Redartz: Every comic company has its iconic, trademark characters. What would Marvel be without the ever-amazing Spider-man? Or DC without Batman? Archie Comics have, well, Archie. Disney and the ducks go hand-in-wing. You get the idea; many characters are intimately identified with their parent company, and many of those companies go to great lengths to keep those characters close.
However, over the years, numerous characters have started their print careers under one company, only to make a switch to a competing company later on. Whether due to a copyright battle, a corporate buyout, or changes in licensing, many notable characters have seen publication under more than one banner. This makes it challenging for the collector, and probably a headache for Bob Overstreet; but that's the comic biz. Let's look at some of these 'company jumpers'...
Captain Marvel
"The Big Red Cheese" moved from Fawcett to DC years after legal wrangling in which DC claimed the character violated their copyright on Superman. One wonders how Marvel would have liked to get their hands on the Captain; they put the name to use at any rate.
Tarzan
Edgar Rice Burroughs' "Tarzan" appeared for years under the Dell label, and then under Western's Gold Key. DC got the rights, and continued Gold Key's numbering. Marvel took over in the later 70's with a new first issue, and art by ace John Buscema.
Conan the Barbarian
Marvel won rights to Robert E. Howard's barbarian, and presented his adventures in various formats from the 70's through the 90's. The new Millenium saw Dark Horse Comics publishing Conan, until recently Marvel regained the rights. Although a licensed character, I'll always associate Conan with Marvel...
Yogi Bear
Jonny Quest
One lonely issue from Gold Key was all you could find of the iconic boy adventurer for many years, until in 1986 Comico began it's fine run. In the 90's Dark Horse picked up the franchise with the "New Adventures".
Darth Vader
Marvel struck gold by getting the rights to "Star Wars" putting out the first issue before the film opened. The House of Ideas kept it up for years, through the mid 80's. But Dark Horse picked up the ball (or Death Star, if you prefer) and ran with it beginning in the 90's. Yet once again, Marvel recently re-acquired the rights and is putting out numerous series once again.
Blue Beetle
Blue Beetle debuted at Charlton in the 60's, by the great Steve Ditko. In the 70's Modern Comics reprinted some of his Charlton appearances. Not long afterwards, DC bought out Charlton's stable of heroes (as they had with the Quality characters), and made the Beetle a part of the great Justice League International series.
Popeye
The immortal Sailor Man, like Tarzan, has been published for many decades under many banners. Gold Key and Charlton featured him through the 60's and 70's. In the late 80's, Harvey put out some issues (what was up with Harvey back then, anyway- not just Casper and Richie Rich anymore). Most recently IDW has been putting out some fine stories...
There you have a few examples of 'wanderers' among the various comics publishers. No doubt you can come up with more. And of these pictured here, who do you feel did the 'best job' with a given character? Which characters do you identify with which publishers? Go ahead and 'chew the fat'...
20 comments:
Don’t forget about Star Trek- started at Gold Key in 1967, had a two year run at Marvel starting in 1979, was off and on in one form or another at DC from 1983 to 1996. Also had adapted series at Malibu in 1993, and returned to Marvel in 1993. Finally ended up at Wildstorm in 1999. The overlap between companies was due to different versions of the show (Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, a proposed Voyager comic) being published by different companies.
Yogi Bear guest stars in DC's Scooby Doo Team-Up #35, on sale now.
Gold Key published a lot of comic book tie-ins with Hanna-Barbera TV cartoons in the sixties, including Scooby Doo, Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, The Flintstones, and The Jetsons. Evidently, the H-B license was acquired by Charlton in the early 1970s, and, later, by Harvey and then Archie Comics.
Disney usually licensed their characters out instead of publishing their own comics, so Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse were published by Western (Gold Key, Whitman) in the sixties and seventies, and later by Gladstone/Gemstone, and, most recently, by IDW.
King Features, the newspaper syndicate, also usually licensed their comic strip characters. IIRC, Harvey published a Blondie comic, and Gold Key published The Phantom and Beetle Bailey, in the early 1960s.
IIUC, Edgar Rice Burroughs Enterprises wanted Gold Key to increase the frequency of Tarzan and Korak, and to also publish comics based on other ERB series. When GK could not do that, the owners signed with DC.
Quality Comics defined Blackhawks and Plastic Man (or was it Reed Crandall and Jack Cole that defined them). Regardless I never took a shine to DC's versions.
Similarly, Fawcett defined Cpt Marvel (or was it CC Beck). Regardless, I just could not get behind DC's incarnations, even though CC was involved with the first few issues.
So, my DC Voodoo doll is chock full of pins for wrecking my fav characters.
However, I will extract a pin for DC's version of the Shadow but ONLY b/c Kaluta had his hands on it! I tolerated Robbins's work b/c I convinced myself his work was nostalgic.
I also will extract a pin for DC's version of Tarzan (or was that Kubert's?) LOL.
As long as I stuck a few pins in my DC voodoo doll I will stick some in my Marvel. Marvel's forking copyright protection of Daredevil has mucked up Dynamite's reincarnation of the original Daredevil published by Lev Gleason. Now, he is a mute referred to as the "Forked Tailed Devil" or some such nonsense though he gets to keep his ultra-cool uniform.
I mean, only a bloomin' idiot is going to confuse the original Daredevil for Marvel's and cost Marvel sales, as if the comic book shops were chock full of kids these days. And it's not like one will confuse the original DD for the Marvel DD on Netflix or in a movie theater.
Now that I am properly torqued off, I am looking for my Marvel Voodoo doll, LOL
And the same goes for the Eisner's Spirit. No one is going to recreate the original joy, grace, and beauty of Eisner, Cole, Crandall, Beck, Fine... Nor should we expect anyone too. Their genius as writers or artists stands on its own in the pantheon of comic greats and left too strong an imprint on their respective characters, IMHO.
The original Blue Beetle, Dan Garret, was published by Fox in 1939. Charlton later got the rights to the character and published a few issues with Garrett as the BB. Then they killed him off and replaced him with Ted Kord in 1967. When DC acquired the Charlton super-heroes in the early 1980's, Kord was a member of the JLI for a while. Then DC killed him off and replaced him with Jaime Reyes.
DC acquired the Quality Comics titles and characters in the 1950's. At the time, super-heroes were in a slump. The series that DC chose to continue were G.I. Combat and Blackhawk. Presumably, they looked at sales statistics and found that war comics were the big sellers. That trend later reversed, and super-heroes made a huge comeback in the Silver and Bronze Ages, while war comics declined in popularity. (Blackhawk was cancelled in 1968, and subsequent revivals never caught on.)
Even so, DC never had much luck with the Quality super-heroes. They tried a Plastic Man comic in 1966-1967 and again in the 1970's; each run lasted ten issues. They teamed up the Ray, Black Condor, Uncle Sam, Human Bomb, Phantom Lady, and Doll Man in Freedom Fighters, which ran for fifteen issues in the 1970's. Of the former Quality titles, G.I. Combat may have had the longest uninterrupted run.
Yogi Bear, along with Top Cat, Magilla Gorilla, and Wally Gator, appeared in DC's Cartoon Network Presents #3 in 1997. Yogi, Top Cat, Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw, Snagglepuss, and Dastardly & Muttley were also in #18. The latter issue was based on the TV cartoon show Yogi's Treasure Hunt.
King Features tried publishing their own comic books in 1966-67. The Phantom, Flash Gordon, Mandrake the Magician, Popeye, Beetle Bailey, and Blondie. Apparently, that did not work out, and they went back to licensing them to other publishers. Charlton published Flash Gordon, the Phantom, and Beetle Bailey in 1969.
Re: the Burroughs company wanting the comic book company to publish more series, I think that DC's Tarzan had John Carter as a back-up feature, and their Korak comic may have had Pellucidar or Carson of Venus as a secondary feature, too. Later, when Marvel was publishing Tarzan, they also published a John Carter Warlord of Mars comic book.
The Bronze Age classic Micronauts series ended at Marvel and then had brief runs with Image, Devil’s Due, and now is at IDW. It has never been the same as or as good as that initial Marvel run. Marvel retained some of the characters they created (Commander Rann, Bug, and Marionette) but hasn’t figured out what to do with them. There is a Micronauts moviecin early production, but not by Marvel. I would have liked to have seen Disney recapture the rights for the Micronauts and had them in Any-Man’s films but that will likely never happen.
ROM Spaceknight, another great Marvel Comic, is also currently at IDW and I read the first few issues and it just was not the same.
Great topic. Thanks Red.
Marvel/Star Comics published Defenders of the Earth, which ran for four issues in the 1980's. It starred the King Features heroes: Flash Gordon; the Phantom; Mandrake the Magician; and Lothar (who was promoted from Mandrake's sidekick to a co-starring equal partner). It was a tie-in with an animated cartoon series that was running on TV at the time.
I know I've mentioned it before, but Marvel's Tarzan is my favorite comic-book version of the character, and I consider his rendering by John and then Sal Buscema definitive - at least for comics (the art by Neal Adams for the paperbacks from the late '70s is my favorite Tarzan cover art).
By the way, speaking of Tarzan, for a brief time in the 1960s, Charlton published a few issues of the jungle king's stories - with art by Sam Glanzman - because they thought the character had become public domain. The Burroughs company soon put the kibosh on that...
...And I can't believe I forgot to mention two quintessential jumping characters, in that they initially jumped from different genres into comics.
Charlie mentioned the Shadow, who jumped into comics from the pulp magazines, first in newspaper strips in the 1940s, and then in a comic book as well. Then Archie, of all companies, briefly produced some Shadow comics in the 1960s - in which the Shadow was redesigned into a muscle-bound superhero. Then DC got the character in the 1970s, and began publishing a series again in the 1980s (initially set in the modern era), while Marvel did a graphic novel (by O'Neil and Kaluta) in the late 1980s (*not* set in the modern era). DC kept producing Shadow comics until the early 1990s, after which Dark Horse obtained the license for a while. For about the past 10 years, Dynamite has held the license and has published quite a few Shadow comics.
Then there's the Green Hornet, who jumped from a radio serial into comics. First publisher Holyoke produced some Green Hornet comics in early 1940s, and then he moved to Harvey, which produced a few dozen issues. In the '50s and '60s, Dell and then Gold Key published a few Green Hornet comics, while in the 1990s a publisher called Now produced a whole bunch of Green Hornet material: a regular ongoing series plus a bunch of minis. And currently, as with the Shadow, for the past 10 or so years Dynamite has been producing a bunch of Green Hornet comics up to the present - and there was even a cross-over or two between GH and the Shadow.
Great comments ,all! Thanks for doing in so many details
Allen- good call on Star Trek. The Gold Key run is most familiar to me, I'd forgotten about Marvel's efforts.
TC- thanks for the details! And a special thanks for highlighting "Scooby Doo Team Up". Fun book, it makes sense they'd bring in To go eventually ...
Charlie- I join you in saluting all those Golden Age creators and creations . Did you ever check out the Plastic Man series in Adventure by Martin Pasko and Joe Staton? It was quite enjoyable.
Anonymous - huge thanks for all your info, and particularly for setting me straight about Blue Beetle. Doing this blog is an education, frequently!
Edo - Charlton snuck in a few issues of Tarzan? Fascinating. Also, glad you brought up the Green Hornet. He too has really been around...
Lousy autocorrect. TC, that of course should be Yogi , not To go. Proofreading is a challenge on this phone!
I like Tarzan and Conan, though I usually prefer the books to the comics. Same with Star Wars/Trek ... I love the shows and movies, but haven't really read any of the comics.
I never cared for the Fawcett Captain Marvel stuff; it always seemed a bit too juvenile to me (which I guess it was). I've heard good things about Ordway's revival, but haven't gotten around to reading it yet.
Oh, just a note for everyone: many of you don't really follow current comics, but I wanted to recommend IDW. They keep on putting out truly fine material, and it's well worth a look. I've only actually read their Popeye and Disney, but it's been impressive...
IDW does a great job with their material. I hope the quality stays up after Chris Ryall leaves.
When it comes to Tarzan ,I identify him most with DC. His comics were some of the first I bought off the rack.
As for the question of favorite versions of multi-company series, IMHO, Gold Key/Western was the best at adapting licensed properties. "My" Tarzan was published by GK and drawn by Russ Manning. And I loved the animated cartoons (Hanna Barbera, Looney Tunes, Disney), but the GK comic books had more variety. They told actual stories, as opposed to a bunch of sight gags with the characters chasing each other back and forth. And Carl Barks put the Disney Ducks in exotic adventures, instead of just doing minor variations on Donald getting into a snowball fight with his nephews.
When Capital Comics and Pacific Comics went out of business in the 1980's, First picked up Badger, Nexus, Whisper, and Starslayer. IIRC, they usually continued with the original creators, so there was no noticeable change in the quality.
The 1966 Green Hornet comic by Gold Key was based on the TV series, with photo covers of Van Williams and Bruce Lee. The 1990's version by Now alluded to the Hornet being a descendant of the Lone Ranger (which had been revealed on the old radio series), but, because of the trademark, they could not mention the ancestor by name.
Charlton published an Abbott & Costello comic in the late 1960's, a tie-in with the Hanna-Barbera TV cartoon show. In one story, they went on a safari and met a jungle hero who was obviously Tarzan. The running gag was that no one was allowed to say his (trademarked) name. I didn't realize it at the time, but now I suspect that the story was a spoof of the situation (mentioned above by Edo) where the Burroughs estate stopped Charlton from publishing a Tarzan comic.
Similarly, in the story "What's In a Name? Doomsday!" in Shazam #7 (1973), a rumor gets started that saying Captain Marvel's name aloud will cause a disaster. As the rumor spreads, a bystander says, "No one is allowed to say the name. Must be a lawsuit or something."
At the time, I thought the gag was an allusion to the DC vs. Fawcett (aka Superman vs. Captain Marvel) plagiarism/copyright suit. Now, I think the story was a spoof of the DC vs. Marvel Comics trademark dispute. As a result of that case, DC could use the name "Captain Marvel" in the stories, but not on covers or in merchandising.
Bronze Age Enlightenment follows!
Driving in the car, listening to the radio, and I learned a lyric I never know before...
Sting was singing, "Giant steps are what you take, walking on the moon." Love that bass, too!
Anyone else get a taste of the bronze age today?
Anyone?
Anyone?
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