mwm@dartvax.UUCP (M. W. Modrall) (05/21/84)
all you guys flaming on the "DC stands for jerk" all point to 1939 as the
starting date for dc... come on guys... where is your trivia??? 39 was the
first action comic... not the first dc comic by a long shot... Detective
Comics (for which dc is named) beat action by some stretch of time,
i don't know how much... if any of you hard core buffs REALLY know when
dc started, i'd be interested in finding out. granted superman is an important
milestone to dc, but he isnt everything....
another thing... would anyone know the actual legalities of the Timely/Marvel
connection... i've always suspected that marvel just picked and chose, buying
up the character writes from timely after its death... does anybody know any
specifics??? some people i know think that Timely just changed its name to
Marvel at some unspecified date....
any information on the above would be greatly appreciated...
Mark Modrall
mwm
Dartmouth collegeboyajian@akov68.DEC (Jerry Boyajian) (05/25/84)
From "A Chronology of the Development of The American Comic Book" by M. Thomas
Inge in THE COMIC BOOK PRICE GUIDE #11 (Overstreet):
"1935: Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson's National Periodical Publications issued
in February a tabloid-sized comic caled NEW FUN, which became MORE FUN after the
sixth issue and converted to the normal comic-book size after issue eight. MORE
FUN was the first comic book of a standard size to publish original material and
continued publication until 1949.
"1937: The first non-reprint comic book devoted to a single theme ...<ellipses
mine> was DETECTIVE COMICS, an offshoot of MORE FUN, which began in March to
continue to the present... <e.m.>
"1938: `D.C.' copped a lion's share of the comic book market with the publica-
tion of ACTION COMICS No. 1 in June... <e.m.>
"1939: The continued success of `D.C.' was assured in May with the publication
of DETECTIVE COMICS No. 27 containing the first episode of Batman... <e.m.>
SUPERMAN COMICS appeared in the summer. Also, during the summer, a black and
white premium comic titled MOTION PICTURE FUNNIES WEEKLY was published to be
given away at motion picture theatres. The plan was to issue it weekly and to
have continued stories so that the kids would come back week after week not to
miss an episode. Four issues were planned but only one came out. This book con-
tains the first appearance and origin of the Sub-mariner by Bill everett (8
pages) which was later reprinted in MARVEL COMICS. In November, the first issue
of MARVEL COMICS came out, featuring the Human Torch by Carl Burgos and the Sub-
Mariner reprint with color added."
<me again>
It should also be noted that ADVENTURE COMICS started in Dec. 1935 as
NEW COMICS, changed it's name to NEW ADVENTURE COMICS in Jan. 1937 (#12) and to
ADVENTURE COMICS in Oct. 1938 (#31).
As to the Timely/Atlas/Marvel connections, if I read you right, what you are
saying is that you think that "A" owned Timely, and at some point, "B" started
up Marvel, and bought some of the Timely characters. Is this it? I don't think
that this is the case. I have no refernce works that give the details, but Time-
ly Comics became Atlas comics circa 1954, and Atlas became Marvel circa 1962.
What I think happened was that "A" owned Timely, and sold it to "B", who then
changed the name to Atlas, and later "B" sold Atlas to "C", who changed the
name to Marvel. I admit that there does seem to be some confusion, because
some of the titles crossing over (like TALES OF SUSPENSE, JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY,
etc. seemed to switch from Atlas to Marvel in different months.
Your theory could be possible, though, with some slight modification.
I seem to recall (most of my old comics have been sold off, so I can't really
check this out) that at any given time, some titles seemed to be owned by one
company, and others by another (eg. (and these may not be accurate as specified)
DAREDEVIL was owned by Cadence Industries, while THE AVENGERS was owned by Maga-
zine Management), though all were part of the "Marvel Comics Group". Eventually,
all of the Marvel Comics came under Cadence Industries.
Certainly, further research is required, but I doubt that I have the
necessary references.
--- jayembee (Jerry Boyajian, DEC Maynard, MA)
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