Friday, January 31, 2014

The Existentialism of Cliff Steele

"The Existentialism of Cliff Steele" from Who's Who in the DC Universe #15 (DC, 1992) by Richard Case
In the early 90s, Who's Who came back with a completely different format. Loose leaf products were all the rage - I also own a great many pieces of AD&D's Monstrous Compendium, similarly packaged - and the idea was that you could order your Who's Who whichever way you liked, whether alphabetical or by type, or even by team. The Doom Patrol entries had that white stripe format, just like the book's covers, that would have made that idea very natural. I'd rather have bound comics and books, but I do admit the illustrations were generally gorgeous, big and in full color, and the binders very beautiful (if much too full, especially once I added the DC Heroes RPG companion loose leafs). Because of the high production values, I'm afraid this version of Who's Who wasn't as "complete" as the original, no room for more obscure characters, but they did do some delightful things with it - longer fold-outs, a Vertigo issue, Sandman in black with white script, Death with a sort of cheeky non-entry... But I don't consider it superior to the original series.

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