While the cover variations may not be as fun as some of the others we've seen, this is possibly the most interesting foreign variant I've yet come across. While the others were stand-alones or part of short runs designed to bring American comics to markets that generally weren't familiar with them, this one was clearly published as part of a larger American comic book scene. On the first page, it indicates the issue of the American series to which each of these issues corresponds for the diehard fans that want to know, and each has a DC News page, along with a list of the month's releases (twenty books on average!).



Superman aside, the longest running books listed are in their twenties, and while many of these were either current or close to current, we do have Superman vs. The Amazing Spiderman (1976) and Legends of the Dark Knight #1 (1989), being published in the same months as Batman #426-429 (1988). Interestingly enough, there is a regular Batman series that is up to issue #28 (the new issue features Fever, which means it's reprinting Detective Comics #584 from March 1988), but Death in The Family was first printed at the end of 1988, so I guess they are publishing A Death in the Family out of order as its own limited series. Does that mean they won't be reprinting any of the remaining seven months worth of Jason stories that follow? Maybe they'll only reprint the Wagner/Grant/Breyfogle Detective Comics stories, in which Jason is almost always absent.

Since this was printed in only three parts, the cover to Batman #429 appears inside of the third issue, in front of the portion that would have appeared in #429. Because #426 and #427 were 44 pages as opposed to 22 in their American iterations, these three volumes are able to maintain the original pacing of the first two issues while combining the last two into one.

Finally, I should mention that these books faithfully reprint the ad page with the two 1-900 phone numbers to call, not that any of those votes would have helped in 1989!