DC Dollar Comics retailer flyer production art, page 2 (1977) - Superman and Wonder Woman Tell It Like It Is

Interesting time capsule from the failed "DC Explosion." Nice likenesses on the bottom tier. I'm struck by two things. One is how old DC's bosses were, emblematic of the "old guard" mentality that allowed the mostly younger Marvel crowd to better capture the zeitgeist of the 60s and 70s.

The other thing is that this flyer implicitly admits that both Marvel and DC were grappling with declining sales at the NYC news stands which for decades had been their lifeblood. Hence the experimentation with different products at higher price points like "52 big pages for 25 cents" and "Giant Size X-Men."

Ultimately both companies were driven from the corner stores where curious children might encounter them, and comics became an adult hobby, relegated to its own freestanding specialty stores. So it's unfortunate that DC's Dollar Comics could not overcome the very real challenge for which they were designed.

I'd buy that for a dollar!  And I did... over and over. I loved those oversized dollar comics as the 100 pagers were just before my time (and these were all-new stories as they advertised).  An interesting piece of comics industry history from an amazing time to grow up reading comics.