Shortly after Christmas I visited a beautiful bookstore in Petaluma, California with my kids.

After begging me to buy them the latest Dogman release (and succeeding), we brought the book up to the front desk. Behind the shelf, with all their rare books, was an edition of Superman For All Seasons which caught my eye that I had never seen before.

Going for $60 was a nice looking copy of Loeb and Sale’s masterpiece that was a first printing of the standard size hardcover from 1998.

Just that much would normally be a perfectly valid reason for anyone to buy it, but what separated it from other editions was a see-through dust jacket that added a layer of scenery to the front cover (is this called zip-a-tone? If anyone knows, please let me know in the comments below).

I needed it. It was so gorgeous!

I finally found a more affordable copy on eBay recently that was well below $60, and man am I glad I did!

The interior pages are of exceptional quality with glossy stock paper and resolution that is much more clear than the (nevertheless wonderful) deluxe edition from over a decade ago. Oftentimes I notice that DC makes art a bit blurrier when blown up for larger editions of a book. I hope they solve that some day.

And speaking of, the deluxe hardcover you see in the cover photo is the one I got signed by Jeph Loeb at a con in San Francisco a few years ago.

In addition to these two beautiful books, not too long ago I also purchased a promotional postcard of Superman For All Seasons, a nice little gimmick DC gave to comic book stores to promote the book’s upcoming release back in the day.

All three of these wonderful items make me so happy to have them in my Superman collection. For All Seasons has really been growing on me over the years since the first time I read it. Maybe Tim Sale’s passing gave me a little nudge to appreciate it a bit more.

If you’re wondering which is my pick for best version of the story to own, you really can’t go wrong with any of the versions DC has put out. The overall quality of the art is better in the standard size edition, but the deluxe is perfectly fine and contains Jeph and Tim’s other Superman collaborations too. I’d probably give a slight nod to that one.

I know an Absolute edition of this story came out two years ago, followed by a standard paperback with that material, which from what I can tell looks great too. Still, I’ve generally only bought Absolute size books when it’s an artist whose art holds up in that size, which so far has only been Alex Ross and Jim Lee. We’ll see if that changes in the future and I give Sale’s art a try in that size as well.

So much good stuff here. A great story, one of the all time best for the Man of Steel, and some really cool collectibles. Just thought I’d share.