Pictured above, Golden Comics Digest #45 from 1975, which I’m pretty sure I had back then.
Mark Evanier wrote an interesting article about the Gold Key Digests of the ’60s and ’70s. I don’t encounter these too often in the wild, unfortunately…I had a collection come in with some Boris Karloff digests, but it was so far back that I can’t remember if it was at my current store or at the shop at which I used to work.
Any, Mr. Evanier presents some surprising revelations about how these digests sold, depending on whether or not other regular-sized comics were available as well. I’m going to ask you to read his post first so I don’t spoil it — okay, have you read it?
Good. Basically, he says that Gold Key’s digests tended to sell poorly when the digests were available in the same retail space as regular-sized comics, or even if regular-sized comics happened to be in a nearby store. However, if the digests were the only comics game in town, they sold pretty well.
That surprises me a little, given that a money-conscious child should find that a relatively thick digest a better deal than a normal comic book…twice or three times the price for maybe four or five or more times the content?
Evanier believes that sales were poor in comparison to the typical comic book size as the digests looked “cheap and unimportant,” which could be possible. A problem with perceived value could have set in, with kids comparing the smaller, pricier format to the more familiar, less expensive, larger format and deciding “bigger is better,” I suppose. Even if the the digests were, page-to-penny, a better deal.
And perhaps there was the perceived nature of “newness” — the periodicals came in new every month or two. So did the digests (perhaps not as frequently) but they may have read as “books” and “non-periodicals” to a child’s eye, and did not seem as “fresh.”
Not that comic digests died with Gold Key/Western’s offerings. Archie had been selling digests for years, probably helped quite a bit by being grandfathered into those grocery store racks right near the registers in prime “impulse buy/kids begging their parents for one” spacing. I do wonder what their particular sell-throughs were on those, given that anything distributed through retail chains like that would be returnable. These sales numbers on Comichron can give you an idea of how Archies sold in general, and it includes the note that, eventually, the digests outsold the periodicals. (However, the digests are having their own issues at the moment.)
Personally, at my previous place of employment and my own store, the Archie digests sold…in bursts, actually. I’d order ’em, they’d sit on the shelf for a while, then someone would come in, exclaim “ARCHIE DIGESTS!” then buy an armload of them. So they weren’t consistent sellers so much as eventual ones.
One thing I did get reminded of with Mr. Evanier’s post was, of course, the DC Comics digest.
Starting in the late ’70s, not too long after the Gold Key digests took their final bow, these were primarily reprints of older comics, but the occasional new story would slip in here and there. You had Best of DC (which ran 71 issues from 1979 to 1986), and DC Special Blue Ribbon Digest (24 issues from 1980 to 1982) as the primary series, though the DC Special Series had a couple of digests in its run as well.
I have no idea if these suffered the same sales fate as what Mr. Evanier described for the Gold Key digests. Alas, I didn’t check with my former boss about how they sold for him at the time, so Watch This Space for updates once I ask him. But I’m guessing they didn’t…this was a slightly different target audience, and one (at least among your already-converted comic book fans) that may have had a stronger appeal. There’s a not-insignificant portion of that audience that wants reprints of material they might have missed.
I know I picked up just about every digest DC put out for a while…I was still relatively new to following the DC Universe, and these digests made for great catch-up tools. Origins were reprinted, interesting multi-issue storylines were gathered together (making for mini graphic novels, of sorts). Sometime some new editorial content was provided, like Bob Rozakis explaining how he scripted the heroes vs. villains baseball game in this “Strange Sports Stories” digest. Or sometimes there would be text pieces, usually by E. Nelson Bridwell, contextualizing the reprinted stories.
I would generally find these in locations like convenience stores tha talso carried your standard-sized periodical comics, so again, I’m guessing they didn’t take quite the same sales hit as the Gold Key digest line did. Regardless, by the mid-1980s, this format was essentially dead, replaced by the more costly, but probably more bookstore-friendly, trade paperbacks. (Marvel had its own short-lived line of digests in the mid-to-late 1980s, reprinting some of their licensed material like G.I. Joe, which may warrant its own post.)
The digest format is missed, I think, as it was a quick and easy and inexpensive way to catch people up on some classic comics. I always liked DC’s digests, particularly with some of the wild new covers some of them got. Unfortunately, my current eyeball status probably precludes enjoying the reprints therein, but for Young Mike, they were just the perfect size and format.
It’s not quite the same, but DC seems to be having some success with the current Compact format, which are essentially manga-sized paperbacks representing many of their classic books in a smaller format, at a flat $9.99 price point. At least, they sell well for me, and they keep making them, so DC must be making some money on them. Titles like Watchmen, New Frontier, Supergirl: World of Tomorrow…not quite the diverse and weird themes that would be collected in digests (like “here are all the weird secret identities Superman used!”) but it’s nice to have a lot of this work in more affordable formats.
Again, maybe just a little too small for easy readability by yours truly, but those of you with young, spritely peepers should be fine. However, I imagine even the sharpest of eyeballs will feel my pain once that Compact edition of Crisis on Infinite Earths comes out. Keep your magnifying glasses at the ready!
I never got into comics digests very much, with the exception of Adventure Comics once it became a digest and started reprinting the early Superboy and The Legion of Super-Heroes stories.
As I recall, there were some nice new covers by ’80s Legion artist Keith Giffen, Ed Hannigan, and other artists. I think I also picked up the two Best of DC digests which featured classic stories of the Doom Patrol, and the Teen Titans–which both also had great George Perez cover art.
I definitely picked up the Archie’s Superhero Comics Digest Magazine no.2 that reprinted a bunch of the campy ’60s Mighty Crusaders stories,and some The Fly stories, yet also had a new Neal Adams Black Hood story.
Re: that Gold Key Golden Comics Digest with the Pink Panther,I wonder why it cost 69 cents instead of 70 cents? Saving a penny for the dear readers, I suppose–but standard comic books back circa 1975 were usually sold at 25 cents a piece, if memory serves.
I wish Supergirl still sported that ’70s costume shown on that Best of DC Blue Ribbon Digest no. 17–I always thought that was her best look. Nice Perez and Giordano cover art on that digest as well.
Super anecdotal, but I remember another thing about impulse comic book buys at the local grocery or drug store. The quarter.
If you begged Mom or Dad for comic book money, they’d give you a single quarter. Perhaps 2 if you were very persuasive. This was enough to buy a floppy or two, but not for a digest.
Later on, as I had more of my own pocket money, I got VERY into the DC Dollar Comics and other fat boys of the 70s – but mostly because I’d discovered how much I liked the reprint content and that was the only way I knew to get it.
Mega-dittoes to Sean about the Adventure Comics digests and their early Legion reprints.
I suspect the sales success of digests in traditional retail stores also had something to do with where grandmas and grandpas did their shopping when the grandkids were coming to visit. “Mike likes comics and this one seems to have more of them.” I don’t know if that supports or refutes Evanier’s point, but it’s one of the reasons young me ended up with some. God bless marketing toward grandparents!
Pricier than digests but more precious to me was the run of regular-sized paperback books from Pocket that reprinted six-issue runs of early Marvel series. I guess a totally different species of comic book (not periodical, in the paperback spinner rack instead of at the register, more expensive) but very cherished for the time I had them.
I’m certain that my love for DC grew out of my early exposure to those digests, where I read tales of Superman-Red/Superman-Blue, the groovy Bob Haney Titans stories, or Perry White’s Super-Cigars.
Not to mention the YEAR’S BEST COMICS STORIES, with Jonah Hex, House of Mystery, Whatever Happened To The Crimson Avenger, and my all-time favourite Batman story – “To Kill a Legend”.
I even have a single Gold Key Digest buried somewhere with my Archies.
I can blame the G.I. Joe digests for kicking off my lifetime comic habit/obsession – I’m fairly certain that #10 (reprinting the origin of Snake Eyes!) was the first comic I ever read!
I might be wrong, but ADVENTURE COMICS#500 was digest-size. When I was shopping, the digests were always by the counter with the Enquirer’s. “Hey, Mom. You’re buying that, buy me this, too.” Me? I bought Weekly World News.
At the comic shop, we sold the digests pretty well.We kept them on a sort of pull out shelf (taken from the beauty salon next door when they closed) and we kept ordered in higher quantities as many would sell out. But in the 90s, you had teens buying Image and their parents and younger siblings buying the digests.
The store being near a Polish bakery, kids would join pop to buy a ham then stop by us or the Singer sewing store (sometimes) and then us. We made a surprising amount of money on Thanksgiving Day, though I always thought of what I was doing with my life in my mid-thirties on a snowy Thanksgiving pricing back issue of LOBO.
One of this “best stories of the year” digets was the first place I read a Deadman comic, who is pretty much my favorite comic dude, so thanks digests!
My first ever exposure to the Legion was a Best of DC digest.
I don’t know how I forgot about the Adventure digests, as I had a complete set of them, but I’ll try to talk about those in a future post.
Since DC, and Marvel, are starting to release a lot of facsimile editions nowadays, I really wish they would also revive the 100 Page (or 80 Giants) Giants format with Adventure Comics, and maybe Marvel Tales, to reprint a bunch of stuff from the Golden, Silver, and Bronze Ages.
Imagine an issue of 100 Page Giant Adventure Comics featuring some Golden Age stories of Sandman, Manhunter, Starman, or Shining Knight (or maybe some Spy Smasher or Bulletman Fawcett Comics stories), plus some early Legion of Superheroes stuff from the late ’50s/early ’69s, plus Bronze Age Black Orchid, Supergirl, Black Canary, and Zatanna stories.
Or maybe revive All-Star Comics as a 100 Page Giant Golden Age stories only reprint title where each issue would feature one JSA story, reprinted in sequential order, along with solo adventures of other Golden Age DC/Fawcett/Quality heroes and the occasional Seven Soldiers of Victory story. Or maybe also throw in one All-Star Squadron story reprinted in sequential order as well.
And for a 100 Page Giant Marvel Tales, each issue could have several Golden Age stories by headliners like Captain America and Bucky, Namor, or the Human Torch and Toro, along with a few stories featuring lesser known Golden Age Timely characters. Each issue could also feature a Blonde Phantom, Namora, or Venus story, a Kid Colt or other Western character story, a Patsy Walker or Romance story, an Atlas Comics monster or horror story, and at least one early Silver Age story of the FF, Spider-Man, Thor, Hulk, Ant-Man and Wasp, Iron Man, Avengers, X-Men, or Daredevil.
From my own experience, the supermarket sold both digests and floppies, and I definitely felt the digests were a better deal. The advantage the floppies had was the stories were new, and you wouldn’t get weird dated moments your eight-year-old mind couldn’t comprehend. I remember reading an Archie digest and thinking “this is a good story and all, but why are the gang bopping bongos and calling everybody Dad?”
I’m serious about what I’m about to say: if I were president right now, I would sign an executive order forcing the Archie digests to go back onto supermarket checkout racks. It’s not right that they aren’t there. That’s a massive eighty year library lying dormant and it ain’t right. Until now, I could be assured kids today were enjoying the same stories just as much as I did. It’s like growing up without Dr. Seuss or Sesame Street or something. LOBBY CONGRESS TO PUT ARCHIE BACK WHERE HE BELONGS!
I wouldn’t be surprised if kids opted for multiple comics with different characters, possibly from different publishers, instead of blowing their comic money on a digest and getting more stories but less variety.
And there was probably also the “enough money for a floppy, not enough for a digest” issue.
In many cases, when the young kids came in with Dad with the Polish ham in the car, they were given a set time limit and often went right for the digests first and then the new triangle Superman titles, as an example.
@Wayne
Did they ever buy issues of Peter Porker the Spectacular Spider-Ham to go along with the Polish ham?
@Pete
I agree that Archie Digests should stay in print and be available at supermarket checkout racks. But I think DC and Marvel should be mass producing digests filled with reprinted stories from their massive eighty plus year libraries as well. And they should be ramping up the number of facsimile editions as well.
I cannot trust my memories of childhood, but I think I got all my digests at the grocery store and all my floppies from convenience stores. I do know that the grocery store did not have floppies, but I’m not sure if the convenience stores ever had digests.
If I don’t have every DC digest, I have 95+% of them. I loved and reread them so much as a kid I can’t bear to part with them now, even though their size and my eyesight do not go together any longer (and the shoddy printing doesn’t help).
I remember getting most of my digests at a pharmacy near a doctor’s office when I was a kid; it wasn’t my usual place to get comics (although that was also a pharmacy). I got some great ones, including the Legion issue with the Dark Circle on the cover.
Sometime in the last few years, I picked up a digest of Brave & Bold adventure stories from before the title became Batman teamups… and I soon discovered the sad fact that 50+ year-old eyes shouldn’t spend too much time looking at tiny, muddy printing. Every time I see a digest, I’m tempted… but I’ve learned my lesson. Flip through it and admire it, but for god’s sake, don’t try to READ it.
@Sean: I get the joke, but I don’t think the kids knew about Spider-Ham. Man, that deli smelled.
Again, to everyone, it was insane that ADVENTURE # FIVE HUNDRED was a digest, I believe it stopped at #502.
I think the new whatever-you-call them, Mike, that I think even Marvel puts out, replaced any chance of digest-size. I wish DC would have stuck with SHOWCASE in B&W, though.
@Wayne
Adventure Comics no. 503 was the last issue.
I wonder if it was a situation where Adventure Comics had become so unprofitable for DC during the Dial “H” For Hero revival period featuring Chris King and Vicki Grant (issues no. 479-490) that they initially ceased publication with issue no. 490 (Feb.1982), and then maybe Paul Levitz pitched the idea of bringing the title back as a digest which would reprint early Legion of Super-Heroes stories in sequential order due to the fact the Levitz and Giffen’s LOSH ’80s comc was a top seller at the time?
It is kinda surprising that Adventure Comics no. 500 was still in digest format and also an All-Legion stories issue. But, then again, Adventure Comics digests had been hyping the Legion with two Legion story reprints per issue.
But, on the positive side, DC had featured some new Captain Marvel, and Challengers of the Unknown stories (or maybe they were unpublished stories that had been meant to see print in World’s Finest when it was a Dollar Comic?).
I think it would have been cool if Adventure no. 500 had featured a huge adventure story where DC had tried to cram as many heroes as possible who had appeared in the first 499 issues –not counting reprint stories–into the tale: Sandman & Sandy, Hour-Man, Starman, Shining Knight, Manhunter, Superboy, Green Arrow & Speedy, Aquaman & Aqualad, Johnny Quick, Congo Bill & Congorilla, The Legion of Super-Heroes, Supergirl, Black Canary, Zatanna, Vigilante, Adventurer’s Club, Black Orchid, Captain Blood, Dr. 13, The Spectre, Crimson Avenger & Wing, Star Spangled Kid & Stripesy, J’onn J’onzz, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Elongated Man, Deadman, New Gods, JSA, Plastic Man & Woozy Winks, Prince Gavyn/Starman, Chris King & Vicki Grant and their “H” Dials, The Challengers of the Unknown, Captain Marvel, Mary Marvel, and Captain Marvel Jr.
I would envision it somewhat similar to Showcase no. 100, where some characters could make cameo appearances. But it could be an entertaining time travel and Crisis-type story involving Earth-2 (JSA–including Sandman, Starman, and Spectre), Paul Kirk Manhunter, Johnny Quick, Seven Soldiers of Victory), Earth -S (The Marvel Family), and Earth-1 (all the other characters). Maybe the Aquaman of Earth-2 and the Aquaman of Earth-1 would meet for the first time? Maybe both Earth-2 and Earth-1 iterations of Green Arrow and Speedy would be used? Maybe the ’80s JSA would be time travelling and interacting with the ’40s Hour Man, Starman, Sandman & Sandy, Paul Kirk/Manhunterand Seven Soldiers of Victory? Would older Star Spangled Kid meet his younger self? Would Power Girl be annoyed with both iterations of the Star Spangled Kid? Maybe some cameos by the late ’30s adventure characters like Barry O’Neill, Socko Strong, Captain Desmo, etc. who appeared in the very early issues of Adventure Comics? Lots of possibilities for a fun story exist.
Thanks, Sean. I just remember working at the shop and being pi$$ed at the #500. This was before almost every comic was getting renumbered as #1. I think they call it legacy numbers ghosted under the current ones, like when Geoff Johns started Adventure back up with Superboy-Prime in some year for a certain amount of issues. I’m not going to Google Superboy-Prime. Ever.
Remember the new 52 and how everybody wanted that DETECTIVE#900 and that numbering happened in a weird way. I just thought Adventure deserved better, then decades later we get Superboy-Prime.
If you recall, SUPER-TEAM FAMILY had, briefly, new CHALLENGERS stories and a story with Creeper and Wildcat, which is exactly what I wanted in the 70s.
I could see DC doing whatever they are called (DC’S FINEST?) an ADVENTURE COMICS where all the stories are reprints but they were all appearing in the book at some point. Same with ALL-STAR and a few others. Someone call Carmine Infantino now!
@Wayne
I guess you know that Carmine Infantino passed away some years ago, sadly. But I do like a lot of the comics and initiatives he had going on while he was the art director, and then publisher, of DC Comics.
Yes, I enjoyed the Challengers of the Unknown stories in Super-Team Family. If memory serves, most of them were drawn by the outstanding artist James Sherman–who also did some great work on LOSH in the late ’70s.
Here would be my pitch to DC. Since it looks like Adventure Comics, when it was rebooted, left off with no. 529 in 2011, I would bring it back as a reprint title (80 or 100 pages) on the same cheaper paper DC is using for its facsimile editions. Publish it every two weeks. Every issue would contain Legion material, starting in sequential order (as it did back in the digest days)! Every issue would also contain at least one 1940s character who had appeared in Adventure Comics. Personally, I would start off with Golden Age Wesley Dodds/Sandman stories published in sequential order. And maybe Golden Age Ted Knight/Starman stories. Then rotate in some GA Shining Knight, Johnny Quick, Paul Kirk/Manhunter, or GA Aquaman, and Green Arrow and Speedy stories that had appeared in Adventure Comics back in the day. Each issue could also rotate a Superboy story from the ’40s, ’50s,’60s or ’70s, or a Supergirl story from the ’70s, and then a Spectre, or Black Orchid, or Zatanna story from the ’70s, and a JSA, Plastic Man, Prince Gavyn/Starman, or Chris King and Vicki Grant Dial “H” for Hero story from the ’80s. So, essentially, a cross section of material from each decade from the ’30s, ’40s, ’50s, ’60s, ’70, and ’80s which was originally printed in Adventure Comics would get reprinted bi-weekly, at a price point of, maybe $8.00.
Then, for issue no. 600, my pitch from before would be the idea of featuring as many of the characters as possible in a time travel/Crisis type story involving pre-COIE Earth-2, Earth-1, and Earth-S–which, presumably all exist somewhere or somewhen in DC’s vast Omniverse. For villains for this epic Adventure no. 600 story, I would suggest Vandal Savage, Per Degaton, Time Trapper, and Darkseid. Paul Levitz or Paul Kupperberg as writer for the project, and my artist of preference would be Jerry Ordway. Oh, and this proposed Adventure Comics no. 600 should be printed as a Treasury Edition. That’s the pitch.
“Compact format, which are essentially manga-sized paperbacks representing many of their classic books in a smaller format, at a flat $9.99 price point.”
These are a good idea- they’re smaller but not TOO small. And a fair price point!
I have some trouble reading the old digest size books, now. They were great when I was a kid! And the “Best of DC” ones were very well done. There was some GREAT stuff in there I wouldn’t have seen otherwise.
“Pricier than digests but more precious to me was the run of regular-sized paperback books from Pocket that reprinted six-issue runs of early Marvel series”
I had the Hulk one and some of the Spider-Man ones of those!
“But I think DC and Marvel should be mass producing digests”
Marvel tried again recently, I think they didn’t sell well enough. I bought at least one of them at Fred Meyers.
“Adventure Comics had become so unprofitable for DC during the Dial “H” For Hero revival period featuring Chris King and Vicki Grant”
I liked those silly things!