hw wrote:

> this is an old trick used by food manufacturers for years. Cut down the
> size of the package but leave the price the same. The ultimate consumer
> does not realize the package down sizing for a while. When was the last
> time you were able to purchase a pound of coffee...I believe the new size is
> now 13ox - 14 oz.

Quoting from:
http://www.povonline.com/cols/COL074.htm

Batman was not really in Superman's
"world" nor was Superman in Batman's.
There was plenty of room for them to
have their solo tales and also back-up
stories of other DC heroes, like
Johnny Quick and Zatara, since the
comic was 96 pages when it started.
As costs went up over the years, they
diminished its page count, usually by
dropping or trimming the back-ups.

(That was how they did it back when
comics were a dime and costs went up;
instead of raising the cover price,
they dropped pages. Finally, in the
mid-fifties, they got down to thirty-two
pages plus covers. Since printing/binding
requirements dictate that the interior
page count must be a multiple of sixteen,
that was about as thin as they dared
slice it. The next step down was the
sixteen-page comic...too fragile to
survive the rigors of distributors'
trucks. So they kept comics at
thirty-two pages and invented the
price increase.)