This one, subtitled Secret Origins: Super-Villains, is a treasure trove of vintage origin stories and key appearances of such villains as Lex Luthor, the Joker, Captain Cold, and Dr. Sivana, among others. For longtime DC fans, this is a welcome trip down memory lane. For those of us who in our youth skewed more toward Marvel, it’s a change to the characters in their best Golden Age and Silver Age incarnations.

Often adapted, Beowulf is probably the best-known epic Old English poem. The subject of multiple translations and frequent scholarly discussion, its true origins are unknown, although there is a manuscript which dates to between the years 975 and 1025.

Dilton has built a rocket and Archie, Betty, Veronica, and Jughead are going to be the first teenagers in space. When the voyage doesn’t go as smoothly as planned, the quartet get some help from Cosmo the Merry Martian.

The Gotham City Sirens – aka Catwoman, Harley Quinn, and Poison Ivy – are back together. It starts when Catwoman plans to steal a valuable artifact called “the conduit” and needs Harley and Ivy to create a big distraction so that she can pull off the heist. The item Catwoman wants is located in Gotham’s hot new intergalactic themed club, which is filled with people and security.

Long before Ursula the sea witch met young mermaid Ariel, she ruled over the ocean kingdom Atlantica as a member of the Seven Sea Witches. Ursula is prospering and enjoying the banquet she will consume on tithing day when she learns that one of her sisters has been attacked and has lost her power.

Morgan Le Fay has gone to the year 1776 to help British forces defeat the Continental Army and quash the American revolution. Spider-Man, Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, and Clea have traveled back in time to stop her and set history back on course.

The Doctor came to the floating prison Panoptopolis with one goal: to save his traveling companion Belinda Chandra from the lunatic warden that is holding her against her will. The Doctor embarked on a Dante’s Inferno style odyssey through the prison, alongside four prisoners who were just transferred to the facility.

Kermie is private detective Flip Minnow who has just been hired by Dolores Crustworth, the queen of pies, to find her missing niece, Meringue (aka Miss Piggy). Flip’s investigation takes him to the police station where Officer O’Bear puts him on the path to find a Mister Gonzini, who may know something about Meringue’s whereabouts.  

In the early days of both licensed comics based on video games and the growing use of original graphic novels, 1983’s Star Raiders (DC Graphic Novel #1) is fairly unique in that it is both animals at once. Following DC’s first Atari Force series and preceding its second one, this European album format (a 64-page 8-1/4” x 11” softcover) is solidly entertaining and rises well above many later attempts to bring story development and strong characters to early video games.

In 1984, David Singer’s Deluxe Comics launched Wally Wood’s T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. Printed on nice paper and aimed clearly at the burgeoning comic book specialty market, Singer and company attempted to replicate the caliber of Tower Comics’ all-star line-up with one of their own.

Journalist Paul Blair and Detective Michael Simms have teamed up to investigate the apparent suicide of a security guard at the defunct Crownsville State Hospital. What they soon discovered was a decaying facility that clearly contains ghosts from the past.

In the aftermath of the recent Marvel Versus DC and DC Versus Marvel: The Amalgam Age omnibus editions, the Batman/Deadpool and Deadpool/Batman crossovers, and the recent facsimile edition of the original Marvel-DC collaboration, Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man, there’s a good deal of interest in the stories that preceded the modern iterations of DC and Marvel getting together.