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Quality Comics was an American comic book publishing company that operated from 1937 to 1956 and was an influential creative force in the Golden Age of comic books.

History

Quality Comics was started by Everett M. "Busy" Arnold, a printer who saw the rapidly rising popularity of the comic book medium in the late 1930s. He entered the field by buying out the existing series Feature Funnies from Eastern Color Press. Initially buying features from Eisner & Iger, a prominent "packager" that produced comics on demand for publishers entering the new medium, Quality introduced such superheroes as Plastic Man and Kid Eternity, and other such characters as the aviator hero Blackhawk. Quality also published comic-book reprints of Will Eisner's The Spirit, the seven-page lead feature in a weekly 16-page, tabloid-sized, newsprint comic book, known colloquially as The Spirit Section, distributed through Sunday newspapers.

By the mid-1950s, with television and paperback books drawing readers away from comic books in general and superheroes in particular, interest in Quality's characters had declined considerably. After a foray into other genres such as war, humor, romance and horror, the company ceased operations with comics cover-dated December 1956. All of its properties were sold to National Periodical Publications (now DC Comics), except for Blackhawk, which was leased to DC. (DC bought Blackhawk outright a few years later.)[1] Despite buying all of Quality's titles, DC only continued four at the time: Blackhawk, G.I. Combat, Heart Throbs and Robin Hood Tales.

Over the decades, DC revived other Quality characters, including Plastic Man as well as a group of other characters who formed the titular team of the 1970s series Freedom Fighters. Other than Plastic Man, who has been a member of the Justice League and has had his own ongoing series, most former Quality heroes are occasional supporting characters in the DC Universe.

According to DC canon referred in the Official Crisis on Infinite Earths Cross-Over Index, the Quality characters, before the DC revamping event called "Crisis on Infinite Earths", existed on two separate realities in the DC Multiverse: Earth-Quality and Earth-X.

While Earth-Quality followed Quality comic continuity (with various heroes such as Doll Man, Plastic Man, and Blackhawks fighting crooks and communists until 1956) Earth-X was radically different in that FDR's death due to a heart attack in 1944 delayed the development of the atomic bomb long enough for the Nazis to develop one as well. The cold war between the Allies and Axis powers continued until the Nazis invented a mind control machine in 1968, resulting in their victory.[2]

In issue #11 of Crisis on Infinite Earths it is stated that in the Post-"Crisis" continuity the Quality characters have always lived on the single, unified New Earth.

New, successor versions of the characters Black Condor and The Ray were introduced in 1992; both were recruited into the Justice League. The new Ray also had his own 1994–1996 series and occasionally appears as a reserve League member.


See Also

Notes

  • The Official Crisis on Infinite Earths Crossover Index speculated that various Will Eisner characters (such as the Spirit, Lady Luck, and Mr. Mystic) also existed on Earth-Quality (but not on Earth-X).


Links and References

  1. The Quality Companion by Mike Kooiman and Jim Amash, TwoMorrows Publishing, 2011
  2. Justice League of America #107
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