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Quality Comics was a prominent independent U.S. comic book publisher that operated primarily during the Golden Age of American comics, widely recognized for its beloved original superhero and adventure properties that earned broad audience followings in the 1940s and 1950s.
Key moments
circa 1937Founded by Everett M. 'Busy' Arnold, after he acquired publishing assets from early comic packager Harry A. Chesler
1940sReached commercial peak, launching iconic anthology titles such as Crack Comics and Military Comics, alongside popular original characters including Plastic Man, Blackhawk, Kid Eternity, and print reprints of Will Eisner's syndicated The Spirit newspaper strips
1956Ceased all independent publishing operations, and sold its full catalog of intellectual property to DC Comics
Distinctive character design innovation
Unlike most competing 1940s publishers that leaned heavily on straightforward traditional caped superhero tropes, Quality Comics prioritized tonally flexible, creatively bold protagonists that blended slapstick humor, noir detective elements and war adventure narratives. Its most famous character Plastic Man, for example, combined super-stretching powers with lighthearted comedy that stood out against the often overly serious superhero works from rival publishers of the era, earning a dedicated cross-generational fan base.
Significance to the evolution of the DC multiverse
After acquiring all Quality Comics IP in 1956, DC has steadily integrated the former Quality character roster into its own shared superhero continuity. Many of these properties have appeared in landmark DC team series such as All-Star Squadron and Freedom Fighters, filling narrative gaps for the publisher's Golden Age continuity that could not be covered by DC's own original 1940s heroes.
End of the independent Golden Age comic ecosystem
Quality Comics' closure in 1956 is widely seen as a key marker of the end of the boom era for small independent non-licensed comic publishers. The 1950s anti-comics moral panic and the enforcement of the restrictive Comics Code Authority squeezed nearly all mid-tier independent operators out of the market, leaving only a tiny handful of large surviving publishers including DC and Dell to dominate the U.S. comics industry for the following two decades.
Comic books
genre
Superhero, war, humor, romance, horror
predecessor
Comic Favorites, Inc.
Quality Comics was an American comic bookpublishing company which operated from 1937 to 1956 and was a creative, influential force in what historians and fans call the Golden Age of Comic Books.
Notable, long-running titles published by Quality include Blackhawk, Feature Comics, G.I. Combat, Heart Throbs, Military Comics/Modern Comics, Plastic Man, Police Comics, Smash Comics, and The Spirit. While most of their titles were published by a company named Comic Magazines, from 1940 onwards all publications bore a logo that included the word "Quality". Notable creators associated with the company included Jack Cole, Reed Crandall, Will Eisner, Lou Fine, Gill Fox, Paul Gustavson, Bob Powell, and Wally Wood.
History
Quality Comics was founded by Everett M. Arnold, a printer who saw the rapidly rising popularity of the comic book medium in the late 1930s.Deducing that Depression-era audiences wanted established quality and familiar comic strips for their hard-earned dimes, in 1937 the enterprising Arnold formed Comic Favorites, Inc. (in collaboration with three newspaper syndicates: the McNaught Syndicate, the Frank J. Markey Syndicate, and Iowa's Register and Tribune Syndicate).[1]
Comic Favorites, Inc.'s first publication was Feature Funnies, which began primarily with color reprints of hit strips from all three co-owning syndicates (including Joe Palooka, Mickey Finn, and Dixie Dugan [all three from McNaught]) alongside a small number of original features.[2] The original material came from various sources, including the company's in-house staff and freelancers (from the first issue)[3] and the Eisner & Iger shop (from issue #3).[4]
There has been much confusion over whether the original Quality Comics and their characters are in public domain. The original copyrights for Quality's publications were never renewed, leaving them in the public domain. The trademarks to the characters were sold to DC, which has periodically published stories with them to renew the trademark.[11]
Over the decades, DC revived other Quality characters. Plastic Man has starred in several short-lived series starting in 1966,[12] as well as a
1.Jim Steranko. The Steranko History of Comics 2 Supergraphics, 1972^
2.Mike Kooiman, Jim Amash. Quality Companion, The TwoMorrows Publishing, November 2011^
3.Mike Kooiman, Jim Amash. Quality Companion, The TwoMorrows Publishing, November 2011^
4.
A frequent point of confusion is whether and how comic packaging shop Harry "A" Chesler was involved with the company's early days.Several sources[5][6] list Chesler as the publisher of Feature Funnies, but the only primary source to mention Chesler is an interview with Arnold in which he describes purchasing content from the shop for Military Comics and Police Comics,[7] neither of which began until 1941.An interview with Will Eisner quoted in The Quality Companion indicates that Arnold did not always own Comic Favorites, Inc., but the authors of that reference were unable to find any corroborating evidence amidst a large volume of evidence to the contrary.[8]
In 1939, Arnold and the owners of the Register & Tribune Syndicate's parent company, brothers John Cowles Sr. and Gardner Cowles Jr., bought out the McNaught and Markey interests. Arnold became 50% owner of the newly formed Comic Magazines, Inc., the corporate entity that would publish the Quality Comics line. That year Quality released Smash Comics #1 (Aug. 1939), the company's first comic book with exclusively new material.
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 non-superhero characters including 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.The name Quality Comics debuted on the cover of Crack Comics #5 (Sept. 1940; see at right)."Seemingly never an official publishing title," the Connecticut Historical Society noted, "the Quality Comics Group is a trademarked name (presumably taking its name from Stamford's nickname of 'the Quality City') encompassing Comic Favorites Inc., E.M. Arnold Publications, Smash Comics, and any other imprints owned by Arnold".[9] A 1954 federal document[10] noted that the Quality Romance Group, owned by Everett M. and Claire C. Arnold, with an office at 347 Madison Avenue, in New York City, published two titles as Arnold Publications, Inc., two titles as Comic Favorites, Inc., and 14 titles as Comic Magazines, Inc.
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.
According to DC canon, the Quality characters, before the 1985-1986 DC revamping event called Crisis on Infinite Earths, existed on two separate realities in the DC Multiverse: Earth-Quality and Earth-X.[14] While Earth-Quality followed much the same history as the main Earths, Earth-X was radically different from most Earths, in that World War II continued there until 1973, enabling the Freedom Fighters to continue their fight against the Nazis. Following the Crisis, the Quality characters are transported to the main universe.
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 had his own 1994–1996 series and occasionally appears as a reserve Justice League member. Yet another version of the Ray was introduced in 2011.
Some Quality Comics titles, including Blackhawk and Plastic Man, have been reprinted by DC, while lesser-known ones have been reprinted by AC Comics.
18.As new periodical titles were subject to an expensive registration fee by the U.S. Postal Service to receive a second-class mail permit, Golden Age comic book publishers frequently continued the numbering of old titles on new ones, hence one comic book title "becoming" another with completely unrelated content.^
19.Per Andrews, Henry, at Quality Comics : Comic Favorites, Inc. (Indicia Publisher) at the Grand Comics Database: "Contrary to what is often reported, there is no evidence that Harry 'A' Chesler was ever an owner of this company or in any way a 'pre-Quality' publisher. He is not mentioned anywhere in Feature Funnies #1 or #2, and the earliest available statement of ownership (from #16) lists Everett M. Arnold, Frank J. Markey, Henry P. Martin, Jr. and Frank J. Murphy as co-owners."^
20.Mike Kooiman, Jim Amash. Quality Companion, The TwoMorrows Publishing, November 2011^
21.Such renumbering occurred when the U.S. Postal Service discovered a new title distributed under old numbering; the publisher was then forced to not only pay the registration fee, but also to list the correct issue number.^
