Tuesday, August 2, 2016

Upcoming Collections! I'm Going To Be Broke!

A hat tip to blog buddy Mart Gray for pointing me to a Bleeding Cool post which showcased ucpoming DC comic collections. Here is that link:
http://www.bleedingcool.com/2016/07/27/going-late-night-dc-comics-amazon-fishing/

The link sent me to Amazon to look for myself. I am continually amazed at how popular Supergirl has become. Just looking at trades, within this year, we have seen a slick Silver Age Omnibus, the resoliciting of the Sterling Gates/Jamal Igle trades, a Daring New Adventures trade, reprintings of the first Peter David Supergirl volume, reprints of the Loeb/Turner stuff, and the resoliciting of the Landry Walker/Eric Jones magnificent series Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the Eighth Grade.

Whew! That's a lot of Supergirl collections on the shelves.

But wait! There's more!

Now we have even more trades coming out. A Supergirl Bronze Age Vol.1 is coming out! And another volume of the Peter David Matrix run as well. Suffice it to say, DC realizes (finally) that Supergirl is a marketable character with a deep history.

I'll take a closer look at the trades below.


The Bronze Age Vol 1 trade is an incredible collection. It collect the bulk of her Adventure Comics stories as well as her short 1972 solo titles and just one Superman Family tale.

I think the idea to start with Adventure Comics 397 (cover above) makes a ton of sense to mark the beginning of Kara's Bronze Age. With this issue we retired the original blue skirt costume. We began to have the mod and groovy variant costumes. It also marked the beginning of Mike Sekowsky's pure run on the book. No longer were there inventory stories of Supergirl in the blue skirt and drawn by Kurt Schaffenberger. (Those had a more Silver Age feel.)

But this is going to be a dense book with some twists. We'll get the reporter Linda and the drama student Linda. We'll get action adventures and weepy romance stories. We'll get wonky continuity, hypnotizing sunglasses, Kara as surrogate mother, and team-ups.

It took a long time for me to track down all these issues for my collection. So I am happy that everyone will be able to read them.



As many know, I love the Peter David Supergirl series, especially the first 50 issues. So I am thrilled to see more of it collected in trade.

This collection will really start to delve into the mystical and angelic portion of Supergirl's story. The first volume hinted that maybe there was something more than just superheroics in Linda/Supergirl's future. Here we'll read her battle with Silver Banshee, her meeting Power Girl for the first time, a great battle with Despero and the first appearance of her angelic flame wings. And throughout this, we get the heady topics of redemption, what does it mean to be alive, what is a soul, and can you replace someone who hasn't existed before?

If you haven't read this series because you were turned off by the idea of Matrix and Earth Angels, please read this book. And please trust me. This was and is an excellent run.

So I better start saving my pennies!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm sorry to report (truly sorry, because I was looking forward to it, too) that the Supergirl Bronze Age collection was canceled as quickly as it was announced. I'm hoping it's because it was mis-solicited as a $24.99 trade paperback -- given the volume of the contents included, it would more likely be a $75 hardcover omnibus. Here's hoping it gets resolicited (especially since I already have my Amazon order in, and they often honor early mispricings -- I got the Supergirl Silver Age omnibus for $17.99).

KET said...

It's really too bad about the cancellation of the Bronze Age SG collection; I really hope that it gets re-solicited soon. But news of a new collection of PAD's outstanding Supergirl run is welcome indeed. Naturally I have all the individual issues, but these days I would imagine some of those are hard to come by in the wake of the Maid of Might's commercial renaissance. More availability of well-written Supergirl comics stories is always a good thing!

KET

Anonymous said...

I feel your pain Anj. I got quite a bit of Supergirl-related merchandise, both comic and non-comic related,
my last comics run I had to leave behind quite a few things... and more Supergirl related merchandies just
keeps coming out.

Not that I'm complaining, it continues to be great that DC et al continues to keep Supergirl front and center
promo-wise! As you say, great time to be a Supergirl fan!


Regards

Martin Gray said...

The Bronze Age book is still up at Amazon UK, for £18.99 with pre-order guarantee. Just sayin...

I have ordered, fingers crossed. I want Zond and Starfire and creepy girl in picture and comforting kitty!