DC Comics is one of the two largest comic book companies in America. By creating graphic stories in a comic book format rather than as a comic strip for newspapers, DC invented the modern comic book. It also created some of the world’s most famous superheroes and villains: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Lantern, Lex Luthor, The Joker, Two-Face, Darkseid, and Catwoman.
DC Comics is America’s oldest comic book company still in existence, formed as an amalgamation of older companies dating back to 1934. National Allied Publications, the oldest of these predecessors, was founded by Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson in 1934, when he first published New Fun and its sequel More Fun. He modeled it after Famous Funnies, which republished newspaper comic strips, but Wheeler-Nicholson’s innovation was to buy new comic stories from unknown writers and artists. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster had their stories published in New Fun. These two would make history in 1938 when they sold their Superman story to National. Malcolm-Wheeler’s second magazine was New Comics. Its size, slightly larger than those today, became the standard for comic books before the 1960s. New Comics eventually became Adventure Comics and proved to be the longest running comic book title in history, continuing from 1935 to 1983. His third magazine, Detective Comics, came out in 1937, and in issue #27 Batman first appeared, quickly becoming DC’s second biggest hit after Superman. To publish Detective Comics, Wheeler-Nicholson had to form a partnership with Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz, who had the necessary capital to help him pay off his debts. In publishing Detective Comics, a second company, Detective Comics Inc. with Liebowitz as co-owner, was created.
Donenfeld was a Jewish immigrant who at an early age developed his sales skills as a barker and a huckster. He took over a printing business from his brothers and made it profitable by selling sex pulp magazines, called nudies or smooshes. He was indicted for printing one particular cover of his magazine Pep, which was deemed pornographic, only escaping conviction by having an employee claim responsibility. Donenfeld realized that he needed to move his publications into more respectable directions, and already having built a publishing and distributing company that linked adventure stories laced with enticing images, the partnership with Wheeler-Nicholson worked in everyone’s best interests.
Liebowitz was also a Jewish immigrant, but unlike Donenfeld whose parents owned a business, Liebowitz’s father was a labor union activist. After getting his degree in accounting, Liebowitz first became Donenfeld’s accountant and later his business partner. With Donenfeld as the salesman, Liebowitz as the accountant, and Wheeler-Nicholson as the creative spark, the necessary ingredients were present for National’s success. Wheeler-Nicholson was soon forced out, though, due to his continued financial difficulties. It was soon after his departure that a fourth title, Action Comics, was published, featuring Superman on the cover.
The cover of a DC Detective comic depicting Batman, a DC Comics creation. The inventor of the comic book as we know it gave birth to Superman, as well as to many other iconic figures of American graphic lore. Dating back to 1934, DC is the oldest surviving comics publisher in America and remains one of the largest. (flab/Alamy Stock Photo)
The company that officially became DC Comics in 1977 (but was unofficially known by its logo DC for many years prior) was an amalgamation of three companies: National Allied Publications, Detective Comics Inc., and a third, All-American Publications, formed when Donenfeld provided funding to Max Gaines (co-creator of Famous Funnies) to start the company and take on Liebowitz as co-owner.
Siegel and Shuster had sold the rights to their Superman story to DC for $130, and upon its success, continued to write and draw for DC well into the 1940s. Remarkably, they did not reap any of the profits from the comic book or from the royalties DC received from its radio or film spin-offs, its newspaper comic strip, or its product endorsements. Because comic book characters were almost always owned by the publisher, its creators—those writers and artists who actually created the comic books—were paid by the number of pages they produced, while those who ran the company were the ones who got rich from its successes.
Bob Kane, who was credited with creating Batman, was an exception. After he and his hired writer Bill Finger came up with the character of Batman, he received some legal advice that helped him negotiate his contract with DC, so that he was able to keep some ownership rights to the character. Finger, however, was never given credit for co-creating Batman until fifteen years after his death when Kane publicly regretted not having acknowledged Finger’s role earlier.
By 1940 Superman and Batman had become the cornerstone of DC. With the success of Superman in particular, DC hired writers and artists to create more superheroes. But sales of these lesser characters lagged behind, and so it was decided in 1940 to unite these characters. The Flash, The Atom, Doctor Fate, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Hourman, and Sandman became a superhero team called the Justice Society of America. Joining them as a team proved very successful. Then, in 1942, psychologist William Moulton Marston created Wonder Woman, the first woman superhero in a field dominated by men.
DC Comics, along with its competitors, sold well during the war years. In addition to fighting criminals, these superheroes also uncovered spy rings and encouraged rationing and bond buying to help the war effort. By the end of the war, the quota limits on paper that had forced comic book companies to cut their output was lifted, and DC was able to increase the frequency of many of its titles. But as postwar optimism brought forth interest in romantic, funny, western, and animal themed comics, those titles featuring superheroes declined in popularity. Green Lantern and The Flash ended their publishing run, and only Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman continued to be published during the remainder of the 1940s and during the first half of the 1950s.
DC is credited with sparking what has been labeled the Silver Age of Comics. Beginning in 1956, DC reintroduced The Flash under long-standing DC editor Julius Schwartz, writer Gordon Fox, and artist Carmine Infantino. Looking for material that would conform to the new self-censoring Comics Code Authority (CCA) that had been created in the wake of Fredric Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent, DC created Showcase as a way of introducing new morally acceptable characters that would also be financially profitable. Following the success of the new Flash, DC rebooted Green Lantern, The Atom, and Hawkman using the same approach: creating new characters and story lines for these bygone superheroes. In 1960 DC rebooted the Justice Society of America, renaming it Justice League of America, with Aquaman, Wonder Woman, The Martian Manhunter, The Flash, Green Lantern, and occasional visits from Superman and Batman. Its success motivated Marvel Comics to create a new line of superheroes of its own, beginning with the Fantastic Four. Marvel’s success with them and others during the first half of the 1960s pushed DC into new directions. Writer John Broome and artist Infantino, under Schwartz’s direction, revamped Batman, both in his appearance and in the stories themselves. New writers and artists such as Steve Ditko, Neal Adams, Joe Kubert, Dick Giordano, Mike Sekowsky, and Jack Kirby were all hired, and artists rather than writers became the editorial driving force of the company. But sales did not meet their expectations and even Kirby’s Fourth World series, which would eventually be seen by the DC fandom as an important title that would later play a part in the DC Multiverse, was cancelled.
Near the end of the 1970s, the energy that DC put into introducing a whole new set of characters and stories did not translate into stronger sales. As a result, the company fired much of its staff and closed down about 40 percent of its titles in what would be known as the DC Implosion. It wasn’t until the mid-1980s, in what some refer to as the end of the Bronze and the beginning of the Modern Age, that DC had some major success stories. Marv Wolfman and George Perez created The New Teen Titans followed by the spin-off Tales of the New Teen Titans. Following this, DC reworked its entire universe of characters in a landmark limited series called Crisis on Infinite Earths. Also at this time, three British writers and artists, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and Grant Morrison, brought a new dimension to DC. Moore’s Watchmen, while technically not part of the DC Universe, became a huge hit, and along with Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, helped bring DC back into prominence.
In the 2000s, DC once again remade their characters for yet another generation, coming out with Infinite Crisis as a sequel to their earlier Crisis on Infinite Earths. Upon the close of this limited series, the DC story lines jumped forward one year and began a weekly series called 52, in which was revealed what had happened throughout that missing year. DC continues to revamp its characters for each new generation, and in recent years, there has been less need to coherently fit each new reboot with an overarching continuity.
Rick R. Lilla
See also Batman; Lee, Stan; Marvel Comics; Superman
Further Reading
Harvey, R. C. 2014. “Who Discovered Superman?” The Comics Journal. January 6. http://www.tcj.com/who-discovered-superman/. Accessed July 2, 2015.
Jones, Gerard. 2004. Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book. New York: Basic Books.
Teitelbaum, Michael, et al. 2008. The DC Comics Encyclopedia, Updated and Expanded Edition. New York: DK.
Wallace, Daniel, et al. 2010. DC Comics Year by Year: A Visual Chronicle. New York: DK.