In the midst of dueling Captain Marvel franchises, KINO-LORBER scores!

Follow-up on DAREDEVILS OF THE RED CIRCLE upcoming release. The date is now set for April 21st.
Here's a screen shot...



Daredevils of the Red Circle Blu-ray Detailed

This will be a first day purchase for your's truly!


Cat

 

Maybe they'd also like to collect the Blackhawk serials?. Before acquiring the Fawcett characters, NPP/DC bought up Quality Comics' inventory and rights which included Blackhawk, Plastic Man, Doll Man and everything but The Spirit/Eisner affiliated characters. I remember having some of the 100PG. Giants in the early '70s and they reprinted a lot of old Quality and Fawcett material. Kid Eternity and Ibis (The Invincible) were a couple of my favorites.

 

I'd love to see a legit release of the Blackhawk serial. That one starred Kirk Allen, but Columbia only budgeted for several of his team which made the yarn seem a little half-hearted. It's one of the studio's later entries ('52, I think). No idea if any of the serial negatives or prints survive in Columbia's archives. Although this isn't one of the comic threads, I know exactly where you're coming from (here are a couple of the original Quality books in my collection)...




Sorry about the off-topic digression.


Cat

 

Related Information:

DC has a history of acquiring other company's characters. Before Crisis On Infinite Earths (COIE) they put each company's characters on their own Earth (and maintained the same basic continuity as with their original company). Examples:

• Fawcett Characters: Earth-S, where science is an adjunct to magic. One quirk with the Fawcett characters is that (if I remember correctly) DC didn't actually own the characters until the 1980s so it is likely that it limited their ability to use the characters for a time.
  
• Quality Characters (excluding Plastic Man): Earth-X, where WWII was still going on in the 1960s. Later, they established the Quality heroes were originally from Earth-Two (DC's original Earth which features the original version of their heroes) and they traveled to Earth-X to fight when all of the Earth-X native heroes were killed.
  
• Charlton Characters (Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, Nightshade, The Question, Peter Cannon - Thunderbolt, Peacemaker): Earth-Four, which had very few heroes.

During COIE the above heroes, along with those from other versions of Earth (Earth-One and Earth-Two), were folded into one version of Earth.

 

I think they got some of the Charlton 'properties' last (although they didn't get E-Man so far as I know in that), and also some Gold Key ones like Doctor Solar, Man Of The Atom I think. There wouldn't have been a Watchmen otherwise (all meant to have been Charlton/Gold Key characters). The company that was actually predatory sometimes about acquiring rights though was Marvel. They would get something to take it away or keep it away from another company, publish it to the minimum required by contract and then axe it even if it was outselling most of their superheroes (although once they began losing regular newsstands that was probably beside the point). They took Tarzan and John Carter from NPP/DC (who had taken over from Gold Key), the Hanna-Barbera titles from Charlton (then axed them despite strong sales, new comics only appearing in Europe), and Dennis The Menace from what was left of Fawcett, and also tied-up The Smurfs. They did a lot of toy-tie-ins for awhile too.

Yes, off-topic here. Sorry to hear the Blackhawk serial was a bit of a clunker, I only ever saw one of them. Those comics are in astonishing condition for their age! I think I only ever owned one comic from 1943 in what could be called near mint. Anything from before September 1945 is a survivor of some kind.

 

If I remember correctly, DC acquired the Charlton characters right before Crisis on Infinite Earths so they made their formal debut there (although I think the characters may have appeared in a DC title elsewhere first). In the end, with the Charlton characters they refined continuation for some characters (Blue Beetle, The Question, Nightshade), but with Captain Atom they did a complete re-imagining of the character.

Sorry to take it off-topic. Something I'd like to do when I have the time is to watch some of the old serials. One I've heard is excellent is the one featuring Captain Marvel.

 

DC Comics doesn't own Doctor Solar. He ultimately landed at Valiant Comics.

 

Who was Doctor Manhattan in Watchmen patterned after? Was it Captain Atom maybe? I was thinking it might have been Dr. Solar but it's been so long now, like thirty years since I originally knew some of these things. I used to have some nicely weird Steve Ditko Capt. Atoms and Blue Beetle with Nightshade (who became the Nightowl guy and Silk Spectre II). Ditko also did some Liberty belle character there and this really wild Ayn Randian thing called Killjoy which i found incredibly fun. I talked with Dick Giordano about some of this Charlton stuff because he used to work for Charlton and told me a lot of obscure things about them (some of which I doubt I could repeat), and one of their printing presses had been used to print cereal boxes before they did comic book covers on it. He and his wife were like my Italian grandparents from NY/NJ. In fact he was hard of hearing and Mrs. Giordano had diabetes, so in that respect exactly like my grandparents!

If you can't go off topic in this day and age, what is the internet even for anymore I ask.

 

Hey, I like it when threads derail now and then, ...it makes the train of thought more challenging. Steering an unwieldy serial thread takes a little lobbying...





Just think of it as a monstrous plot!

Cat

 

A few corrections here, since we're off topic anyway: Marvel did not take the Edgar Rice Burroughs properties away from DC. Rather, DC let their license lapse because the titles were not selling well enough. For a short time, ERB Inc. toyed with the idea of publishing their own comics, but they ultimately decided against it and then worked out a deal with Marvel to license the characters. The Marvel versions did not sell well either so Marvel cancelled them as soon as their license expired.

Marvel also did not take the Hanna Barbera characters away from Charlton. Rather, Hanna Barbera became unhappy with the Charlton versions because they were badly written and the characters behaved off-model, and this elicited complaints from overseas publishers who were licensing the material from HB. So HB did not renew their license, and they hired Mark Evanier to essentially set up a shop and produce material featuring their characters. This material was then licensed to Marvel in the US and to other publishers overseas to publish.

 

Let's try getting back on topic. If you'd like to start a separate thread focusing on the correction of minutiae, I'll gladly contribute.


Cat

 

Fair enough. Mark E is one of the people I talked to way back about the sales numbers. That the Hanna-Barbera titles outsold many super comics when they were cancelled, he said something about people in NY being against both non-super properties and the west coast. I used to have the hard numbers, wish I still did. I can't remember what he said about the Blackhawk comics sales when he was doing them with Dave Cockrum and Dan Spiegel though. Certain other people naming practices as predatory to me probably didn't have all the info either. I'm open to being given the wrong idea about Tarzan, Conan, Godzilla, kung-fu, war and mystery comics sales, they tended to be newsstand sellers with a lot of wasted/destroyed copies, and once things were going to collector shops their days would've been numbered anyway regardless of artists not wanting to do them anymore.

And now back to the serials!

 

Yes, Alan Moore patterned Doctor Manhattan after Captain Atom.

 

He based all of the characters in Watchman after the Charlton characters. Originally, he was going to use them but when DC saw what he was going to do in what became Watchman they refused him because the characters would never be able to be used again. I think it was a good move because it gave him the freedom to take the characters (and the story) in a direction that would not have been possible with the Charlton characters (as an example, Dr. Manhattan is vastly more powerful than Captain Atom).

 

Hey fellas, the conversation about Alan Moore and the Watchman series is interesting, but not relevant to the topic of KINO-Lorber releases or serials in general. If we keep moving in this direction before long we'll be discussing Zack Snyder's filmmaking, ...and trust me, you don't want to go there.

Since this thread has already veered away from the original topic ...and in part, that's my fault... it might be better if I were to wait a week or so and start a different discussion thread exclusively focused on serials, lobby cards and releases from Olive & KINO.

Don't get me wrong, I love discussing comics and comic franchises ...as a historian of GA comics I conduct A/V presentations and speak on collecting & investment at comic/SF conventions..., but this thread is straying too far from the original topic. I'm concerned that the information I'm providing will get lost to those curious about it. With that in mind, it's probably best that I step back and you folks can take the discussions wherever you like.

Carry on, and thanks for contributing.


Cat

 

I'd like to see this serial someday...



When I was little we got a Washington State station, I think it was KTNT, on Channel 13, that used to have a lot of great serials. I avidly followed King Of The Rocketmen and Captain America. Sadly it went out of business sometime in the 1970s and two new Channel 13s followed, but it wasn't the same. We also had a station that showed old Sheena Of the Jungle tv series and Rocky Jones Space Rangers.

 

You're in luck! Flying Disc Man From Mars is still available on either DVD or BD:
Amazon.com: Flying Disc Man From Mars [Blu-ray]: Walter Reed, Gregory Gaye, James Craven, Fred C. Brannon, Lois Collier: Movies & TV

That's one of several Republic serials Olive released in 2015.


Cat

 

I'll probably see if I can grab this and Blackhawk together and get ready for Capt. Marvel!

 

Olive Films put out a serial from Republic Pictures on Blu-ray, Panther Girl of the Kongo. Actress Phyllis Coates is Panther Girl, better known for her portrayal of Lois Lane in the first season of The Adventures of Superman.

Panther Girl of the Kongo Blu-ray Review - DoBlu.com