Like the Essential line, a Showcase Presents volume carried the suggested retail price of US$16.99 (increased to $17.99 in September 2009) and was usually devoted to one character, "reprint[ing] all of their adventures in sequential order via cover date", or occasionally to a specific title rather than individual.
Showcase featured the first appearances of the Silver Age Flash (Barry Allen), Green Lantern (Hal Jordan), and the Atom (Ray Palmer), among other characters.
[1] "While Julie Schwartz was reviving the super-hero genre, his success allowed editors like George Kashdan and Murray Boltinoff [to] try more offbeat approaches to heroics with characters like Metamorpho and the Doom Patrol.
[1]Greenberger noted that DC's collections department had already determined when Superman's Silver Age began for the purposes of the Man of Tomorrow Archive editions.
[3][4] As explained by Greenberger, "DC pays a royalty based on a percentage of the cover price to writers, pencillers, and inkers to all material published prior to 1976 and after 1997.
[4] In effect, this meant that the low retail price of the Showcase volumes could not easily cover the contractually-required reprint fee that any republication would require.
Affected volumes included the solicited Suicide Squad, Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew!, The Great Disaster featuring the Atomic Knights, The Secret Society of Super Villains, and Jonah Hex Vol.
In April 2008, Paul Levitz referred to such contractual issues in a post on his Newsarama blog, writing (emphasis added): When we introduced that first talent contract, it had a flat guaranteed reprint fee per page.