2016 . jump to navigation search this article is about the us publisher of comics . for the american publisher of comics and newspapers see d.c. thomson & co. dc comics parent company warner bros. status active founded 1934 ; 82 years ago 1934 1 as national allied publications founder malcolm wheeler nicholson country of origin united states headquarters location burbank california key people diane nelson president dan didio co publisher jim lee co publisher bob harras editor in chief geoff johns president and chief creative officer 2 patrick caldon evp finance and administration john rood evp sales marketing and business development publication types comics see list of dc comics publications fiction genres crime horror mystery romance science fiction war western imprints imprint list owner s time warner official website www.dccomics.com dc comics inc. is an american comic book publisher . it is the publishing unit of dc entertainment 3 a subsidiary of warner bros. a division of time warner . dc comics is one of the largest oldest and most successful companies operating in american comic books citation needed and produces material featuring numerous well known heroic characters including superman batman wonder woman green lantern the flash aquaman cyborg shazam martian manhunter hawkman and green arrow . the fictional dc universe also features teams such as the justice league the justice society of america the suicide squad and the teen titans and well known villains such as joker lex luthor darkseid catwoman ra s al ghul deathstroke professor zoom sinestro black adam and brainiac . the company has also published non dc universe related material including watchmen v for vendetta and many titles under their alternative imprint vertigo . the initials dc came from the company s popular series detective comics which featured batman s debut and subsequently became part of the company s name . 4 originally in manhattan at 432 fourth avenue the dc comics offices have been located at 480 and later 575 lexington avenue ; 909 third avenue ; 75 rockefeller plaza ; 666 fifth avenue ; and 1325 avenue of the americas . dc has its headquarters at 1700 broadway midtown manhattan new york city but it was announced in october 2013 that dc entertainment would relocate its headquarters from new york to burbank california in 2015 . 5 random house distributes dc comics books to the bookstore market while diamond comic distributors supplies the comics shop specialty market . 5 dc comics and its major longtime competitor marvel comics owned since 2009 by the walt disney company time warner s main rival together shared 70 % of the american comic book market in 2016 . 6 contents 1 history 1.1 origins 1.2 the golden age 1.3 the silver age 1.4 kinney national subsidiary 1.5 the bronze age 1.6 modern age 1.7 time warner unit 1990 present 1.8 2000s 1.9 2010s 2 dc entertainment 2.1 dc films 3 logo 4 imprints 4.1 active as of 2016 4.2 defunct 4.3 licensing partnerships acquired companies and studios 5 films 6 see also 7 notes 8 citations 9 sources 10 external links history edit origins edit entrepreneur major malcolm wheeler nicholson founded national allied publications in autumn 1934 . 1 7 8 the company debuted with the tabloid sized new fun the big comic magazine 1 with a cover date of february 1935 . 9 10 the company s second title new comics 1 dec. 1935 appeared in a size close to what would become comic books standard during the period fans and historians call the golden age of comic books with slightly larger dimensions than today s. 11 that title evolved into adventure comics which continued through issue 503 in 1983 becoming one of the longest running comic book series . in 2009 dc revived adventure comics with its original numbering . 12 in 1935 jerry siegel and joe shuster the future creators of superman created doctor occult who is the earliest dc comics character to still be in the dc universe . wheeler nicholson s third and final title detective comics advertised with a cover illustration dated december 1936 eventually premiered three months late with a march 1937 cover date . the themed anthology series would become a sensation with the introduction of batman in issue 27 may 1939 . by then however wheeler nicholson had gone . in 1937 in debt to printing plant owner and magazine distributor harry donenfeld who also published pulp magazines and operated as a principal in the magazine distributorship independent news wheeler nicholson had to take donenfeld on as a partner in order to publish detective comics 1 . detective comics inc. was formed with wheeler nicholson and jack s. liebowitz donenfeld s accountant listed as owners . major wheeler nicholson remained for a year but cash flow problems continued and he was forced out . shortly afterward detective comics inc. purchased the remains of national allied also known as nicholson publishing at a bankruptcy auction . 13 detective comics inc. soon launched a fourth title action comics the premiere of which introduced superman . action comics 1 june 1938 the first comic book to feature the new character archetype soon known as superheroes proved a sales hit . the company quickly introduced such other popular characters as the sandman and batman . on february 22 2010 a copy of action comics 1 june 1938 sold at an auction from an anonymous seller to an anonymous buyer for 1 million besting the 317 000 record for a comic book set by a different copy in lesser condition the previous year . 14 the golden age edit main article golden age of comic books national allied publications soon merged with detective comics inc. to form national comics publications on september 30 1946 15 which absorbed an affiliated concern max gaines and liebowitz all american publications . that year gaines let liebowitz buy him out and kept only picture stories from the bible as the foundation of his own new company ec comics . at that point liebowitz promptly orchestrated the merger of all american and detective comics into national comics ... next he took charge of organizing national comics the self distributorship independent news and their affiliated firms into a single corporate entity national periodical publications . 16 national periodical publications became publicly traded on the stock market in 1961 . 17 18 despite the official names national comics and national periodical publications the company began branding itself as superman dc as early as 1940 and the company became known colloquially as dc comics for years before the official adoption of that name in 1977 . 19 the company began to move aggressively against what it saw as copyright violating imitations from other companies such as fox comics wonder man which according to court testimony fox started as a copy of superman . this extended to dc suing fawcett comics over captain marvel at the time comics top selling character see national comics publications inc. v. fawcett publications inc. . despite the fact that parallels between captain marvel and superman seemed more tenuous captain marvel s powers came from magic unlike superman s the courts ruled that substantial and deliberate copying of copyrighted material had occurred . faced with declining sales and the prospect of bankruptcy if it lost fawcett capitulated in 1955 and ceased comics publication . years later fawcett sold the rights for captain marvel to dc which in 1974 revived captain marvel in the new title shazam featuring artwork by his creator c. c. beck . in the meantime the abandoned trademark had been seized by marvel comics in 1967 with the creation of their captain marvel disallowing the dc comic itself to be called that . while captain marvel did not recapture his old popularity he later appeared in a saturday morning live action tv adaptation and gained a prominent place in the mainstream continuity dc calls the dc universe . when the popularity of superheroes faded in the late 1940s the company focused on such genres as science fiction westerns humor and romance . dc also published crime and horror titles but relatively tame ones and thus avoided the mid 1950s backlash against such comics . a handful of the most popular superhero titles including action comics and detective comics the medium s two longest running titles as of 2013 continued publication albeit with a restart in numbering volume 2 of both action comics and detective comics in 2011 and then a return to the titles original numbering following the dc rebirth event of 2016 . the silver age edit main article silver age of comic books in the mid 1950s editorial director irwin donenfeld and publisher liebowitz directed editor julius schwartz whose roots lay in the science fiction book market to produce a one shot flash story in the try out title showcase . instead of reviving the old character schwartz had writers robert kanigher and john broome penciler carmine infantino and inker joe kubert create an entirely new super speedster updating and modernizing the flash s civilian identity costume and origin with a science fiction bent . the flash s reimagining in showcase 4 october 1956 proved sufficiently popular that it soon led to a similar revamping of the green lantern character the introduction of the modern all star team justice league of america jla and many more superheroes heralding what historians and fans call the silver age of comic books . national did not reimagine its continuing characters primarily superman batman and wonder woman but radically overhauled them . the superman family of titles under editor mort weisinger introduced such enduring characters as supergirl bizarro and brainiac . the batman titles under editor jack schiff introduced the successful batwoman bat girl ace the bat hound and bat mite in an attempt to modernize the strip with non science fiction elements . schwartz together with artist infantino then revitalized batman in what the company promoted as the new look re emphasizing batman as a detective . meanwhile editor kanigher successfully introduced a whole family of wonder woman characters having fantastic adventures in a mythological context . dc s introduction of the reimagined superheroes did not go unnoticed by other comics companies . in 1961 with dc s jla as the specific spur n 1 marvel comics writer editor stan lee and legendary creator jack kirby ushered in the sub silver age marvel age of comics with the debut issue of the fantastic four . 20 since the 1940s when superman batman and many of the company s other heroes began appearing in stories together dc s characters inhabited a shared continuity that decades later was dubbed the dc universe by fans . with the story flash of two worlds in flash 123 september 1961 editor schwartz with writer gardner fox and artists infantino and joe giella introduced a concept that allowed slotting the 1930s and 1940s golden age heroes into this continuity via the explanation that they lived on an other dimensional earth 2 as opposed to the modern heroes earth 1 in the process creating the foundation for what would later be called the dc multiverse . a 1966 batman tv show on the abc network sparked a temporary spike in comic book sales and a brief fad for superheroes in saturday morning animation filmation created most of dc s initial cartoons and other media . dc significantly lightened the tone of many dc comics particularly batman and detective comics to better complement the camp tone of the tv series . this tone coincided with the famous go go checks checkerboard cover dress which featured a black and white checkerboard strip all dc books cover dated february 1966 until august 1967 at the top of each comic a misguided attempt by then managing editor irwin donenfeld to make dc s output stand out on the newsracks . 21 in 1967 batman artist infantino who had designed popular silver age characters batgirl and