Thursday, May 17, 2007

Best of DC Blue Ribbon Digest #11 - April 1981

sgAh, it's that time of year again--time for the year's best comic book stories! Once again DC shows their largesse by giving the reader 32 extra pages, for no extra cost!

Behind the we're-all-in-this-together cover by Andru and Giordano(I love Jonah helping Sgt.Rock--it makes total sense those two would hang out) are the following stories:
"The Miraculous Return of Jonathan Kent" by Cary Bates, Curt Swan, and Frank Chiaramonte (Action Comics #507)
"Pinball--A Tale of Gotham City" by Jack C.Harris and Dan Spiegle (Detective Comics #494)
"Dreadful Birthday, Dear Joker...!" by Len Wein and the boffo art team of Walt Simonson and Dick Giordano (Batman #321)
"Brief Encounter" by Mimai Kin(?), Trevor Von Eeden, and Carl Potts (Time Warp #5)
Superman and Deadman in "The Man Who Was The World" by Len Wein and Jose Luis Garcia Lopez(yesss!) (DC Comics Presents #24)
"A Bridge Called Charlie" by Bob Kanigher and Frank Redondo (Sgt.Rock #337)
The Legion of Super-Heroes in "Star Light, Star Bright...Farthest Star I See Tonight" by Paul Levitz, Garcia Lopez, and Giordano (Super-Star Holiday Special 1980)
"The Vow of a Samurai" by Michael Fleisher and Tony DeZuniga (Jonah Hex #39)
"Bruce the Barbarian" by J.M.DeMatteis and Vicatan (The Unexpected #205)
"The Secret World of Jonathan Kent" by Bates, Swan, and Chiaramonte (Action Comics #508)

...plus a two-page text feature by ENB about how they selected the stories, and where he cheerfully admits all the stories combined fell one page short of what they needed, so ENB is writing an extra-long text piece, "which", he says "you are now reading."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This was the first "Year's Best" I picked up. Very fond of a lot of it, especially the Garcia Lopez stories and the Dan Spiegle short story. I really liked the Sgt. Rock story, too, although for whatever reason it would still be another decade before I'd start reading DC's war comics outside of random digest bits like this.