angarthewhisperer wrote:
It's unbelievable to see so many volumes in the century club. Even a batman volume inhabits the same club. Doesn't Batman always sell pretty well? What's Blackhawks deal? Better yet why does DC continue to get volume 1 out there before finishing up on lines that are close to done.

I think two things helped to create the Century Club: DC cutting back the releases in the last half of the previous decade, and the emphasis on the non-DC lines (The Spirit Archives, The THUNDER Agent Archives, ElfQuest Archives)  in the middle part of the decade that soaked up a number of spots that could have gone to other DC titles.

Batman: World's Finest Comics is in the Century Club more due to timing. The previously released volume in April 2004 brought that line all the way to February 1948, and the next volume will go all the way to May 1951. Conversely, the Batman Volume 8 (2013) and Batman: The Dark Knight Volume 8 (2012) volumes reached April 1951 and November 1946, respectively. So you could make an argument that the third volume wasn't due until now, otherwise it would be so far ahead of the other titles.

The other challenge that DC has is that, unlike Marvel, they just have too much material to ever hope to see it comprehensively collected. All the Golden Age Batman-related comics to be collected to marry up to the Batman: The Dynamo Duo line will require another 30 volumes. They've published just 18 volumes of Golden Age Batman material since the Archives program began in 1989.

To close the gap to Superman: The Man Of Tomorrow will only take 23 more volumes (because the Silver Age Superman titles start about five years before the Silver Age Batman ones, so less ground to cover). They've published 15 volumes of Golden Age Supeman material since the Archives program began.

It's significant what has been accomplished so far. It's daunting to look at how far there is to go.

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