The "DC Comics Classics Library" was a short-lived line of hardcovers published by DC from 2009 to 2010, with only nine releases. It seemed pretty ill-conceived, and some of the choices of what to include were frankly inexplicable, but that's another discussion.
The most interesting book in the line was this, the first release (and the only book of the nine I picked up, and even that was on sale several years after the fact for far less than the US$40 list price), featuring a nine issue run of SUPERMAN from 1971, #233-238,240-242 (the missing issue being a reprint giant, which they did instead of Annuals at the time). This was a run by Dennis O'Neil, Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson (with one issue inked by Dick Giordano, and covers mostly by Neal Adams). #233 was also the first issue of Julius Schwartz's editorial run on the book, replacing long-time editor Mort Weisinger, which would last until 1986.
It's a fairly famous run which, except for the first chapter and a few 1980s digests, had mostly been unreprinted for almost 40 years.
This is also a rare example of a DC or Marvel reprint apparently sourced entirely from scans of published comics. Generally for comics of this vintage they seem to go back to the original art or copies of that art, recoloured in modern techniques with or without any attempt at fidelity to the original printed colours. Even when they have to use printed comics as the source material in most cases they seem to isolate the black lines of the original art (by physical or digital means) to reconstruct an approximation of the original art and recolour that. Not the case with this book. DC used this kind of technique for some 1940s material (some Kirby&Simon material I know for sure, I recall hearing about some others), but not so much for material of this era. The only example I know for sure was the 1970s Kirby/Simon "reunion" on Sandman, which was scanned when reprinted with earlier 1940s Sandman material, and recoloured when reprinted with other 1970s Kirby material.
I don't think it was the rule for this line of books, where most of the books included material already recently reprinted with the usual techniques. I guess it was experiment in this kind of reprint, and given how it's not used now probably a failed experiment. I have kind of mixed feelings. Part of me likes the esthetic of reprints that look as much like the original as possible, which you don't often get with reprints with shiny new colours on shiny paper. On the other hand, I don't think the technology was quite there in 2009 to do a great job with reprints sourced from aging newsprint, and they made a few specific choices in this particular reprint that I disagree with. Also, for reprints of this era (where the original colouring was limited and largely anonymous) my interest is in getting the best possible view of the linework, so the closer the source material is to the original art, the better. There's a reason a huge mass of my collection is black and white reprints of colour comics (well, besides price, that was also a big factor).
(just checked, they did a new edition last year, with the usual recolouring they do for most comics of that era. And 25% cheaper, twelve years later)
This depowering of Superman was one of the other innovations planned for the new Schwartz era, as Superman's powers has gradually increased in over 30 years of continuous publication to a ridiculous level, and the thought was that toning them down a bit might make for more interesting stories. This change also didn't take, Superman was as powerful as ever soon after, maybe even more powerful in some later Schwarz stories than he ever was under Weisinger. Anyway, before this book I mostly heard the stories called the "Sand Superman" stories, not "Kryptonite Nevermore", which describes them better.
Anyway, I'd read about half of these as back issues before getting this book, including the beginning and the end. Overall I'd have to say they're okay. Flawed in a lot of ways, but with some interesting ambitions, and an important step in the history of Superman.
The best part is the art. This is pretty much the middle of Curt Swan's reign as the principal Superman artist. He'd been drawing Superman related stuff among other work since 1950, but from about 1955 on Superman was his main job, and it was a rare Superman comic that didn't have a Swan story or cover. And of course he continued as main Superman artist until the 1986 reboot, and still returned to the character on a regular basis until he passed away in 1996.
While he's always good and professional, from what I've seen some of the late 1960s work is a little bit less inspired, either because he was drawing essentially the same scene for the twelfth time or he had less compatible inkers. For this run he was inked by Murphy Anderson, a great artist in his own right. Actually, he started inking Swan regularly on covers a year before this, and on stories a few months earlier, and continued on a regular basis for a few years, plus some later returns (including a great run of ACTION COMICS WEEKLY with a 2-page Superman serial formatted like a newspaper Sunday page). It's probably the best extended run of high quality and artistically compatible inking that Swan ever got.
It probably also helped that he was asked to draw a lot of things that he hadn't done before. In addition to the kryptonite being gone, so are Superman's regular villains, so no third battle this month with Luthor and Brainiac, we get some different situations. Sometimes ridiculous, but different.
And there we get to the problem. Now, I'm as big a fan of Dennis O'Neil as you're likely to encounter today. But even O'Neil will admit (as he does in the afterword to this book), that he was an ill-fit for Superman. At this time this run started, he was still on Green Lantern and a regular on the Batman books, both celebrated and oft-reprinted runs for editor Schwartz. On this though, he didn't quite seem to gel. He had some interesting ideas, but ultimately it seems that wasn't the direction for Superman, and he ends the story in a kind of abrupt way, involving the then-current jumpsuited Diana Prince and unfortunately named I-Ching from WONDER WOMAN.
Ironically, it seems that a Weisinger carryover, Cary Bates, was the one who gave Schwartz what he wanted, and he was a mainstay on the books with Swan until the 1986 reboot, complete with a full-powered Superman and regular appearances of kryptonite and the classic Superman villains. So I think they misdiagnosed the patient when they tried to operate back in 1970...
So, a book with some merits and some demerits, not nearly worth full price, but worth what I paid for it.
This also includes an introduction by Paul Levitz, an afterword by Dennis O'Neil and some house ads for the Superman revamp of the era (which including Jack Kirby's run on JIMMY OLSEN).
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