http://ausreprints.com/

This is a revised and updated reprint guide for the “Forgotten Superman.” The original guide listed stories starting in 1948; however, as there are so few reprints for 1947 thusfar, I decided to list those as well.

That old guide was posted on the Superman Thru the Ages site–and also the Marvel Masterworks site. A few months ago I decided to revise the guide for Thru the Ages, but in the meantime, as you all know, that site went down. When Nightwing invited me to blog on his site, I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to put up the guide for everyone to use.

We are starting to get more reprints from this period–and this new revision reflects that growing amount of material to be found. But this is still a point in Superman’s existence that is easily overlooked. And some stories–such as the Superboy stories– will not likely be reprinted in a Showcase or Archive very soon.

I was amazed to find no Superman reprints for 1951 cover dates! In fact, from my research, only three issues of Superboy account for that publication year (nos. 14 - 16)–all in Australian reprints.

The so-called “silver age” Superman began in 1958, when Mort Weisinger instituted changes that became established parts of the Superman mythos. The Siegel and Shuster Superman had ended in 1947, thus the intervening period lacked a clear identity (I’ve sometimes called this the “Lost Decade”).

However, this transitional decade was important, as new concepts and reworkings of old concepts developed at that time. The Weisinger revisions beginning in 1958 were really based on all those developments from the previous decade (or earlier). This list ends up on the doorstep of the “silver age” with the May 1958 cover dates (as the seminal “silver age” story, “The Super Key to Fort Superman,” was published in the June 1958 Action Comics–issue # 241)

The reprints on this list are all Superman stories or “Superman Family” stories (including the World’s Finest team-ups with Batman). I’ve tried to find as many reprint sources as possible, while at the same time excluding all foreign language reprints. If I had tried to include all non-English editions, the project would have been much more difficult to complete.

The following sources were used in compiling the original guide and this revised version:

SM Rubin, The Grand Comics Database, Mike’s Amazing World of DC Comics, and (on the message boards) Aldous, Lee Semmens, and Osgood Peabody.

I hope that fellow posters will provide any new information or point me toward databases for the same as this list continues to be revised. Also, there are bound to be mistakes that I’ve made in the current guide and I hope that you all will bring those to my attention (even simple typos). This current revision was prompted by a topic from Bob Hughes (whoswhoz) on the DCMB: DC Archives forum–
“The Superman of the Atomic Age “