What publishers have been incorporated into DC over the years?

[RJ Bowman]

The following is from a discussion on DC's message boards (http://dcboards.warnerbros.com/web/thread.jspa?threadID=2000253797&tstart=0) of the origins of the various comics properties that have been acquired by DC Comics over the years. DC is not always publicly forthcoming with the details of their acquisitions, so much of this information is based on comic book indicia, the speculations of comics historians, and shreds of information that have leaked out through interviews and public appearances by DC Comics personnel This information has been shared among comic book aficionados through the process of rumor and legend, which is highly subject to error.

I provide this information to this forum so that it can be discussed and debated, corrections can be made, and additional knowledge can be added.

To begin with, National Comics and All American Comics merged early on to form DC Comics.

Quality got bought in the mid 50's; most of their stuff had been canceled by that time, but Blackhawks and G.I. Combat continued uninterrupted and without renumbering (could you imagine that happening now?). DC later revived Quality's Plastic Man, and eventually other Quality superheroes including Phantom Lady. It has been claimed that some of these lesser known Quality characters had actually passed into the public domain at the time that DC first revived them, so their exclusive ownership of these characters might be a matter for debate. Notably, Phantom Lady, a character created by the Eisner/Iger studio, was canceled by Quality in the mid 1940's, and was later licensed from Jerry Iger by Fox Feature Syndicate. More on Fox later.

The earliest masked hero created specifically for American comic books was The Clock, created by George Brenner for Comics Magazine Company, the primary forerunner of Centaur Publications. When Brenner left Centaur to become an editor for Quality, he took the Clock with him, and placed the character in some of Quality's comics, which in those early days were of anthology format. Based on the Quality comics appearances, the character has been looked upon as a DC property, and has been referenced in James Robinson's Starman and the JLA Destiny Elseworlds comic. However, the character has also appeared in Malibu Comics' Protector's, which may or may not currently be the property of Marvel.

in the 1960s DC purchased two romance comics, Young Love and Young Romance, from Prize Comics. These titles, like the Quality acquisitions before them, continued uninterrupted and without renumbering. In the 1970s, DC reprinted stories from the Prize Comics horror title, "Black Magic" with art by Kirby; this may indicate that DC owns more of the Prize Comics catalog than just the two romance comics. In its heyday, Prize Comics published Green Lama, The Fighting American and Dick Briefer's Frankenstein, had a stable of superheroes with such names as Airmale, Atomic Man, Black Owl, Doctor Frost, Yank & Doodle, Blue Streak, Flying Fist, Power Nelson, Jupiter, K the Unknown and others.

Here's a very slim, obscure connection. DC published a comic based on Ideal Toys' Captain Action; the character was portrayed as possessing coins that gave him the powers of mythological beings. In the late 1990's, a new DC character, Obsession (http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Obsession), possessed the coins.

In the 1970's, DC licensed Captain Marvel from Fawcett. Years later they bought the rights to the Fawcett superheroes outright.

In the mid 1980's, DC bought from Charlton the characters that had been published under the "Action Heroes" banner in the 1960's. Now here is an interesting thing: The Blue Beetle, purchased from Charlton, was purchased by Charlton from Fox Features Syndicate. Now the characters with that name that DC has presented in its comics are a little different from the old Fox Blue Beetle, but the original Fox secret identity name "Dan Garrett" has been used once or twice in DC books, and the Fox character appeared on a "DC Cosmic Cards" trading card in the early 1990's. It is also notable that for a couple of years in the 1940's, when Fox was having money troubles, the Blue Beetle was published by Holyoke Comics.

In the 1950's, Charlton comics purchased some unused material from Fawcett comics, which was getting out of the comics business for complicated reasons that deserve a separate discussion. Charlton published at least one issue of Ibis the Invincible, and some Nyoka the Jungle Girl material. Hoppy the Marvel Bunny continued at Charlton, in revised form as Hoppy the Magic Bunny, a character divorced from his Captain Marvel roots. A few Fawcett comics series were continued by Charlton. When Charlton got out of comics in the 1980's, AC Comics' Bill Black bought the rights to Nyoka, without any legal objection from other parties, affirming Charlton's ownership of at least that character up to that point. It is possible that Charlton could have had a legal claim to Ibis, but DC seems to have been able to publish that character without any problems.

Milestone Media, publisher of Static, Hardware, Icon, etc., was founded by Dwayne McDuffie and his associates in the 1990's. The company was affiliated with DC from the beginning, and has now been absorbed into DC.

Several years ago, DC absorbed Jim Lee's Wildstorm, one of the original Image Comics affiliated studios.

I've found no confirmation, so this is only rumor; through a series of corporate acquisitions, the company that was once Nedor/Better/Pines comics may have at some point in the past been acquired by Time/Warner.

Through acquisition, Warner now owns most of the several thousand characters formerly published by IPC Magazines, who dominated the British comics industry for over a century. Many characters were used in the 2005-2006 Wildstorm limited series 'Albion' and its two follow up series 'Thunderbolt Jaxon' and 'Battler Britton'.

On at least two occasions, DC has published Archie's superhero characters, but nothing permanent. The same is true of Tower's T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. The Shadow was licensed by DC in the 70's and established as existing in the main line universe, but again there was no permanent ownership. Various Warner Animation and Hanna-Barbera characters are also owned by DC's parent company, but have been kept separate from DC's properties.


So we have:

1. National Periodicals
2. All American
3. Quality
4. A tenuous connection to the Ideal Toy company
5. At least part of the Prize Comics library
6. A tenuous connection to Comics Magazine Company and...
7. A tenuous connection to Centaur Publications.
8. Fawcett Publications
9. Charlton and...
10. an ancestral link to Fox Features Syndicate and...
12. Milestone Media
13. Wildstorm, which might be considered an offshoot of Image, but I won't go there.
14. Ownership of IPC Magazines' characters by DC's parent company Time/Warner.
14. A rumored acquisition of Ned Pines' company.

Have I left any out?

[narfstar]

Nice rundown. You make the common mistake of interchanging trademark and copyright. The copyrights to many of the stories went into public domain while DC kept the trademark. DC continued some of the Quality romance titles also. DC has the trademark to the quality characters that they have used except Phantom Lady. She not only went to Fox but then to Ajax along with Samson and the Flame. Not only did DC have Captain Action but Hotwheels

[John C]

Also keep in mind that "incorporation" doesn't necessarily mean ownership of assets.  There's no obligation for a company to disclose that a property is licensed from another or that it comes from the public domain, so use of characters doesn't need to mean anything at all, really.

[Bob Hughes]

Most of this stuff is only sort of correct.
In the beginning was National Allied Publications.  This was replaced by NIcholson Publications.
Detective Comics Inc bought Nicholson Publications.  This only included the rights to the currently published characters. Nicholson never renewed the original copyrights.
Detective Comics and All American Comics and a couple of other companies merged to form National Comics.  (All-American kept the rights to Picture Stories from the Bible and History and Fat and Slat.)
National Comics for some unknown reason spun off its romance titles to a company called Signal (later Arleigh).
National licensed the rights to Blackhawk from Quality Publications and later bought it out right.  By that time the rights to all the other Quality Characters had expired.  DC also bought GI Combat and Secret Hearts.  Many Quality characters were actually owned by Jerry Iger and he kept them, licensing them to Fox and Ajax.
The Clock was created for Eisner and Iger when they were doing WAGS overseas.  The Centaur Clock stories are reprints.
National Comics went public and became National Periodical Publications in 1961.
National bought two romance comics from Prize Comics.  (In the seventies they licensed some Black Magic stories from Joe Simon)
National eventually bought whatever rights the company that swallowed up Fawcett still owned to Captain Marvel.  It's questionable that they bought anything there.
National bought the rights to a handful of characters from Charlton- who usually never bothered to copyright anything- so they mave have overpaid there.
They also bought Mad Magazine sometime in the very early sixties.
DC Comics came into existence in the mid 70's, when Jenette Khan became publisher.  First it was DC Comics, Inc. then just DC Comics. Now it's DC entertainment, I think.
Still It's way simpler than Marvel.

[RJ Bowman]

I had never heard that the Clock had appeared in "Wags" first. Every source I've seen mentions Centaur books. I now await the Clock/Sheena team-up.

[josemas]

Back in the 1970s DC also published several issues of Tor which contained both some new material and material previously published by St. John.  By then Joe Kubert had acquired rights to those stories from St. John's son so the deal with DC to publish the character must have been either a licensing set up or for a limited time only because Kubert still owns the rights to the character and all his stories.

Best

Joe

[bchat]

The Clock first appeared in books cover dated "November 1936" (more than likely Copyrighted and released in September of '36), in Comics Magazine Company's "Funny Pages 6" and "Funny Picture Stories # 1".

From http://terrororstralis.com/sheena/comics/FH-prehistory.htm: "The first issue (of Wags) went on sale in England on 1 January 1937, ... Later issues of Wags also contained a masked detective strip by George Brenner called The Clock Strikes.
Based on info from http://thecomicsdetective.blogspot.com/2010/04/return-to-wonderful-wags-of-oz.html, The Clock seems to have first appeared inside "WAGS" issue 38 (September 1937, a guess based on the weekly schedule the book had).

From http://dccomicsartists.com/DCHISTORY/qualityHISTORY-1.htm:
"(Dec 1937) The first Eisner/Iger material appears in Arnold's books: Hawks of the Sea by Eisner and George  Brenner's The Clock.  Feature Funnies #3. Both are reprints from Wags."

[RJBowman]

Then something there doesn't add up, because the Clock appeared in Funny Pages months before the first issue of Wags. His original Centaur character status is preserved.

[OtherEric]

In a situation similar to "The Clock", Sheldon Mayer brought Scribbly over from Dell to All-American and hence to DC.  Several reprint strips also made the move from The Funnies to All-American, but as far as I know Scribbly was the only original material in the lot.

[Bob Hughes]

The Clock could have appeared in Funny Pages first.  I was under the impression the Australian Wags predated the British one- but they're all undated just to drive us crazy.  It is true, however, that The Clock was an Eisner/Iger production- which is how it got from "centaur" to Quality.  After wards Eisner probably sold it to Iger who took it with him when Busy Arnold fired him.  (Although I'm not sure whether all the Iger strips departed at the same time or if the dribbled away over time.  More research to be done.)

[narfstar]

DC also did Hotwheels

[RJBowman]

I think that Hotwheels was an adaptation of a very short-lived cartoon series, and was never referenced by any later DC book in the way that Captain Action was later referenced.

[josemas]

I think that Hotwheels was an adaptation of a very short-lived cartoon series, and was never referenced by any later DC book in the way that Captain Action was later referenced.

Hot Wheels ran on ABC Saturday mornings for two years- from 1969-1971.  Ken Snyder produced the show which was, naturally, sponsored by Mattel (who had introduced the toy cars in 1968 to compete with Matchbox). 
The show and the cars fed off each other for one very hot year and then simmered quickly (at least as far as the show was concerned).
Eventually, years later, Mattel acquired Matchbox's parent company and ended up owning both brands.

The DC comic book series only ran for 6 issues (1970-71) but they are all worth tracking down because Alex Toth did the lead story in issues #1-5 (#5 is a particular beaut, IMHO) and Neal Adams did the lead in #6. 

Best

Joe

[darkmark (RIP)]

And if you want a further mind-croggler...Freddy Freeman made a cameo in a Charlton issue of DON WINSLOW OF THE NAVY.

[jfglade]

 Rumor has DC acquiring or trying to acquire Ned Pines' company? That's a new one on me. Granted, DC did have a connection to Moore's "Terra Nova" series, but aren't all or most of Better/Standard/Nedor/Pines characters in the public domain (Felix the Cat being the obvious except since Felix must have been a liscensed character). What is their that would need to be acquired?