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As just announced on the DC Source blog, the 52 new DC Comics series will be released as collections between May and November 2012.

Missing on the list (thanks Yonatan) is Wonder Woman. I have to guess that this is an oversight or details on Wonder Woman are just forthcoming, and not that DC is not publishing a collection of this series. (Newsarama reports from DC that news of a Wonder Woman collection is coming.)

Here's some statistics on these to help get the conversation started:

Hardcovers: Action Comics, Aquaman, Batman & Robin, Batman, Batwoman, Batgirl, Detective Comics, Flash, Green Lantern, Green Lantern Corps, Green Lantern: New Guardians, Justice League, Superman, Batman: The Dark Knight

Paperbacks: Animal Man, Batwing, Blue Beetle, Blackhawks, Birds of Prey, Captain Atom, Catwoman, DC Universe Presents, Deathstroke, Demon Knights, Firestorm, Frankenstein: Agent of SHADE, Green Arrow, Grifter, Hawk and Dove, Savage Hawkman, Justice League Dark, Justice League International, Legion of Super-Heroes, Legion Lost, Men of War, Nightwing, OMAC, Red Hood and the Outlaws, Red Lanterns, Resurrection Man, Supergirl, Suicide Squad, Static Shock, Stormwatch, Superboy, Swamp Thing, Teen Titans, Mr. Terrific, I, Vampire, Voodoo, All-Star Western

Eight-issue collections: Action Comics, DC Universe Presents, Deathstroke, Swamp Thing

Seven-issue collections: Batman, Blue Beetle, Blackhawks, Birds of Prey, Captain Atom, Demon Knights, Flash, Green Lantern, Green Lantern: New Guardians, Hawk and Dove, Justice League Dark, Legion of Super-Heroes, Nightwing, Red Hood and the Outlaws, Red Lanterns, Resurrection Man, Supergirl, Suicide Squad, Stormwatch, Detective Comics, Teen Titans

Six-issue collections: All-Star Western, Animal Man, Aquaman, Batgirl, Batman & Robin, Batman: The Dark Knight, Batwing, Catwoman, Firestorm, Frankenstein: Agent of SHADE, Green Arrow, Green Lantern Corps, Grifter, I, Vampire, Justice League, Justice League International, Legion Lost, Men of War, Mr. Terrific, OMAC, Savage Hawkman, Static Shock, Superboy, Superman, Voodoo

Five-issue collections: Batwoman

$24.99 collections (with issue count): Action Comics (8), Batman (7), Detective Comics (7), Green Lantern (7), Justice League (6)

$22.99 collections: Aquaman (6), Batgirl (6), Batman & Robin (6), Batman: The Dark Knight (6), Batwoman (5), Blue Beetle (7), Flash (7), Green Lantern Corps (6), Green Lantern: New Guardians (7), Superman (6)

$16.99 collections: All-Star Western (6), DC Universe Presents (8), Deathstroke (8), Men of War (6), Swamp Thing (8)

$14.99 collections: Animal Man (6), Batwing (6), Birds of Prey (7), Blackhawks (7), Captain Atom (7), Catwoman (6), Demon Knights (7), Firestorm (6), Frankenstein: Agent of SHADE (6), Green Arrow (6), Grifter (6), Hawk and Dove (7), I, Vampire (6), Justice League Dark (7), Justice League International (6), Legion Lost (6), Legion of Super-Heroes (7), Mr. Terrific (6), Nightwing (7), OMAC (6), Red Hood and the Outlaws (7), Red Lanterns (7), Resurrection Man (7), Savage Hawkman (6), Static Shock (6), Stormwatch (7), Suicide Squad (7), Superboy (6), Supergirl (7), Teen Titans (7), Voodoo (6)

Conclusions:

* All the $24.99 books are hardcover. Most of the $22.99 books are hardcover, except Blue Beetle, where you'll pay $22.99 for seven issues of Blue Beetle in paperback but only $14.99 for seven issues of another "Young Justice" title, Teen Titans, also in paperback.

* The entire "Dark," "Edge," and "Young Justice" families are in paperback; the entire "Green Lantern" family is in hardcover except, surprisingly, Red Lanterns. In the "Justice League" family, only Justice League, Aquaman, and Flash are hardcover; in the "Superman" family, only Action Comics and Superman are hardcover. In the "Batman" family, the only hardcovers are the four main Batman titles plus Batgirl and Batwoman.

* Formatting seems to be entirely based on the prestige of the series; it seems to me DC has the known quantities in hardcover betting fans won't want to wait, and then the rest of the titles first in paperback to encourage fans to pick them up right away.

* If you buy all of these before tax and without any discounts, it will cost $904.49.

* It will take almost an entire year for DC to release the first collections of the New 52. These are being released at a rate of about 7 or 8 a month. When the first collections come out, the New 52 titles will be on their ninth issues; by the time the last collection comes out, all of the titles will be on their fifteenth issues.

If the next round of collections begin in December, that's seven months between the first and second Justice League trades, for instance, and only about three months between when the last issue of the collection is published (issue #12, presumably) and when the collection comes out. Seven months still seems a smidgen long to me, but if DC stays consistent with it, this seems to me a pretty good schedule at first glance.

I'm going to stop there -- there's more to say on this, but I'm going to think over these conclusions and come back to this topic again before too long. And now, to you -- What do you think of DC's New 52 collections? Did this change your buying plans at all? What's on your list?

Cancelled Trade Cavalcade -- where the Collected Editions blog looks at some trades that never quite made print. Big news last week was the cancellation of DC Comics's REBELS: Starstruck (which you can still see listed at the link on DC's site even though they've announced it cancelled).

So big was the news about REBELS that despite that we've lost Doom Patrol: Fire Away, JSA All-Stars: Puzzle Men, and the Weird Worlds collection officially, and good money says Nick Spencer's Supergirl: Good Looking Corpse is going to go soon, too, this is the first time the recent cancellations have scored mainstream comics news coverage, with an article posted at Bleeding Cool.

Fan Joe Kontor posted about the cancellation to Dan DiDio's Facebook Wall, and Dan replied, "Sorry but the sales were not there to support this book going to press."

On the Collected Editions Facebook Wall, reader Matt Adams shared anecdotally that he heard from his local comics shop that the "print slots" are being used for DC New 52 reprints instead.

I can't say if that's actually the case or not, and I do understand that DC Comics is a business that has a responsibility to make money, and that if they complete an equation that says the REBELS trade (or Doom Patrol, or Manhunter way before it) isn't going to be profitable, they have to cancel it. I don't believe anyone's out there thinking, "Let's pretend we're going to publish it and then snatch it away just to make people mad." I'm sure that's not what's happening.

Two items I'm wondering about, however:

First, why was REBELS the cancellation that seems to have brought wider attention to this, at least for the moment? Is it that while Tony Bedard has not necessarily been writing comics longer than Doom Patrol's Keith Giffen, for instance, Bedard has written more "high profile" titles of late like Green Lantern Corps and seemingly does more work for DC across the board than say Manhunter's Marc Andreyko, and therefore the cancellation of one of Bedard's trades is a larger shock (and if so, wait'll DC axes the Supergirl trade!)?

Or did REBELS achieve a level of fan favoritism greater than Doom Patrol (or, certainly, JSA All-Stars) with its Starro storyline and the inclusion of Lobo, Starfire, Adam Strange and others? I know I enjoyed the space opera and the chance to see the LEGION characters in action again; you can read all the Collected Editions reviews of REBELS at the link.

Second, DC solicited REBELS: Starstruck in August for December release; the book came available in most stores for pre-order in September, and then was announced as cancelled at the end of October. That's not much time for readers to get their acts together -- and literally no quarter given to what I'd imagine are the large majority of readers who don't want to pay ahead of time for a book they won't receive until four months later, and instead want to walk into a comics shop or bookstore like a normal person, see what's out that week, and then make their purchasing decisions.

We all know the old chestnut that "pre-ordering is your friend," but now it seems more like "pre-order or die" -- apparently, the only guarantee that a book will reach the shelves is sufficient pre-ordering ahead of time. Is this tied to reprintings of the DC New 52, as Matt Adams suggested? Or have DC's benchmarks for sales levels of trades changed (and does that suggest greater difficulties on DC's part)? Certainly, I don't believe we've seen such week-to-week, higher profile cancellations previously.

I'm not sure I like a system where I have to put down my money early in order to certify a book even gets printed (like the Groupon approach to comics buying), especially when book contents have had a tendency to shift and change sometimes from solicitation to arrival.

Quick glance at the latest DC Comics solicitations, for January 2012 ... anyone want to place bets whether Hawk and Dove: Ghosts and Demons, Power Girl: Old Friends, Justice Society of America: Monument Point, Xombi, or Titans: Broken Promises won't make it to the stores?

UPDATE: Another fatality from DC's November 2011 solicitations -- along with Weird Worlds, REBELS: Starstruck, and Supergirl: Good Looking Corpse, David Hines and Matt Sturges The Spirit Vol.2: The Clockwork Killer is also on the chopping block.

Frequently bought together? I don't think so ...

Number 1049

"Dat takes care of dat!"

As I understand the stories from the history of EC Comics, after founder M.C. Gaines died in a boating accident in 1947, and his son, Bill, took over the editorial chores, one of his first hires was Al Feldstein. Feldstein had been an artist on teenage comics ( Fox's Junior). That was the direction they were headed until they stopped that project and went out for crime, love and Western fare. Al did stories in all three genres.

"Machine-Gun Mad Mobsters" is from War Against Crime #4, 1948. Al's artwork, while noirish, seems a little stiff, but a year or so later when he was drawing horror comics that was appropriate. He drew lots of stiffs.

The first two pages of the story in my copy of this comic are damaged, so I scanned them from Russ Cochran's 2000 reprint. The rest is from the 1948 printing.