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<HEAD><TITLE>Don Markstein's Toonopedia: Quality Comics </TITLE> <script language="JavaScript"></script> <META name = "author" content = "Donald D. Markstein"> <META name = "description" content = "Hypertext encyclopedia of comics and animation"> <META name = "subject" content = "Hypertext encyclopedia of comics and animation"> <META name = "keywords" content = "comic books animated cartoons animation comics comix syndicated comic strips"> <META name = "publisher" content = "Donald D. Markstein"> <META name = "format" content = "text/html"> <META name = "language" content = "EN"> </HEAD><BODY> <body onload="if (self!= top) top.location = self.location"></body> <BODY BGCOLOR="FFFFFF" TEXT="000000" LINK="0000EE" VLINK="551A8B"> <TABLE><TR><TD WIDTH=310 VALIGN="CENTER"><IMG GALLERYIMG="NO" ALIGN="LEFT" HEIGHT=257 WIDTH=300 ALT="The Quality Comics company logo." SRC="quality.jpg"> <TD VALIGN="CENTER"> <H1>QUALITY COMICS</H1><FONT SIZE=4> <B>Primary Product:</B> Comic Books <BR><B>Producing From:</B> 1939-56 <BR><B>Noted For:</B> Plastic Man, Blackhawk and more<FONT SIZE=3> <! BEGIN DONATION CODE> <HR><FONT SIZE=2 COLOR="993366"><CENTER> If this site is enjoyable or useful to you, <BR>Please contribute to its necessary financial support. <BR><A HREF="http://s1.amazon.com/exec/varzea/pay/T1237L0BCY25QA" TARGET="_blank">Amazon.com</A> or <A HREF="https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=don%40toonopedia.com&no_note=1&tax=0&currency_cod e=USD" TARGET="_blank">PayPal</A> </FONT></CENTER><HR> <! END DONATION CODE> <P><A NAME="cont"> In the late 1930s, the thoughts of America's entrepreneurs of printing and publishing turned oft to comic books, where <I><A href="famous-f.htm">Famous Funnies</A></I> and its imitators were providing respectable returns; and <A href="dc.htm">DC Comics</A> had just fielded the medium's first mega-hit, <I><A href="superman.htm">Superman.</A></I> Pulp publishers were branching out into comics, launching  <P ALIGN="RIGHT"><A HREF="#cont"><FONT SIZE=2><I>continued below</A></FONT> </TABLE> <CENTER><! BEGIN ADSENSE "LEADERBOARD" CODE> <script type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js"> </script> <! END ADSENSE CODE></CENTER> <P><TABLE><TR><TD VALIGN="TOP"> ventures like <A href="marvel.htm">Marvel</A> (<A href="capamer.htm">Captain America</A>), Nedor (<A href="b_terror.htm">The Black Terror</A>) and <A href="mlj_arch.htm">MLJ</A> (<A href="archie.htm">Archie</A>); and promotors like Kay Kamen (<I><A href="disney.htm">Walt Disney's</A> Comics & Stories</I>) were forging alliances with publishers like <A href="dell.htm">Dell</A> to fill the stands with licensed comics. <P> And in 1939, printer Everett M."Busy" Arnold took his first tentative steps toward creating a publishing empire, by purchasing the already-existing comic book title <I>Feature Funnies,</I> which was serving up a monthly mix of original material like Archie O'Toole and Reynolds of the Royal Mounted, and newspaper comics reprints like <A href="janarden.htm">Jane Arden</A> and <A href="palooka.htm">Joe Palooka.</A> One of the first things he did was change the name of the magazine to <I>Feature Comics,</I> the name it's remembered by today. <P> Within a few months, he'd joined industry trends by introducing his first <A href="glossary.htm#superhero">superhero</A> (unless you count <A href="clock.htm">The Clock,</A> who was already in place when he came along), <A href="dollman.htm">Doll Man.</A> A couple of years later, he'd filled it up with the likes of Rusty Ryan and Samar of the Jungle, and had gone far toward phasing out the newspaper material. <P> By that time, Arnold's Quality Comics was publishing not just one title, but a whole line of comics. <I>Smash Comics,</I> featuring <A href="bozorobo.htm">Bozo the Robot,</A> Wings Wendall, Abdul the Arab and no newspaper reprints, debuted with a May, 1939 cover date; <I>Crack Comics,</I> starring <A href="blcondr1.htm">The Black Condor,</A> Molly the Model and <A href="spider.htm">The Spider,</A> came along in May, 1940; and <I>National Comics,</I> with <A href="unclsam2.htm">Uncle Sam,</A> <A href="penmillr.htm">Pen Miller</A> and <A href="wondrboy.htm">Wonder Boy,</A> joined them in July, 1940. August, 1941 saw the introduction of two new titles, <I>Police Comics</I> (with <A href="firebrnd.htm">Firebrand</A> on the cover and <A href="711.htm">711,</A> <A href="h-bomb.htm">The Human Bomb</A> and <A href="phanlady.htm">Phantom Lady</A> on the inside) and <I>Military Comics</I> (<A href="blakhawk.htm">Blackhawk</A> on the cover and <A href="deathpat.htm">The Death Patrol,</A> <A href="blue-tr.htm">The Blue Tracer</A> and <A href="misamer1.htm">Miss America</A> inside). <P> Filling these comics for Arnold was The Eisner-Iger Studio, which was in the business of producing fully print-ready comics features for such publishers as <A href="foxfeatr.htm">Fox</A> (where they did <A href="flame.htm">The Flame</A>) and <A href="fiction.htm">Fiction House</A> (where they did <A href="sheena.htm">Sheena, Queen of the Jungle</A>). <P> For the next dozen-and-a-half years or so, Quality Comics was subject to the usual market vararies. Superheroes fell out of fashion as World War II progressed, and were replaced with trendier genres. <I>Military Comics</I> changed its name to <I>Modern Comics</I> in 1945 and began emphasizing non-military features like <A href="torchy.htm">Torchy</A> and Will Bragg. <I>Crack Comics</I> converted to <I>Crack Western</I> in 1949 and started featuring the likes of Frontier Marshal and Two-Gun Lil. <I>Police Comics</I> switched to non-superheroic crime drama, such as <A href="kenshan.htm">Ken Shannon</A> and <A href="tman.htm">Treasury Agent Trask,</A> in 1950. <P> Through it all, the trend was down, as the entire comic book industry fell into a near-fatal slump in the 1950s. In 1956, Arnold sold out to former rival <A href="dc.htm">DC Comics,</A> which continued a few titles like <I>Blackhawk</I> and <I>G.I. Combat,</I> but let the majority languish. During the superhero rival of subsequent decades, many of Quality's heroes like <A href="plas.htm">Plastic Man</A> and <A href="maxmerc.htm">Quicksilver</A> have been brought back, including a whole group of them, <A href="freedomf.htm">The Freedom Fighters,</A> who flourished for a couple of years during the 1970s. <P> Despite the fact that DC's ownership of the old Quality characters hasn't been legally challenged, there is a persistent urban legend that DC doesn't really own them all, because many had fallen into the public domain before the sale took place. As anyone having even a cursory familiarity with contemporary copyright law knows, this is nonsense, because at the time, copyrights lasted 28 years before having to be renewed; thus, even the earliest Quality Comics copyrights were a decade away from needing renewal at the time of the sale. <P> A variation on the legend has it that DC doesn't really own the characters because the copyrights weren't registered in the first place. But if they weren't, they fell under "common-law" copyright, by which ownership rights can be asserted over any publication that contains a printed copyright notice, provided the claimant can prove the material was published at the time stated. <P> But DC's ownership of at least some of the characters may be clouded, because some, it's said, may not have been included in the sale. But inasmuch as the documents of the sale aren't publicly available, only DC's lawyers know for sure. <P> And DC's lawyers are exactly who must be dealt with if anyone wants to challenge the company for any of Quality's old characters. If they can't quite make an absolutely airtight case for their ownership of one or two, they can certainly make it more expensive than it's worth to establish the fact in court. <P ALIGN = "RIGHT">— DDM <P><B>Quality Comics articles in <I>Don Markstein's Toonopedia:</I></B> <BR><CENTER>  <A href="spider.htm">Alias The Spider</A>  <A href="atomctot.htm">Atomictot</A>  <A href="barker.htm">The Barker</A>  <A href="blakhawk.htm">Blackhawk</A>  <A href="blcondr1.htm">The Black Condor</A>  <A href="blue-tr.htm">The Blue Tracer</A>  <A href="bozorobo.htm">Bozo the Robot</A>  <A href="bungle.htm">The Bungle Family</A>  <A href="burp.htm">Burp the Twerp</A>  <A href="candy.htm">Candy</A>  <A href="triumph.htm">Captain Triumph</A>  <A href="clock.htm">The Clock</A>  <A href="dc.htm">DC Comics</A>  <A href="deathpat.htm">The Death Patrol</A>  <A href="destiny.htm">Destiny</A>  <A href="dixiedug.htm">Dixie Dugan</A>  <A href="dollman.htm">Doll Man</A>  <A href="firebrnd.htm">Firebrand</A>  <A href="flatfoot.htm">Flatfoot Burns</A>  <A href="freedomf.htm">The Freedom Fighters</A>  <A href="h-bomb.htm">The Human Bomb</A>  <A href="janarden.htm">Jane Arden</A>  <A href="jester.htm">The Jester</A>  <A href="palooka.htm">Joe Palooka</A>  <A href="kenshan.htm">Ken Shannon</A>  <A href="eternity.htm">Kid Eternity</A>  <A href="ladyluck.htm">Lady Luck</A>  <A href="fatal.htm">Madam Fatal</A>  <A href="manhntrq.htm">Manhunter</A>  <A href="marksman.htm">The Marksman</A>  <A href="marmadkm.htm">Marmaduke Mouse</A>  <A href="maxmerc.htm">Max Mercury</A>  <A href="mickfinn.htm">Mickey Finn</A>  <A href="midnight.htm">Midnight</A>  <A href="misamer1.htm">Miss America</A>  <A href="mouthpie.htm">The Mouthpiece</A>  <A href="mrmystic.htm">Mr. Mystic</A>  <A href="palooza.htm">Lala Palooza</A>  <A href="penmillr.htm">Pen Miller</A>  <A href="phanlady.htm">Phantom Lady</A>  <A href="plas.htm">Plastic Man</A>  <A href="maxmerc.htm">Quicksilver</A>  <A href="ray1.htm">The Ray</A>  <A href="711.htm">711</A>  <A href="spider.htm">The Spider</A>  <A href="spidrwid.htm">The Spider Widow</A>  <A href="spirit.htm">The Spirit</A>  <A href="swing.htm">Swing Sisson</A>  <A href="tman.htm">T-Man</A>  <A href="torchy.htm">Torchy</A>  <A href="tman.htm">Treasury Agent Trask</A>  <A href="unclsam2.htm">Uncle Sam</A>  <A href="usa.htm">USA</A>  <A href="wildfire.htm">Wildfire</A>  <A href="wondrboy.htm">Wonder Boy</A> </CENTER> <P><A HREF="index.htm">BACK</A> to <I>Don Markstein's Toonopedia</I> Home Page <BR><A HREF="today.htm">Today in Toons:</A> Every day's an anniversary! <P><! 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