Tuesday, June 30, 2020

Modifying Daughters of the Moon: Federal Comics' World's Finest Comics #4


This is the cover to DC Comics' World's Finest Comics #295


And this is a modified black and white print of the cover without the trade dress and Superman:


This is interesting in and of itself, but what's even more interesting is that this is found in Federal Comics' World's Finest Comics #4 - not as a pinup, but as an inserted page in the story Daughters of the Moon. 

Daughters of the Moon is a 23-page story centred on Superman's attempts to rescue Batman from an incurable virus. It is presented as a 24-page story in the Federal edition, and this page has been purposefully inserted after page 8 to symbolically represent Batman's battle with the virus and the Moondancers who infected him, which is referenced in the preceding panel. It is for this reason that the Superman figure has been deleted, and I'm sure this explains why the moon has been modified with globular formations.

It was common practice to accommodate the page count in these Australian editions by deleting pages or reducing the art and merging pages. This is a rare example of a story with an increased page count. 

Kudos to Neil Hansen and AusReprints for spotting this some time ago.

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