Quality Comics
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Quality Comics is the name of two comic book publishing companies.
The first and best-known was a American company that operated from 1939 to 1956 and was an influential creative force in what historians and fans call the Golden Age of comic books. The second, Quality Communications, was a United Kingdom publisher.
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[edit] Quality Comics (U.S.)
Quality Comics was started by Everett M. "Busy" Arnold, a printer who saw the rapidly rising popularity of the comic book medium in the late 1930s. He entered the field by buying out the existing series Feature Funnies from Eastern Color Press. Initially buying features from Eisner & Iger, a prominent "packager" that produced comics on demand for publishers entering the new medium, Quality introduced such superheroes as Plastic Man and Kid Eternity, and other such characters as the aviator hero Blackhawk. Quality also published comic-book reprints of Will Eisner's "The Spirit", the seven-page lead feature in a weekly 16-page, tabloid-sized, newsprint comic book, known colloquially as "The Spitit Section", distributed through Sunday newspapers.
By the mid-1950s, with television and paperback books drawing readers away from comic books in general and superheroes in particular, interest in Quality's characters had declined considerably. After a foray into other genres such as war, humor, romance and horror, the company ceased operations with comics cover-dated December 1956. Many of its properties were sold to National Periodical Publications (now DC Comics), which chose to keep only a few titles running, such as Blackhawk and GI Combat.
Over the decades, DC revived other Quality characters, including Plastic Man as well as a group of other characters who formed the titular team of the 1970s series Freedom Fighters. Other than Plastic Man, who has been a member of the Justice League and has had his own ongoing series, most former Quality heroes are occasional supporting characters in the DC Universe.
According to DC canon[citation needed], the Quality characters, before the DC revamping event called "Crisis on Infinite Earths", existec on a separate world called Earth-X, one of many parallel Earths in the DC Multiverse. Earth-X was radically different from most Earths, in that World War II continued there until the 1980s, enabling the Freedom Fighters to continue their fight against the Nazis. Post-"Crisis", canon states[citation needed] that Quality characters have instead always lived on the single, unified DC Earth.
New, successor versions of the characters Black Condor and The Ray were introduced in 1992.; Both were recruited into the Justice League. The new Ray also had his own 1994-1996 series and occasionally appears as a reserve League member.
Some Quality Comics titles, including Blackhawk and Plastic Man, have been reprinted by DC, while lesser-known ones have been reprinted by AC Comics.
[edit] Characters/features
- #711
- Alias the Spider
- Black Condor
- Blackhawk
- Blue Tracer
- Bozo the Iron Man
- Captain Triumph
- The Clock
- Destiny
- Doll Man
- Espionage
- Firebrand
- The Human Bomb
- Invisible Hood
- Jester
- Kid Eternity
- Lady Luck
- Madame Fatal
- Magno
- Manhunter
- Midnight
- Miss America
- Mouthpiece
- Neon the Unknown
- Phantom Lady
- Plastic Man
- Quicksilver (later DC's Max Mercury)
- Raven
- Ray
- The Red Bee
- Red Torpedo
- Spider Widow
- Stormy Foster
- Torchy
- Uncle Sam
- Wildfire
- Wonder Boy
[edit] List of titles published by Quality Comics
- All Humor Comics #1-17 (1946-1949)
- The Barker #1-15 (1946-1949)
- Blackhawk #9-157 (1944-1956; formerly Uncle Sam Quarterly #1-8;[1] Blackhawk #158-273 subsequently published by DC Comics, 1957-1983)
- Bride's Romance #1-23 (1953-1956)
- Broadway Romances #1-3 (1950)
- Buccaneers #19-27 (1950-1951; formerly Kid Eternity #1-18)
- Buster Bear #1-10 (1953-1955)
- Campus Loves #1-5 (1949-1950)
- Candy #1-64 (1947-1956)
- Crack Comics #1-62 (1940-1949; Crack Western #63 onward)
- Crack Western #63-84 (1949-1953; formerly Crack Comics #1-62; Jonesy #85 onward)
- Diary Loves #2-31 (1949-1953; formerly Love Diary #1; G.I. Sweethearts #32 onward)
- Doll Man #1-47 (1941-1953)
- Exotic Romances #22-38 (1955-1956; formerly True War Romances #1-21)
- Exploits of Daniel Boone #1-6 (1955-?)
- Feature Comics #21-144 (1939-1950; formerly Feature Funnies #1-20, published by Harry "A" Chesler, 1937-1939)
- Flaming Love #1-6 (1949-1950)
- Forbidden Love #1-4 (1950)
- Gabby #11; issue numbering restarts,[2] #2-9 (1953-1954; formerly Ken Shannon)
- G.I. Combat #1-43 (1952-1956; #44-281 subsequently published by DC Comics, 1957-1987)
- G.I. Sweethearts #32-45 (1953-1955; formerly Diary Loves #2-31; #46 onward Girls in Love)
- Girls in Love #46-57 (1955-1956; formerly G.I. Sweethearts #32-45)
- Heart Throbs #1-46 (1949; #47-146 subsequently published by DC Comics, 1957-1972; retitled Love Stories, #147-152, 1972-1973)
- Hit Comics #1-65 (1940-1950)
- Hollywood Diary #1-5 (1949-1950)
- Hollywood Secrets #1-6 (1949-1950)
- Jonesy #85; issue numbering restarts, 2-8 (1953-1954; formerly Crack Western #1-84)
- Ken Shannon #1-10 (1951-1953; Gabby #11 onward)
- Kid Eternity #1-18 (1946-1949; Buccaneers #19 onward)
- Lady Luck #86-90 (1949-1950; formerly Smash Comics #1-85)
- Love Confessions #1-54 (1949-1956)
- Love Diary #1 (1949; Diary Loves #2 onward)
- Love Letters #1-51 (1949-1956)
- Love Scandals #1-5 (1950)
- Love Secrets #32-56 (1953-1956)
- Marmaduke Mouse #1-65 (1946-1956)
- Military Comics #1-43 (1941-1945; Modern Comics #44 onward)
- Modern Comics #44-102 (1945-1950; previously Military Comics #1-43)
- National Comics #1-75 (1940-1949)
- Plastic Man #1-64 (1943-1956)
- Police Comics #1-127 (1941-1953)
- Range Romances #1-5 (1949-1950)
- Robin Hood Tales #1-6 (1956; #7-14 subsequently published by DC Comics, 1957-1958)
- Secret Loves #1-6 (1949-1950)
- Smash Comics #1-85 (1939-1949; Lady Luck #86 onward)
- The Spirit #1-22 (1944-1950)
- T-Man #1-38 (1951-1956)
- Torchy 1-6 (1949-1950)
- True War Romances #1-21 (1952-1955; Exotic Romances #22 onward)
- Uncle Sam Quarterly #1-8 (1941-1943; Blackhawk #9 onward)
- Untamed Love #1-5 (1950)
- Web of Evil #1-21 (1952-1954)
- Wedding Bells #1-19 (1954-1956)
- Yanks in Battle #1-4 (1956)
[edit] Talents associated with the company
[edit] See also
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ As new periodical titles were subject to an expensive registration fee by the U.S. Postal Service to receive a second-class mail permit, Golden Age comic book publishers frequently continued the numbering of old titles on new ones, hence one comic book title "becoming" another with completely unrelated content.
- ^ Such renumbering occurred when the U.S. Postal Service discovered a new title distributed under old numbering; the publisher was then forced to not only pay the registration fee, but also to list the correct issue number.
