Best of DC Blue Ribbon Digest #40 - Sept. 1983

It's Superman and his fabulous world of Krypton! It's a testament to the imagination of Superman's writers and editors that, over the years, you could do this many stories about Kal-El's home planet, since, you know, it blows up in the first panel of the first Superman story.

Nice cover by Gray Morrow, which was an unusual choice for a digest. I like how Jor-El and Lara look like regular people(Jor-El is even a little paunchy by comic book standards), not ripped-to-the-nth-degree superheroes.

Stories include:
"A Name is Born" by Cary Bates and Morrow
"Let My People Live" by Elliot S. Maggin, Bob Brown, and Dave Cockrum
"The Headband Warriors of Krypton" by Maggin and Cockrum
"The Face On The Falling Star" by Maggin, Dick Dillin, and Joe Giella
"A Tale of Time and Tide" by Maggin, Dillin, and Murphy Anderson
"The Death-Trails of Krypton" by Bates, Brown, and Anderson
"The Loneliest Man in the Universe" by Martin Pasko and Ernie Chua
"All in the Mind" by Marv Wolfman and Cockrum
"The Magic Master of Krypton" by Bates, Curt Swan, and Tex Blaisdell
"The Doomsayer!" by Denny O'Neil and Dick Giordano(guest-starring Green Arrow and Black Canary!)
"Jor-El's Golden Folly" by E.Nelson Bridwell and Anderson
"Marriage, Kryptonian Style" by Bates, Rich Buckler, and Anderson
"The Princess and the Glass Tree-Man" by Maggin, Swan, Giordano, and Frank McLaughlin
"The Man Who Cheated Time" by Bates and Mike Kaluta

...plus an editorial about Krypton by editor Nicola Cuti.

There are some really interesting stories here, and the brief page count and unusual setting seemed to free up the writers to really let their imaginations go wild. Sure, some of these stories are pretty out there(Headband Warriors?), but what they might lack in reality they make up for in inventiveness. And how many times did you get to see Gray Morrow or Mike Kaluta do anything remotely involved with Superman?