Thread:Fmen/@comment-4324417-20150101053132/@comment-1038387-20150101211558

According to the relevant pages on Wikipedia:


 * Blue Beetle was acquired by Charlton when Fox folded. Nothing hokey.


 * Phantom Lady is considerably more troublesome.
 * In 1947, Quality no longer published PL, so Iger Studios, which thought they owned the rights, assigned it to Fox.
 * When Fox went out of business because of the Comics Code Authority, its assets were divided.
 * Some of PL went to Star Publications, which also folded because of the CCA.
 * It then apparently passed to Ajax-Farrell, which published 4 issues 1954-5.
 * Some time later, Ajax-Farrell's stock was published by Charlton, and they reprinted some PL stories, apparently, in the 50s and 60s (don't know where).
 * IW Publications also published reprints, but their claim to the rights isn't explained.
 * DC acquired the stock of Quality Comics in 1956, but didn't publish them until 1970.
 * The problem in this is it is unclear whether Iger Studios had any legal right to assign their work to another publisher, and so whether the uses of the character after that are legit. Considering DC successfully contested the claim to Phantom Lady when Paragon/AC published new material on the character (they renamed their version Blue Bulleteer), they obviously think Iger Studios did not have any right to reassign PL to other studios.

Which begs the question, what should we do with Phantom Lady? We got rid of AC publications on the site, but if the Fox and A-F works are also copyright infringement, does that mean we should not cover them? Was there ever a DC v Iger court case?

This is part of the larger discussion. We already got rid of licensed products (linking them to other wikis instead) and Golden and Silver Age MLJ. We need to figure out how much of Charlton, Fawcett and Quality DC bought, and how much of Fox is owned/was ever owned by DC. So far, it looks like it's only, via Charlton, Blue Beetle.