Comic shops certainly weren't as available to the majority of readers. There were no trade paperback collections or omnibi awaiting us in bookstores. There was no internet or Comixology, no place to legally (or even illegally) download gigabytes worth of old comics.

So for a lot of those older Silver Age stories, and especially the Golden Age tales, these 100 Page Spectaculars were literally the only source a couple of generations of comics fan had to access them, aside from the random garage sale or flea market.

My first exposure to Kid Eternity, and the Silent Knight, and the Star-Spangled Kid, and Superman Red/Superman Blue, and Wildcat, and Johnny Quick, and...well, let's just say that for me, and no doubt a lot of today's creators, our first exposure to a massive chunk of DC history came from the reprints in these humongous comics.

Marvel, of course, had a much shorter history. Yet during this era they had entire books dedicated to reprinting the early Silver Age stories of Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, the Avengers, etc. Meanwhile, aside from the reprints in the 100 Page Spectaculars (and a few other similar projects), DC showed little interest in sharing its past.

So, yeah, yay for Dollar Comics. But boo for no reprints!!

The Overpriced Return Of The 100-Page Super Spectacular!

Surely you remember those great DC 100-Page Super Spectaculars from back in the day, right?

100 pages!! Just 50 cents!! What an insanely great deal!!

Well, it may be 40 years later, but the 100-Page Super Spectacular is back, baby!!

Oh, yeah!! I can hardly wait...

Damn you, DC Comics! Damn you to hell!!

Man, I hate living in the future sometimes...

Anyway...

80% of this is a Batman/Two-Face story that involves Harvey Dent going to the Catholic Church for redemption.

Actual Two-Face quote: "I know the catechism, Father: God is one, the Father almighty. But God is also three: the Father, The Son, and the Holy Spirit. And what I want to know is how God can possibly understand what I've gone through when he's one and three but never just two."

So, yeah, there's that.

And of course someone murders a priest as part of some silly land sale rigamarole and frames Harvey for it and Batman investigates with a priest who distrusts him and whom he distrusts but they ultimately come to respect each other blah blah Batman steals Harvey's coin blah blah Bruce Wayne donates a ton of land to the poor blah blah.

It's a long, LONG but fairly boring mystery that reads like an infomercial for the Catholic Church. But at least you get 70+ pages of Tom Mandrake art, which ain't chopped liver. If only it were in service of a better story...

The second story involves Harley Quinn forcing Batman to let her psychoanalyze him. Not necessarily a bad premise--writers often forget that she used to have a day job--but spread out over 20 pages, there's not a lot there to be worth the space.

So worth $9.99? No way. 50¢? Just maybe...