Tag: Quality

With the acquisition/licensing of the Thunder Agents, Milestone, and Red Circle (Archie) characters DC Comics looks like it reverting to a fragmentary format that goes right back to the foundation of the company. The history is a little fuzzy, but there were two brands of the company operating in the early 1940s.

• National (The World Finest) – The Superman and Batman franchises always were the foundation of the DC Universe. Bit players in their anthologies included Robotman, Aquaman, Green Arrow. Their “house” team was the Seven Soldiers of Victory.
• All-American – Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash, Hawkman, etc. At one point DC collaborated with MC Gaines to set up a new line of comics. These were eventually folded back into the main company, but were briefly a separate company. Their “house” team was the Justice Society.

Then DC made a series of acquisitions during the 1950s-80s which hovered up characters from defunct comics publishers. The parallel world structure of the DC Universe made it simple to buy a new set of heroes and then claim that they were from a new Earth.

• Fawcett Comics – The major competitor to Superman in the 1940s was Captain Marvel. The Fawcett Characters (Captain Marvel and all variants, Shazam, Bullet-Man, Spysmaster, etc) went out of business in the 1950s before being acquired by DC in the 1980s.
• Quality Comics – Another Golden Age player. Quality published Plastic Man, Blackhawk, and the set of characters that are now known as the Freedom Fighters (Uncle Man, Black Condor, etc). They sold out to DC in the 1950s with a few of their titles were continued over at the new company.
• Charlton Comics – Was set up in the 1940s, but it is really known for its 1960s Action Hero comics including Captain Atom, Blue Beetle, and the Question. Their characters were acquired by DC and integrated into the DC Universe during the first Crisis. The Charlton characters are most famous for being the prototypes for Alan Moore’s Watchmen.

There have been attempts to draw these characters together into a more cohesive single universe, but only the Charlton characters have achieved any great success in that respect. It may be impossible to modernise the Shazam characters, but many would argue that it shouldn’t be tried. The same goes for Plastic Man. The other minor characters (the Freedom Fighters, Bulletman, etc) have fared better in some respects, but in their end they’re really just Golden Age cannon fodder.

More recently DC has started another round of licensing characters:

• Milestone – The most modern of the licensed characters. Milestone was a comicbook universe launched at the height of the 1990s comics bubble with the intention of publishing characters with a wider demographic appeal than the normal White, Middle Class characters found at DC and Marvel. They’re breakout character was Static.
• Archie Comics – Aside from the comedy teen characters Archie had tried several times to launch a line of superhero characters. DC even collaborated with them on the Impact version. These have now been licensed by DC Comics and relaunched as the Red Circle heroes (the Web, Shield, Hangman, etc).
• Tower Comics – Another 1960s superhero publisher (a la Charlton) which achieved some fame with their THUNDER Agents characters. I’m not sure if the licensing deal covers just the TA characters or the rest of the Tower characters.

DC has prior history with the Milestone and Archie characters as they served as the publisher of those lines during the 1990s. That’s eight different groups of characters that are now part of the DC Universe and I haven’t even included splits like the Legion of Superheroes or the Vertigo characters. They’ve also announced that the Batman Beyond cartoon setting will be back ported into the DC Universe.

A lot has been made about relaunching various acquired titles from these newlines, but personally I think DC is playing a long-term game. It’s fairly clear that DC is slowly and surely building up a large library of material for the book store market. All these characters represent potential archive editions, show case reprints, and classic trade paper backs.

I’m not really sure where these groups are going in terms of new material. DC have been very cautious with the Milestone characters, too cautious for some people, but their exposure in JLA and Teen Titans is arguably far, larger than the Red Circle characters will get with their own self-contained one-shots. Maybe they’re waiting to see what the sales figures are like on the Brave and Bold showcases, maybe they’re not that interested.