I guess this post can be seen as an epilogue of sorts to my posts about the John Byrne reboot of the Superman titles in the mid-1980s. Essentially, I came across this 1988 issue of Superman from near the tail end of Byrne’s run:
…where you might see this oddly-formatted blurb in the corner:
Now around this time, DC Comics was making a big promotional push to let folks know the series was about to be released on a biweekly basis. To wit: Amazing Heroes #133 (the “Preview Special”) from earlier in the year contains this bit of information within its Superman coverage:
And just to gild the lily, here’s an excerpt from a house ad located right next to this entry, warning you of what’s to come:
As it turns out, the biweekly Superman plan is called off, as Byrne very publicly quits the Super-books around this time, He’s only involved in a couple more issues after this.
It’s my memory that the “Power Failure!” blurb you see on the cover of #19 had shown up in print ads and such prior to its release, containing instead an announcement of the title’s change in release schedule. However, try as I might, I couldn’t find one of those ads for today’s entry. Given how the lettering in the blurb leaves a lot of blank space, it is pretty clear that something else had been meant to be there.
But when I went to the Grand Comics Database to look up information on this issue (and, ahem, “borrow” a scan or two), much to my surprise I see this cover marked as a “Third Printing.”
And there it is, right in the corner, marked “Now Twice Monthly!” If you look at the entry for this cover specifically, it’s noted that the third printing came out quite a bit after the release of the first printing. Why the “Now Twice Monthly!” blurb is retained, I’m not sure, as the Superman title itself never goes biweekly. I suppose in combination with Adventures of Superman, maybe that counts as making Superman a twice-monthly title. However, I think Action is back to being a monthly title at this point, so it’s…three times a month?
Anyway, kind of an oddball thing I discovered. Maybe one of you has the answers! (Or at least where I can find a print ad showing the original version of that cover.)