Welcome to DC Digests and Tabloids

If you are anything like us, you were raised on DC Comics in the seventies and eighties. We were both big Batman fans way back when it wasn’t cool to collect Batman comics.  In those days, though, when we bought our comics at the local variety store or drug store one couldn’t afford to be too choosy. To be sure, we spent a lot of time perusing the weekly selection of comics trying to decide where our 30 cents (or later our 35 cents, or later our 40 cents, or later our 50 cents, or eventually our 60 cents!) would go.  When Batman or Detective Comics were not available, we might make a diversion toward Green Lantern, or perhaps the Flash, or maybe even Superman (although for some reason he always seemed a last resort in those days).  JLA/JSA crossovers were always a fun annual
highlight, although there was the perennial problem of finding part two, or having missed part one of the annual blockbuster event! The younger fans today simply cannot appreciate the devastation of having missed part one of a two-part story line, or having missed whatever heavily advertised “not-to-be-missed” comic event of the year that DC happened to be plugging.  But then there was the thrill of the hunt – riding all over town on our bicycles looking to see if another variety store still had the missed issue, or perhaps if the local thrift shop might have a second-hand copy of an eagerly sought after missing issue from previous year.  This was before the days of comic shops.  And these were good times. 

Yes, the “thrill of the hunt” is what this new blog is all about.  

In those bygone days, every once in a while, something special would appear on the magazine rack: digests and tabloids.  Digests would be found toward the front of the rack, where they could easily be seen, and tabloids would protrude from the top of the very back shelf, towering over the rest of the regular-sized comics.  These were typically “save-up” items, as they were usually twice or three times the price of regular comics (and in the case of tabloids, even four times!). Seeking out the latest issue of Batman, one might find a brand-new tabloid or digest, featuring reprints of classic Batman villain stories.  Could the current issue be forgone and the sacrifice of multiple weeks allowance be expended one of these beauts?  It was a sacrifice that had to be made.  Again, in those days we knew nothing of comic shops, or comic conventions.  The only access we had to classic reprints were the “30’s to the 70’s” collections, and the occasional back issues found in used bookstores or thrift shops of 80/100 page giants of the previous few years that that we had just missed.  The digests and tabloids were a window into another age of the comicdom, and a way of reading fables we had only heard about in editors’ footnotes but had never read for ourselves.  To the young fanboys we were, they were like dreams come true! We loved them then, and we still love them now.

This blog is inspired by a trip that co-blogger Darryl made recently to a thrift shop where he found, in the midst of a bunch of Archie digests, a JLA digest from 1981.  The “thrill of the hunt” was once again ignited.  In this blog, we will be featuring our favourite DC digests and tabloids from what remains of our childhood collections, and from what we find hunting the thrift shops and flea markets.  We hope you enjoy this trip down memory lane, and we certainly invite your own comments and stories about your love affair with DC digests and tabloids!

Dan & Darryl