So , do you have anything to say about DC's corporate " life-long " (hey , they're PERSONS - sez the Supremes , anyway !!!!!!!!!) habit of buying other comic book companies' assets , either in whole or in part ???????
Really ~ It's in DC's corporate DNA - Let's see , Prize Comics , Quality , Fawcett , Wildstorm and I'm sure I'm missing a few now , I'm sorta hungry and Duane Eddy is playing " More " with bongo drums in my headphones...
How do you think DC's buying-things-up habit has affected DC - and comics in general - over the years ???????????
FTM , if Time/Warner went on an " expand our catalog " corporate buying spree , who do you think contemporary DC might add to their goodies collection ???
This is not nessecarily a " You think they SHOULD " question , it might be more " They WOULD..." even with an " Aauugh ! " added on...
If nothing else , DC's buying-up habits have meant that a whole lot of characters who were , in all honesty , sort of " Versions Of "/answers to - rip-offs of - each other have ended up under the same corporate roof !!!!!!!!!!!
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I think that DC's habit of buying up properties from other companies has been, on the whole, good for comics. They've kept characters in print who might otherwise have been dormant or fallen out of the public consciousness. Compare the public profile of the Charlton Action Heroes to the Tower Heroes. The Charlton heroes are much better known today. While the Tower characters have been revived on occasion (including a recent attempt by DC), they've never really stuck. It's also fun for fans like me to see Captain Marvel, Plastic Man and Blue Beetle hanging around in the JLA together. I do wish that DC had done a better job of integrating the more recent acquisitions. Static fit pretty well with the Teen Titans for a while but they weren't able to accomplish much with the rest of the Milestone characters or the Wildstorm ones for that matter.
Question though: did DC actually acquire the Prize characters? I thought they were public domain at this point.
...I actually don't think acquired " characters " from Prize ~ at the very least , their characters were unimportant .
It was , IIRC , at least 1 ongoing romance title - including the original one , YOUNG ROMANCE - and the BLACK MAGIC horror anthology - both?? of which were Simon & Kirby creations and I think that the story material - at least for YR - may be the S&K partnership's now , tho I also believe DC still owns the " concept/format "/title " Young Romance , anyway .
I think DC's takeover of Young Romance and Young Love in 1963 and its Black Magic reprints in the 70s were separate deals. Carmine Infantino referred to buying the rights to the Black Magic stories in this interview. (He doesn't say who they bought the rights from, so I don't know if it was Prize or Joe Simon. I'd guess the latter. Simon edited the reprint series.)
I wish DC had bought Fawcett earlier, perhaps even as early as the original books were scrapped. I only discovered Captain Marvel with Shazam! #1 when I was 12 and I remember thinking that I would have loved this as a younger child. By 12 I was really getting into the more sophisticated Marvel line.
I got to read Fawcett stuff through 70s reprints as a kid when I was just the right age, and loved them. That older kids have different reading interests to younger kids is very much my own experience.
I did read some comics with Spider-Man at an early stage, but I didn't fully understand them. The Superman and Batman stuff I read early on was mostly older stories, in local reprints of DC's 60s giants, from when superhero comics were pitched at a lower level. I collected those Batman comics but didn't like Superman (that is, his 50s stories). I think I remember my first encounter with recentish Batman content. I didn't hate the issue but it didn't click with me either.
...Luke , I have seen that the 70s DC giant (mostly , anyway) reprints of mostly 50s/early Silver Age stuff got issued in Australia in the local , b&w , format , the same compilations of stuff under the same cover (But I suppose w/different paper stock - local ads - besides being B&W ?) .........
Luke Blanchard said:
...One odd thing I know about BLACK MAGIC is that , at one time , DC was specifically aiming to use their rights to BM's material as a source for remaes of stories , early in the late-Silver-into-Bronze " mystery " boom !!!!!!!!!!!
DC specifically planned to use BM/other?? Prize titles as a source for newly-drawn (modernized clothing/hairstyles , obvously) remakes of those stories - I know this because a DC mystery title from the very early 70s had a story in it that was a WA-AA-AY favorite of the 11-yr. old EmerDave at the time - only to have me encounter the S&K-overseen version years later in the brief-run BM mid-70s !!!!!!!!!!!
BTW , speaking of Joe Simon and DC's use of his old concepts , I have read that , sometime in he 70s , DC , realizing that their romance titles were circling down the drain in the changing times , coaxed Simon to come in and take them over again for a while ! ( Obviously , it didn't work in the long term , as...YOUNG BRIDES??...finished off the romance line in 1977-78 . ) Anybody able to comment about this ???
The local republishers did all kinds of different things. DC's at various times published giant B&W comics, smaller B&W comics that were still longer than most US ones, shorter colour comics, and large-paged ones with a mix of colour and B&W pages. Different formats were used for Marvel titles.
Many of the issues are indexed at www.ausreprints.com, but there's often uncertainty as to the local comics' dates. Giant Superman Album and Giant Batman Album were two of the titles I had in mind.
There weren't many ads in these comics: most usually, only on the inside front and inside back and back covers. But these could have house ads instead, and house ads also ran in the filler spaces at the end of Silver Age DC stories or the chapters thereof.
...OK , thank you .
Maybe more later !
You forget DC's first buy-up, All-American Comics, which netted them The Flash, Green Lantern and Wonder Woman.
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