We all know Batman first appeared in Detective Comics #27 & Spiderman first appeared in Amazing Fantasy #15. Of course those issues are worth $$$. Anyone else wonder what Dective 1-26 or Amazing Fantasy 1-14 are like? Who appeared in them?

Both were anthology books that featured three or four different stories in each issue, with each story having unrelated characters and unrelated plot. Most of the characters never re-appeared in later stories. Batman and Spider-Man are unique in that regard since they proved widely popular.

The original Spider-Man story in Amazing Fantasy #15 was only six pages long. The character proved so popular that he was given his own book a few months later.

The original Batman story in Detective #27 was also only six pages long. He was also extremely popular and so DC featured a new six-page story with him in every subsequent issue and gave him his own book a year later. Detective remained an anthology book for a very long time actually with three or four stories in each issue and only one of them was Batman.

I know the Crimson Avenger was in some of the earlier detective comics.

One thing I liked about the old 100-page Super Spectaculars is that a title like Brave and the Bold would have a main Batman team-up story plus reprints of the stories that used to appear in the book pre-Batman when it was an anthology (e.g., the Silent Knight).

The 100 pagers were my intro. to the golden age. My favorite reprint was the one called Mr. Nobody in the JLA books. He was given a name later on but I can't remember what it was. No super powers; just some regular guy helping people out.

http://dc100pagesuperspectacular.blogspot.com/

Nice. There are a lot of issues pictured that I've never seen before, proving that back in the day I did most of my reading by subscription and didn't pay attention to certain characters like Flash. That link also led me to a page on the DC Digests, which I always loved.

http://www.namtab.com/digestcomics/digests.htm

I still have three shown on that link. The two Green Lantern issues and the New Teen Titans. The TT issue actually had an original story in it.

I noticed that your in Seattle. Funny thing is I remember buying this when I was a kid. We were on vacation visiting relatives in Puyallup way back in '74. Still have it.

Yeah, there was a Legion one that had an original story too (according to the site, "inventory" stuff rather than "new" stuff). But I can see how long I was collecting, as I have almost every Best of DC and Special Blue Ribbon (skipping the horror and Archie-clone types like "Binky and His Buddies") up to a point, then nothing. I was a big Legion fan too so I would have grabbed those Adventure volumes had I been collecting at the time.

That's funny. Pretty sure I had that issue too.

Was it done by Mike Grell? I have his complete run in LSH but if that's a Grell I have to hunt it down.

Not Grell -- Infantino. It's the first story in this book:

http://www.dcindexes.com/giants/dbli...c&comicid=5416

Speaking of Silent Knight... when was it retconned in that he was a previous incarnation of (pre Flashpoint) Hawkman? I was kind of surprised by that in Brightest Day.

Yep, Infantino. It's basically a framing story for a flashback to a reprint.

Totally understand about Grell, though. I wish they would release more of his Warlord.

PS: I'm impressed that you pulled that one out so quickly, JasonF, but I forget you're a Legionologist.

Ha, I wikipedia'd Silent Knight when we were having this conversation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Knight

Thanks for th info, guys. I have all the Warlords, too. I even got Grell to sign 1st Issue Special #8 and Warlord #1 back at a convention in the 80's.

Someone lent me the recent ones from last year....

The recent Warlord series was pretty good. The one they did before that without Grell was crap.

I dropped by my local shop yesterday and they had the complete run in the back issue section. $1 each; so I grabbed them all. I'm glad Grell did some of the art. His artwork has always been consistently good throughout his career.

Doh! I loved the details in that blog, and got really excited to see download links. All expired though. My sadness right now is palpable.
I remember when those were introduced. I bought every single one for a few years, and occasionally think about buying the good ones I later missed, but rarely see them for sale.

I know these are comic strips but Popeye didn't appear until like 12 years after the strip in question debuted. Not sure what it was about before that though, but I think Olive Oyl was involved.

Same with Blondie, Dagwood (who is the main guy now) wasn't introduced until years into the strip.