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DC Comics is one of the largest companies in comic book and related media publishing. Today a subsidiary of Time Warner, DC is responsible for such famous characters as Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and their teammates in the Justice League. For decades, DC Comics has been one of the two largest American comic book companies (the other being Marvel Comics). For many years, its headquarters were located at 575 Lexington Avenue, and then 666 Fifth Avenue, both in New York City; in the 1990s, they moved to 1700 Broadway. The initials "DC" are an abbreviation for Detective Comics, after one of the company's flagship titles.
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History
The corporation was originally three companies: National Allied Publications (founded by Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson in 1934 to publish the first American comic book with all-original material rather than comic strip reprints); Detective Comics; and All-American Publications. The first two companies merged in the 1930s to become National Comics (later National Periodical Publications) and the third shared offices until it was bought by the merged company in 1945. At this time "DC" was simply an informal logo regularly used on the cover.
Golden Age (1930s and 1940s)
Cover of Action Comics #1, which featured the debut of Superman, the first superhero.This company was the first to publish original stories in comic book form in 1935 with its first title, New Fun Comics, and then was the first to feature superheroes beginning with Action Comics in 1938. It was the foremost exploiter of the new genre in the Golden Age of Comic Books, introducing such popular characters as Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and the first superhero team, the Justice Society of America.
When the superhero genre faded in the late 1940s, the company focused more on other genres, such as science fiction, westerns, humour and romance. They largely avoided the crime and horror trends of the time, and thus avoided taking the brunt of the backlash against crime and horror comics in the 1950s. A handful of the most popular superhero titles (most importantly Action Comics and Detective Comics, the two longest-running titles in comics history) continued publication.
Silver Age (Late 1950s through early 1970s)
In the mid-fifties, there came a renewed interest to explore superhero properties. Instead of creating new characters, DC decided to recreate popular older characters starting with the Flash. This inacted the beginning of what is commonly referred to as the "Silver Age" of comics. The character's civilian identity, costume, and origin were all changed for a more modern audience. The new series was so popular that it soon led to similar treatment for Green Lantern and a new series which featured a team-up of all of the company's popular characters entitled the Justice League of America.
A major change happened in the late 1960s when many veteran creators petitioned DC management for health plans, pensions and similar considerations. DC responded by curtly firing most of the offending staff and replacing them with young people who had largely grown up with the Marvel influence in comics. This proved to be a mixed blessing: for while the new employees strove for sophisticated storytelling and characters, they had little experience in the industry and the relative lack of professionalism in their work hampered the product of the company.
Green Lantern #76 (April 1970), the first issue of an acclaimed run that delved into social commentary in the genre.
New Gods, the flagship title of Jack Kirby's Fourth World titles.There were, however, bright lights, like Dennis O'Neil, who worked on Green Lantern and Batman. Nevertheless, the period was plagued by short-lived series that started out strong, but quickly petered out when the creators, not having strong financial reasons to stay, abandoned their creations.
In addition, Jack Kirby defected from Marvel to create his most artistically ambitious creation, The Fourth World titles, in which Kirby attempted to create an original sophisticated sub imprint that could appeal to a loyal fan audience. However, conflicts with management who had little faith in the concept led to the venture's premature cancellation, although the characters and concepts would become integral to the DC Multiverse.
Late 1970s and 1980s
The New Teen Titans, the series cred in beginning the revitalization of DC Comics.The company was acquired by Warner Communications (now Time Warner) in 1976. During this time, DC attempted to compete with Marvel by dramatically increasing its output, which they called the "DC Explosion", including series featuring new characters, such as Firestorm and Shade, the Changing Man and several non-superhero titles. This didn't last long, with many of these series being abruptly cancelled in what industry watchers dubbed "the DC Implosion".
In the early 1980s, the new management of publisher Janette Kahn, vice-president Paul Levitz, and managing or Dick Giordano decided to address the problem of talent instability in their series. To that end, they began to offer more concrete financial rewards to their talents, such as royalties which gave a direct incentive to foster successful properties and to keep with them. In addition, the company created the publishing concept of the limited series that allowed more flexible arrangements for storylines that could be successful without the pressure of immediately following them up on an indefinite basis.
These policy changes immediately paid off with the success of The New Teen Titans by Marv Wolfman and George Pérez, a superhero comic that earned significant sales with its artistic quality and the stability of the talent who kept with the title for years. In addition, the creative team took early advantage of the limited series option to create a spin off title, Tales of the New Teen Titans, to present the origins of their original characters without having to break the narrative flow of their main series or obliging them to double their work load with another ongoing title.
This successful revitalization of a minor title led the orship to look at doing the same to their entire line comics. The result was the limited series Crisis on Infinite Earths, which gave the company an opportunity to dismiss some of the "baggage" of its history, and revise major characters such as Superman and Wonder Woman. Yet DC did not abandon their history completely. In 1989, they began publication of the DC Archive ions, a series created to collect their early, rare issues into a permanent hardback format.
Acclaimed limited series such as The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller and Alan Moore's Watchmen, also drew attention to changes at DC. This new creative freedom and the attendant publicity allowed DC to seriously challenge the dominance of Marvel.
1990s
The comics industry experienced a brief boom in the early 1990s, thanks to a combination of speculative purchasing of the books as collectibles and several storylines which gained attention from the mainstream media. DC's extended storylines in which Superman was killed and Batman was crippled, resulted in dramatically increased sales, but the increases were as temporary as the substitutes, and sales dropped off as industry sales went into a major slump.
DC's Piranha Press and other imprints in the 1990s were introduced to facilitate diversification and specialized marketing of its product line. They increased the use of nontraditional contractual arrangements, including creator-owned work and licensing material from other companies. They also increased publication of trade paperbacks, including both collections of serial comics and original graphic novels.
The Vertigo line was aimed at an older and more literary audience, largely free of the "kid stuff" stigma its main superhero line still held. DC entered into a publishing agreement with Milestone Media, which gave the company a line of comics featuring a more culturally and racially diverse range of superhero characters; although the Milestone line ceased publication, it yielded the popular animated series Static Shock. Paradox Press was established to publish material that would be considered "mainstream" in the book trade - including the large-format Big Book ofw/. series, and crime fiction such as Road to Perdition - but paradoxically remained a niche in the comics industry. DC purchased Wildstorm Comics from Jim Lee and maintained it as a separate imprint with its own style and audience. Likewise they added the Wildstorm imprint America's Best Comics, created by Alan Moore, including the titles Tom Strong and Promethea.
2000s
Comics sales stopped declining but remained weak in the early 2000s, as DC continued diversifying its publishing activities to reach new markets. In March 2003 DC Comics acquired publishing and merchandising rights to the long-running fantasy series Elfquest, which had previously been self-published by its creators Wendy and Richard Pini under the Warp Graphics banner. In 2004 it established the CMX line to reprint translated manga volumes (an already-booming market at the time), and acquired the North American publishing rights to graphic novels from European publishers 2000 AD and Humanoids. It also rebranded its titles for younger children with the mascot Johnny DC.
Starting in 2004, DC's main publications began undergoing major changes, starting with the Identity Crisis seven-issue maxi-series. DC also announced a "sequel" to Crisis on Infinite Earths and follow-up to Identity Crisis entitled Infinite Crisis, a seven-issue maxi-series that DC claims will also shake up the DC universe. In 2005, DC started the build-up to Infinite Crisis with the one-shot Countdown to Infinite Crisis. After it was published, DC launched four six-issue mini-series: Day of Vengeance, The OMAC Project, The Rann/Thanagar War, and Villains United; each of the series leading up to Infinite Crisis. After Infinite Crisis is published, all major DC titles will advance one year forward in time.
Recently, DC Comics launched an "All-Star" line, featuring some of DC's more famous characters in modernized settings. All-Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder was launched in July 2005 as an updated version of the titular characters. All-Star Superman, Superman's relaunching, is slated to begin its run in November 2005 for 12 issues. Not unlike Marvel's Ultimate line, "All-Star" is a complete restart from previously established continuity, with which DC hopes to attract new readers.
Logo history
DC's first logo appeared on the March 1940 issues of their titles. The letters "DC" stood for Detective Comics, the name the company used at the time. The logo was small and did not have a background. It simply said, "A DC Publication".
The November 1941 DC titles introduced an updated DC logo. This version was almost twice the size of the first one, and also was the first version with a white background. The name of Superman was added to "A DC Publication", effectively acknowledging both Superman (the company's flagship character) and Batman (star of Detective Comics). This logo was also the first version to occupy the top left corner of the cover, where the logo has usually resided ever since.
In November 1949, the logo was modified, incorporating the company's current name (National Comics Publications) into the logo. This logo would also serve as the round body of Johnny DC, DC's mascot in the 1960s.
In October 1970, the circular logo was briefly retired in favor of a simple "DC" in a rectangle with the name of the title, or the star of the book (i.e. many issues of Action Comics said "DC Superman"). An image of the lead character either appeared above or below the rectangle. For books that did not have a single star, such as House of Mystery or Justice League of America, the title and "DC" appeared in a stylized logo, such as a bat for House of Mystery. This use of characters as logos helped to establish the likenesses as trademarks, and was similar to Marvel's contemporaneous use of characters as part of their cover branding.
DC's "100 Page Super-Spectacular" titles and later 100-page and "Giant" issues published from 1972 to 1974 featured a logo that was exclusive to these ions, the letters "DC" in a simple sans serif font, in a circle. (A variant had the letters in a square.)
The July 1972 DC titles featured a new circular logo. The letters "DC" were rendered in a block-like font that would remain through later logo revisions until 2005. The title of the book usually appeared inside the circle, either above or below the letters.
In December 1973, the logo was modified, adding the words "The Line of DC Super-Stars" and the star motif that would continue in later logos. This logo was placed in the top center of the cover from August 1975 to October 1976.
When Jenette Kahn became DC's publisher in late 1976, she commissioned graphic designer Milton Glaser to design a new logo. Popularly referred to as the "DC bullet", the logo first appeared on the February 1977 DC titles. Although it varied in size and color and was at times cropped by the edges of the cover, or briefly rotated 45 degrees, it remained essentially unchanged for nearly three decades.
On May 8, 2005, a new logo was unveiled, debuting on DC titles starting in June 2005 with DC Special: The Return of Donna Troy #1 and the rest of the titles the following week. In addition to comics, it was designed for DC properties in other media, such as Batman Begins, Smallville, Justice League Unlimited, collectibles, and other merchandise. The logo, which some have dubbed the "DC spin", was designed by Josh Beatman of Brainchild Studios.
Noteworthy creators
- Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster
- Bob Kane and Bill Finger
- William Moulton Marston
- Jack Kirby
- Julius Schwartz
- Gardner Fox
- Jerry Robinson
- Dick Sprang
- Wayne Boring
- Mort Weisinger
- Gil Kane
- John Broome
- Steve Ditko
- Carmine Infantino
- Joe Kubert
- Curt Swan
- Neal Adams
- Dennis O'Neil
- Dick Giordano
- Archie Goodwin
- Paul Levitz
- Keith Giffen
- Marv Wolfman
- George Pérez
- Doug Moench
- Alan Moore
- Frank Miller
- John Byrne
- Jerry Ordway
- Dan Jurgens
- Roger Stern
- Mike W. Barr
- Chuck Dixon
- Barbara Kesel
- Karl Kesel
- Neil Gaiman
- Grant Morrison
- Mark Waid
- Alex Ross
- James Robinson
- Devin Grayson
- Geoff Johns
- Jeph Loeb
- Greg Rucka
- Jim Lee
Imprints
- America's Best Comics
- CMX
- DC Archive ions
- DC Focus (discontinued)
- Helix (discontinued)
- Humanoids (discontinued)
- Impact (discontinued)
- Johnny DC
- Milestone (discontinued)
- Paradox Press
- Piranha Press (discontinued)
- Vertigo
- Wildstorm
See also
References
- DC Comics official site
- Big Comic Book DataBase: DC Comics
- Brave and the Bold
- Interview with DC publisher Paul Levitz
- Collected Comics Library
- Goulart, Ron, Ron Goulart's Great History of Comics Books (Contemporary Press, Chicago, 1986) ISBN 0809250454
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