By Dan Brown

In the comic industry in 2026, it’s all about the format.

I don’t mean e-comics versus paper ones, I mean the many different sizes that printed superhero tales come in today. 

Gone are one-size-fits-all comics.

The point is to make stories available to readers in a format that suits their lifestyle and budget. 

DC, in particular, has been leading the charge as far as alternative formats go. 

Surprise, the Distinguished Competition is actually doing something smart!

I’ve reviewed the company’s Compact Comics editions in this space, and I noted that for a classic book like Watchmen, the reduction in size doesn’t affect the reading experience as much as the cheaper paper used in mini-editions.

That said, I understand Compact Comics now account for a significant chunk of DC’s sales. Apparently, readers love them (and the lower price point). I’ve bought a handful, and I’m not a DC guy by nature.

How small can comics get? Maybe you remember the mini-digests of Archie comics that were a staple offering at supermarkets back in the day. But Archie stories were so anodyne, it never mattered how big or tiny a page they appeared on.

At the opposite end of the size spectrum, DC is also coming on strong with its larger, magazine-shaped digests. They typically centre on one character and contain classic stories taken from different stages in DC’s history. 

I recently read Batman: Three Acclaimed Comic Book Stories. 

I appreciate how DC blows up ordinary comics pages because for my feeble fiftysomething eyes, it makes the action pop.

DC also leavens the panels with painstakingly positioned circular trivia bubbles, like the one that informs readers, “Batman’s origin story was first told in Detective Comics No. 33. The murder of Bruce Wayne’s parents, and how it motivated him to become a superhero, was covered in a two-page sequence.” Another one talks about the Dark Knight’s screen legacy, noting the character’s first appearance at the movies came in 1943 in the form of a 13-part serial. 

So what you get is a reading experience akin to watching Pop-Up Video, the VH1 series that dressed up old music videos with trivia and gossip. None of the factoids will come as a surprise to longtime DC fans, but that’s not the target audience for these magazines, which are chock-a-block with ads for other Batman graphic novels. 

The goal is to create news fans. 

There’s even some correcting of the historical record with an admission in the magazine’s introduction that Bob Kane, “long considered the sole creator of Batman,” didn’t work alone. Kane collaborated with Bill Finger, the company admits. 

Now if only Marvel would follow DC’s lead by acknowledging Jack Kirby’s writing contributions to such company staples as The Fantastic Four!

That would be a positive development, in any format.

Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 34 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly Graphic-Novel Group book club.