Dollar Comics and 44 page comics- All-New! were meant not to cost the consumer more money, but utilize more characters and creators than other time in the Bronze and Silver Ages. It was the last big push by publisher Jennette Kahn to get DC Comics in as many outlets as possible across the planet with books that were cut a little bigger and seemed just the tiniest bit more like magazines than pamplets. Unfortunately, a corporate mentality often proves short-sighted… and things imploded five minutes after they exploded-- not nearly enough time to get sales reports back on those few $.50 issues.
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As a kid at the tail end of my comic book reading at that point, the large size books were a huge draw. You got a lot more comic for your buck, and I always found the reprint backup stories fascinating both as stories and as a look at comic history
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I read somewhere that Ms. Kahn wanted to raise the price of comics to help justify the rack space. If I have a choice of selling a comic for $0.35 and making pennies vs. selling a comic for $1.00 and making dimes I might be more inclined to stock comics along with Time and People which were priced around a dollar also. The other thing that hurt her grand experiment were the blizzards of the late 1970s that held up distribution and wreaked havoc on the launch.
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And then… the comics world changed forever…
These books were the first ones targeted as much at direct sales as “newstands.” The books started showing up at comic book stores a week or two earlier than your most well-stocked 7-11.
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When collecting The Batman Adventures, it was $1.23, It’s a shame that comics aren’t cheap anymore.
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Once upon a time, it all fell apart for the New Teen Titans creative team. The Mento and Hybrid story line gets weirdly shunted aside for an over-long resolution to the Brother Blood saga-- including a weird interlude fight with the Brotherhood of Evil drawn by guest artist Kerry Gammil-- who apparently wasn’t told that Wally Flash was actually in the story-- so Wally disappears between one page and the next without explanation, returning the same way when Eduardo Barretto returns as the regular illustrator. Despite the fact that Marv Wolfman is credited as writer/editor in each issue, Paul Levitz is at first credited as providing the dialogue, and then as guest writer-- with Mike Gold listed as consulting editor. Brother Blood taken down by Raven, Changeling goes back to hunting for the Hybrid-- while the other Titans decide to take the weekend off-- despite the fact that Aqualad has been missing and presumed in the clutches of Mento for 5-7 issues now.
Yes, Marv Wolfman calls this period the worst writer’s block of his life, but clearly backstage shenanigans were going on, and mistakes in storytelling like this would continue off an on for the next 100 issues until the end of this run.
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I was going to post something, but the images of the Publishorials are just not big enough to read
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The one you posted will pop up a bit.
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The days of the “Full Length 17 Page Novella!”
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Novella? DC Comics insisted the were novels! Even little me thought this was cra-zy.
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