Set Description:
Synopsis: This is a complete set of all 111 books with a minimum grade of 8.0.
Background: World's Finest Comics was published initially by National Periodical Publications and later by DC Comics beginning in the Summer of 1941 until January of 1986 spanning a total of 322 issues. The series was initially entitled World's Best Comics, but changed to World's Finest Comics after issue #1.
Originally, World's Finest Comics was an anthology series that featured DC's most popular characters from other anthology series—mainly Superman and Batman. The comic was 1.5 times larger than standard comics, and cost 15¢ (when standard comics were 10¢). The series was orginally issued on a quarterly schedule for the first twenty issues. It then went to a bi-monthly schedule but still retained more pages then the other DC Comics at the time.
With World's Finest #71, the comic was made regular-size (and price). In order to retain the draw of Superman and Batman without giving them both full-length stories, the series began chronicling the team-up adventures of Batman and Superman. Unlike their Post-Crisis counterparts, the early versions of these characters were the greatest of friends and routinely teamed up to battle the likes of villains such as Lex Luthor, Brainiac and the Joker. Although not considered an official part of the World's Finest team, the Golden Age Robin assisted them in many of their adventures.
For the best part of the Silver and Bronze Ages, the series continued publication with different formats going from regular size comics, featuring experimental ideas such as removing Batman from the lineup and making this series a team up book for Superman while Batman would team up with other heroes in the The Brave and the Bold (Volume 1). The sales of World's Finest Comics began to lag so Batman was brought back to the lineup. Other concepts included the Super-Sons storyline and the 80-pages Dollar Comics, which featured various back-up stories including Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, Green Arrow and Hawkman among other notable characters, but always with a main focus on Batman and Superman. The series was eventually cancelled in 1986 after a series of failed attempts to revitalize the concept of the primary characters and the growing tensions between them as their new characterization made it impossible to keep the stories feasible.
Our Collection: I never seriously collected any Superman or Batman comics as a kid as they were always the least attractive superheroes in my book-one having no super powers except for being rich, one I seriously underestimated as a kid, and the other being too powerful and without any comparable villains. I also think I was turned off by their TV shows of the era, which were plain silly and seemingly intended for much less serious comic collectors. When I started back collecting comics in around 2000, I concentrated mostly on Marvel titles, but my appreciation for DC covers grew as I started collecting new titles. We started collecting this title after completing runs in JLA, Green Lantern, Flash and Aquaman and building significant a collection of Wonder Womans. At that time Superman and Batman were the only early JLA members which our collection completely ignored. Problem was, there were so many Superman and Batman titles and WF seemed to accomplish the goal of having a sampling of both since the title featured both JLA members. Still, I had no interest in the GA WFs, many of which could not be sillier.
We later started collecting the Superman, Batman and Detective titles from the Silver Age and have actually gotten to where we like the Batman and Detective titles much more than WF. But since we started WF first, it makes sense that the first Superman/Batman set we have completed is this one, as it covers just the Silver Age, where our concentration has been with these books. There are still some pretty silly covers in this set, but they are better than those in the Superman title to me where half the stories are either imaginary tales or about his secret identity (and yes, I know that all the superhero comics are imaginary, but at least stay in the lane you create).
This set was only created by CGC a couple of years ago and, while our collection does start a couple of years earlier and continues a couple of years into the Bronze Age, it really covers the heart of our WF collection. In fact, we may decide to sell our earlier and later books at some time in the future, as we have made no progress in years in completing the set that starts and ends earlier (Issues #71-#121) and we have never had any goal to finish the extended set that starts with Issue #1.
This is not our best DC set by any means, but it is pretty sweet. Of the 111 books in this set, 88 are highest graded copies with 33 being single highest graded as of June 2026. However, 14 more books in this set were single highest graded when we acquired them and have now lost that distinction. And over a dozen of our books in this set have now lost their status as highest graded since we acquired them. There are also five books in this set, all early ones, which are only third highest graded, as we have never seen any better copies for sale. Still, there are dozens of pedigrees here and I doubt there are any unregistered sets of these books that could compete with this one, there’s just considerable room for improvement.
I am making this set public since it is now complete, and I have spent the hours involved checking the census to update most of the book’s descriptions, which quite frankly is rather dreadful. (I have gotten to where I can only stand updating a few sets a year, the whole process is too time consuming and generally more than a little depressing LOL). If anyone has an upgrade to any of our books and would like to sell it, please drop us a line. If you happen to catch us when we aren’t paying for other books on time and actually have a little liquidity, maybe we can strike a deal.
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