Best of DC Blue Ribbon Digest #52 - Sept. 1984

Another Year's Best collection! The celebratory cover is by Paris Cullins and Dick Giordano, and I notice that this year's "winners" are seated at the main table, with the rest of the DCU stuck by the bathroom and kitchen entrances, apparently.

DC's best of 1983 included:
"Siege" by Marv Wolfman, Keith Pollard, and Romeo Tanghal (New Teen Titans #35)
"The Death of Blackhawk Island" by Mark Evanier and Dan Spiegle (Blackhawk #258)
"The Birthright" by Dan Mishkin, Gary Cohn, and Ernie Colon (Amethyst: Princess of Gemworld #1)
"Violet's Story" by Paul Levitz, Keith Giffen, and Kurt Schaffenberger (Legion of Super-Heroes #305)
"The Dummy" by Bob Kanigher and Frank Redondo (Sgt. Rock #376)
"Stopover in a Place of Secret Truths" by Martin Pasko, Steve Bissette, and John Totleben (Swamp Thing #16)
"Look to the Mountaintop" by Doug Moench, Gene Colan, and Bob Smith (Detective Comics #533)

...as usual, DC's Year's Best collection featured some superb stories:New Teen Titans of course was almost always excellent, a sample from Evanier and Spiegle's vastly-underrated Blackhawk run(there's a book that deserves a trade collection, schnell!), the quiet classic "Violet's Story", Bissette and Totleben completely reimagining the look of Swamp Thing, and the solid team of Moench and Colan on Batman.

My only complaint is the back cover, where amid all the heroes sitting down to a nice meal(leaving B'Wana Beast, Nightmaster, and The Global Guardians to fight crime, I guess) we have this little insulting piece of detail:

...Swamp Thing has to serve drinks?? Is this anyway to treat a member of the DCU who has his own title and starred in his own movie?!?

One thing we can guarantee--by next year's Year's Best collection, Swampy was being written by Alan Moore, so he started commanding a lot more respect.