Super bargain

I'm hitting the old-fart age where everything seems over-priced, wincing at our grocery bills (I work at home, so I do our weekly "big" shop, as well as picking up dinner fixings every day), staring increduously at a $7.99 paperback ("I used to buy these for 60 cents," I think). We won't even talk about gasoline.

So it's nice to come across a bargain every now and then. Taking a page from Marvel's "Essential" series, DC is releasing a "Showcase" line of black-and-white reprints of their classic titles. First out the gate is "Superman: Volume 1," only $9.99 for 560 pages including some of the best Superman stories from the late `50s to early `60s.

"Best," should probably be qualified relative to whether you originally read these sometimes goofy comics in the late `50s and early `60s as I did. As with science fiction, the golden age of comic books is... 12, as the critic David Hartwell once wrote. But if you were a Superman fan then and now, you'll love this collection.

The volume includes the first appearances of Supergirl, Brainiac, the Fortess of Solitude and some genuinely weird stories such as the marriage of Clark Kent and Lois on a desert isle (later annulled), and Superman as Alfred E. Neuman.

Who could ask for more?