Sometimes a good anthology is stronger than its individual parts. For instance, I wouldn't consider The Boy King, or Nightmare and Sleepy, or Zippo to be even close to the top tier of Golden Age heroes, but put them all together and I think Clue Comics is one of the strongest all-around comics of its era. To me, there isn't a weak feature in the bunch. Meanwhile, I consider more popular books, like Action Comics, to be just the opposite. In Action Comics, Superman outshines everything else to the point that it's kind of downhill after reading his story. Yeah, Vigilante is good and a worthy back-up, but the rest when compared to Superman? The book is top-heavy with its star. The back-ups got stronger by the mid-late 40s and 50s, but the weak earlier material colors my opinion of the series in the Golden Age and a little beyond.
So what are your favorite Golden Age anthologies or runs in anthologies where the entirety of the book is greater than any one feature? I'll post more of mine a little later.
-Eric
