I saw the DC Daily a couple days ago where they mentioned DC aquiring the first copy of New Fun Comics #1 for their archives. And I got to say while that is definitely a cool thing, as it is the one that started it all. I was surprised to find that DC didn’t have every comic of theirs in their archive already. I mean, yeah I don’t doubt given when comics were first created they were seen as disposable reading material and no one even thought of the idea by the 21st century (when they thought we would all be living in spaceships) would even remember them, much less care about owning a copy, much less pay insane money for a comic.
But it makes me wonder what else isn’t in their archive.
It’s surprising the things that aren’t in company archives. Master prints of certain old movies, recordings of famous songs, etc. DC Comics is evidently no different. Good to see they have this book now.
There should be at least most of it. In the runup to Crisis on Infinite Earths, they hired a researcher to read the entire archive. It’s usually reported as having comprised every issue DC ever published but, in this interview, he clarified that it was only “all the comics relating to DC universe continuity.” https://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/12/30/history-lessons-peter-sanderson/ Assuming they didn’t sell off the archive in the intervening decades, the comics Sanderson read are likely still there.