Having dedicated themselves to making strides within the new Direct Sales marketplace, an arena in which Marvel had up to this point been overwhelmingly outselling pretty much everybody, DC produced a number of issues of DC SAMPLER, an overview and preview of their line intended to be given out at comic book specialty stores across the country and hopefully entice some new readers into trying out their books. The material in these samplers were all-new, and I can recall them being greeted with a certain amount of excitement. This last edition, DC SAMPLER #3, came out in the closing days of 1984 and looked ahead to 1985’s releases.
DC’s Executive Editor Dick Giordano lays out the table in one of his typically-avuncular MEANWHILE columns.
The opening spot in this Sampler is given over to a dark horse choice: SAGA OF THE SWAMP THING. But the new creative team of Alan Moore and Stephen Bissette were getting a lot of notice for a title that nobody had been especially paying attention to, and this was one attempt to make the book catch fire in a larger way–which is did.
DC published ROBOTECH DEFENDERS in a limited series format, based on the Revell imported models of the same name. This was prior to Carl Macek translating and rewriting three Japanese series–MACROSS, SOUTHER CROSS and MOSPEADA–into the animated ROBOTECH series that was a major breakthrough for anime in the United States. DC had gotten there a bit too early in this instance.
Most of the robot designs in this project were harvested from FANG OF THE SUN: DOUGRAM, just to be precise about it. The cast, though, looks like a batch of STAR WARS knock-offs.
DC was working hard to continue their long tradition of publishing comics about more than just super heroes, and so CONQUEROR OF THE BARREN EARTH was a science fiction barbarian limited series by Gary Cohn and Ron Randall.
As always, Jack Kirby’s promotional copy for this era is unmatched, his particular facility with bombast well in evidence. The HUNGER DOGS graphic novel was another attempt to wrap up Jack’s Fourth World trilogy, but it ran into some conflicts with current DC publishing goals and so it didn’t quite accomplish what it had set out to do.
The AMERICA VS. THE JUSTICE SOCIETY limited series was perhaps writer Roy Thomas’ ultimate project. It allowed him to lay out and reinterpret the entire history of the heroes of his childhood, the Justice Society of America, within the context of a new adventure.
The DC WHO’S WHO was the company’s answer to the popular OFFICAL HANDBOOK TO THE MARVEL UNIVERSE. it was more centered on presenting great artwork than the density of information that the Handbook would routinely provide.
The Monitor had been showing up in DC titles all across the line (including in such unlikely places as SGT ROCK and JONAH HEX.) Now, the company was ready to roll out the introduction to their enormous continuity-streamlining event, CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS. Though at this point, the title was given as DC UNIVERSE: CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS.
Mike Baron and Eduardo Barreto take a strangely text-heavy approach to spotlighting their series ATARI FORCE. This book had a decently long run for a tie-in series and is positively remembered today.
For all the sprucing up that the rest of the line was experiencing, the Superman titles remained very much in the mold they’d maintained for around 15 years. That would soon be changing as well.
Both LEGION OF SUPER HEROES and NEW TEEN TITANS had started releasing two editions every month: the usual one aimed at the newsstand market, and a second book, set one year ahead of the other and printed on much nicer paper for the Direct Market. So for a year, you were getting two issues of each title every month.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
As a guy who grew up reading Marvel Comics, DC’s Who’s Who was a disappointment and their excuse for not doing a DC like Marvel Official Handbook ( It would tie the hands of writers ) has not borne out by the facts ( At Marvel — just have to look at changes in powers ( Falcon went from controlling 1 bird to flocks not to forget becoming Captain America, then there is Ice Man, the Grey Hulk being brought back into Marvel History, She-Hulk’s strength change to name a few ).
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The Marvel Handbooks had better (or at least more thorough) text, but Who’s Who had much better (or at least more interesting) artwork.
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But as someone new to the DC Universe I was looking for information. I wanted to know who in the DC Universe was as strong as say Spider-Man or how strong the DC Characters were to each other ( Not that delusion that Superman picks up a planet and walks across an imaginary surface to move a planet, when those rockets Galactus attached to Ego proves Superman moved planets with propulsion not strength ( Granted what keeps them from ripping themselves apart or how he calculates how much strength to use to get them to spin at their normal again is a mystery ) ).
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Marvel’s “OHBotMU” did seem more in-depth. The main pic was cool, and interesting to see who got to draw it. And the other, smaller pics were taken from actual comics. Their series was first. And then had a whole updated second edition while DC’s Who’s Who” was getting started. That’s an advantage. Anything DC would do could seem an imitation. So there had to be differences.
So DC gave us a main figure, in full color. And then smaller figures outlined in one color. Some great artists took advantage of these. Jerry Ordway had several stand-out entries. As did Denys Cowan. A real stunner was Steve Rude’s Blue Beetle, which either Dick Giordano or Bob Greenberger (I remember reading it from one of them) credited for (re)igniting considerable interest in the character. The polka-dots seemed hokey. But now, I see smaller or indie publishers use them for their characters complete w/ the polka-dots, and pics just like “Who’s Who” had.
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Whereas I found the Official Handbook laughably clunky. Efforts to set exact limits on people’s strengths, ludicrous power-explanations (Cyclops doesn’t absorb ultraviolet energy, his eyes are pinhole gates into an energy-verse!) ā DC sticking to a broad picture worked so much better.
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Funny. I much prefer Whoās Who to the Handbook, especially getting some out of the book art choices for characters. But both are great.
people may not remember now the JSA book was loosely based on the Hitler Diaries, where books purported written by him turned out to be forgeries.
as a teen at the time, I have a fondness for the pre-Crisis DC line, even if the books are not all that.
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CRISIS: They should have just reduced it to Earth-1, Earth-2 & Earth-3 and got rid of the rest. As for comparing the art in both books, I never ever gave that a thought cause it was knowledge I was seeking. They left out abilities Green Lantern ( Jordan & Scott ) demonstrated in the JLA-JSA first team up to escape a trap designed to hold them but not the silver age Atom to shrink to microscopic size ( Which I wouldn’t know if it wasn’t for The Official Justice League of America Index ( Independent Comics Group ) and I think some other things Hal Jordan did in the original JLA series.
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I completely forgot there were three of the DC Samplers. Need to track down a copy.
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I would have liked to see more of JONNI THUNDER. And I wish ATARI FORCE had gotten better writing after Gerry. Baron with a more conventional editor to rein him in, or a more conventional writer with Helfer to encourage him to get weirder. But the two of them together just lost the core of the book…and with it, the audience, I’d say.
But mostly, I look at this version of the Sampler and it looks rushed and sloppy. Some of the entires do what they’re supposed to, but a lot of them don’t really introduce the ideas, and some have no real effort put into them. That JONNI THUNDER text reads like it was just taken from the editorial pitch.
If that’s the amount of effort they were willing to put into it, it’s best that it ended.
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Thank you! Yes, i was really disappointed in Baron’s work on the book too.
Whatever the flaws in the individual pitches, this makes me nostalgic for what a great creative period that was. Amethyst, Jonni Thunder, Blue Devil, Moore’s Swamp Thing …
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Although I bought and enjoyed the Deluxe OHOTMU, the insistence on throwing ever more ludicrous psuedo-science and schematics did the exact opposite of what I think it was supposed to do. It made the Marvel Universe less of a real place to me. WHO’S WHO (and the DC SAMPLER), on the other hand, fired my imagination and made me want to read more.
(Sadly for me, DC spent much of the subsequent years rewriting much of the stuff that intrigued me. But I did buy and enjoy many comics regardless.)
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