DC Comics is one of the largest companies in
comic book and related media publishing. DC is responsible for such famous characters as
Batman,
Superman,
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 666 Fifth Avenue in
New York City; in the
1990s, they moved to 1700 Broadway. The initials "DC" are an abbrieviation for
Detective Comics.
History
The company was originally three companies, National Allied Publications, 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)
This company was the first to publish original stories in comic book form in 1937, 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 (1950s and 1960s)
Under the editorship of Julius Schwartz in the late 1950s, the company was responsible for kickstarting the Silver Age of comic books, with the revival of The Flash in a modernized form. The company quickly followed with revamps of Green Lantern, Hawkman, The Atom, all with a more science-fiction angle to them. The superhero team concept was revived and updated as the Justice League of America. Interest in comics picked up, and DC enjoyed being at a prominent position in the industry.
In the early 1960s, Marvel Comics - previously a relatively minor publisher - was beginning to rise quickly in the market, due largely to the creative contributions of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko. DC was slow to react to Marvel's successful focus on more complex characters and tighter continuity, and the publisher began to develop a reputation in the market for simplistic and "old-fashioned" storytelling. It was mainly with defectors from Marvel like Ditko, or newer talents like Neal Adams that this new approach to storytelling took hold at DC.
Late 1960s and early 1970s
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, but they had little experience in the industry and the relative lack of professionalism in their work hampered the product of the company. There were, however, bright lights, like Dennis O'Neil, who worked on Green Lantern and Batman. 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.
Late 1970s and 1980s
The company was acquired by Warner Communications (now Time Warner) in 1976. In the early 1980s, the new management of publisher Jenette Kahn , vice-president Paul Levitz, and managing editor Dick Giordano decided to offer more concrete financial rewards to their talents, such as royalties to encourage long term commitments to the company. This immediately paid off with the success of 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.
This successful revitalization of a minor title lead the editorship 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. 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.
Meanwhile, British writer Alan Moore had re-energized the minor horror series Saga of the Swamp Thing, and his highly acclaimed work sparked a comic book equivalent of rock's British Invasion, in which numerous British talents, including Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison, came to work for the company. The resulting influx of sophisticated horror and dark fantasy material led not only to DC abandoning the Comics Code for particular titles by those talents, but also to the later establishment in 1993 of the Vertigo imprint for mature readers.
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 and Batman were killed/crippled and replaced, 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 established several imprints in the 1990s 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 of... 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 A.D. and Humanoids. It also rebranded its titles for younger children with the mascot Johnny DC.
See also list of DC comics, list of DC Comics characters, list of DC Cosmic Entities.
Noteworthy creators
Imprints
See also
External links
Last updated: 10-19-2005 17:06:21
