News Mon, 30 Oct 2006 17:53:07 CST Vu

DC Comics: an Italian history
posted 18 August 2005 at 12:42am by Francesco Vanagolli

(excerpt)

PLAY SAGA #1: CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS (Italy) (1990) AMERICAN HEROES #1 (Italy) (Nov 1991)

In 1990, a big change: Edizioni Play Press, which already published some Marvel series, started new DC books: JUSTICE LEAGUE and GREEN ARROW. At last, some DC title well published. They contained the recent post-Crisis relaunches of JLI (with the LEGENDS prologue), FLASH and WONDER WOMAN (JL) and GREEN ARROW, BLACKHAWK and GREEN LANTERN (GA). There were introductions, mail pages, notes for the new readers... Not bad. The only true problem was the... Er, I don't know how you call it... Brochure? I mean, what makes the difference between a normal comic book and a tpb. The books weren't bound, but pasted, so the pages could fly away, if you didn't pay attention.

Then other series arrived: PLAY SAGA and PLAY EXTRA, which contained miniseries (PS #1/8 were CRISIS), AMERICAN HEROES, a magazine containing TEEN TITANS, DOOM PATROL, ANIMAL MAN and other series. But Superman and Batman, the big ones, were still at Rizzoli's. Besides, they weren't published anymore... Rizzoli owned the rights, but didn't used them. The only exception were a special Superman story produced in North Europe, which I have never read (if Lars and others can tell me something more, it would be useful!) and a new Batman title, published not by Rizzoli, but Glenat (a sort of Rizzoli's international branch, if I recall correctly). This new BATMAN was hated by readers, because there were stories published with no order... In the same issue, you could find stories released in 1990 and 1940!