The Four Color Media Monitor

According to this news, Dan DiDio said on Facebook that DC no longer has the rights to publishing books based on pulp heroes like Doc Savage, comic strips like Will Eisner's Spirit (although they still have the right to publishing archives based on the old strips) and even the pulp Avenger character that has no connections to Marvel's superteam. With people like DiDio in charge though, that's a good thing if they don't have those licenses any longer. Doc Savage was something they'd adapted way back in the late 80s, when Denny O'Neil wrote a miniseries spotlighting the hero. They even published one based on the Shadow at the same time, and Andy Helfer was one of the authors. Their versions of the Spirit were more recent. If they hadn't published anything based on Doc Savage and the Shadow for many years after the first renditions, it shouldn't be surprising they wouldn't have the rights to them now.

Comics Beat says that one of the reasons they abandoned these pulp fiction stories is because:

...at WB it was pointed out that DC paying good money to license old characters didn’t make much sense when they had their own catalog of little-used characters to exploit.

Trouble is, since the New 52 took over, they've thrown away many of those "little used" characters, or damaged them so badly, who in their right mind would want to bother?

Labels: dc comics, licensed products