Detective Comics is an American comic book published monthly by DC Comics since 1937, best-known for introducing the iconic fictional character Batman. It is, along with Action Comics, the book that launched with the debut of Superman, one of the medium's signature series, and the source of its company's name. With 840 monthly issues published as of January 2008, it is the longest continuously published comic book in the United States.

Publication history

Detective Comics was the final publication of the entrepreneur Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, whose comics company, National Allied Publications, would evolve into DC Comics, one of the world's two largest comic book publishers, though long after its founder had left it. Wheeler-Nicholson's first two titles were the landmark New Fun: The Big Comic Magazine #1 (Feb. 1935), colloquially called New Fun Comics #1 and the first such early comic book to contain all-original content, rather than a mix of newspaper comic strips and comic-strip-style new material. His second effort, New Comics #1, would be retitled twice to become Adventure Comics, another seminal series that ran for decades until issue #503 in 1983.

The third and final title published under his aegis would be Detective Comics, advertised with a cover illustration dated Dec. 1936, but eventually premiering three months late, with a March 1937 cover date. In 1937, however, Wheeler-Nicholson was in debt to printing-plant owner and magazine distributor Harry Donenfeld, who was as well a pulp-magazine publisher and a principal in the magazine distributorship Independent News. Wheeler-Nicholson took Donenfeld on as a partner in order to publish Detective Comics #1 through the newly formed Detective Comics, Inc., with Wheeler-Nicholson and Jack S. Liebowitz, Donenfeld's accountant, listed as owners. Wheeler-Nicholson was forced out a year later.

Originally an anthology comic, in the manner of the times, Detective Comics #1 (March 1937) featured stories in the "hard-boiled detective" genre popular, with such stars as Ching Lung (a Fu Manchu-style "yellow peril" villain), Slam Bradley (created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster before their character Superman saw print two years later), and Speed Saunders, among others. Its first editor, Vin Sullivan, also drew the debut issue's cover.

Batman

Issue #38 (April 1940) introduced Batman's sidekick Robin (billed as "The Sensational Character Find of 1940" on the cover). Robin's appearance and the subsequent increase in sales of the book soon led to the trend of superheroes and young sidekicks that characterize the era fans and historians call the Golden Age of Comic Books.

In addition to the Batman stories, the comic also had numerous back up strips such as "Martian Manhunter" which was introduced in Detective Comics #225.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the magazine adopted the expanded format used by the cancelled Batman Family, adding solo features including "Robin: the Teen Wonder", "Batgirl", "The Human Target" and the anthology called "Tales of Gotham City", which featured the stories of the ordinary people of Gotham City. This was done in part, to boost sales as at the time "Batman Family" outsold Detective Comics, putting Detective Comics in peril of cancellation during the late 1970s.

Another sales ploy of the 1980s was the use of serialization of the main Batman story, as stories from "Detective Comics" and "Batman" directly flowed from one book to another, with cliffhangers at the end of each book's monthly story that would be resolved in the other title of that month.

Awards

Character debuts

Detective Comics reprint collections

• Batman Archives' (six volumes): Collects Batman stories issues from #27-135
• Manhunter: The Special Edition: Collects Manhunter backup from #437-442, and the Batman/Manhunter crossover in #443
• Batman: Strange Apparitions: Collects #469-476, 478-479 ISBN 1-56389-500-5
• Batman: Year Two: Collects #575-578
• Batman: Blind Justice: Collects #598-600
• Batman: Evolution: Collects #743-750
• Batman: War Drums: Collects #790-796
• Batman: City of Crime: Collects #800-808, 811-814
• Batman: Detective: Collects #821-826.
• Batman: Death and the City: Collects #827-834
• Batman Chronicles (four volumes): Includes Batman stories from #27-56
• Batman: The Dynamic Duo Archives (two volumes): Collects #327-339 (1964-1965)
• Showcase Presents: Batman vol 1: Collects #327-342

Detective Comics stories also appear in other Batman collections.

Footnotes

References

• DC Comics official site
• Grand Comics Database
• Big Comic Book DataBase
• Jones, Gerard. Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book (Basic Books, 2004; trade paperback ISBN 0-465-03657-0)
• Batman: Yesterday, Today, & Beyond - Comics
• Detective Comics cover gallery