In 2016, DC changed their logo. Many
columns, blogs and articles discussed this and camps remain strongly divided. This was the third significant logo change in
a period of 10 years.
The previous logo was only a little over 3 years old.
The most stalwart logo DC ever had was the iconic Milton Glaser "DC Bullet" which graced the covers of the company's comics for 28 years. And while Glaser is praised for his work, it wasn't really a great leap from the logo
Michael Uslan had designed prior to that
(Uslan had taken the 1972 logo, added stars and DC's ad copy "The Line of
Super-Stars" - then Glaser removed the ad copy, added two more stars to it, concentric circles, outlined the letters "DC" and
tilted it about 36.7° to the left).
Here are the company's logos as
they've appeared over the better part of a century. These include the
short-lived All-American bullets, which differentiated properties such as
Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, The Flash and All-Star Comics, starring the
Justice Society of America as part of a different company. Also included are the
Romance Group bullets, as well as the "DC Special/Showcase" bullet, which
ushered in the next "look" of the logo in the 1970s, and the "Giant" logos,
which differentiated the larger-than-normal page counts, all the way up to
the two (1971 & 1974) 100-Page Super Spectacular logos, which - combined with
the 1970s logos, plus inspiration from the serifs of the "classic" early DC
bullet (1940-1954 & 1955-1970) - inspired the current/2016 logo. Every
image of each and every bullet/logo contained herein was
reconstructed/restored by our Webmaster from the highest resolution sources
available:
Historically, a "Character Bullet" (of sorts) preceded the more familiar stylized
circle with a DC logo - Superman Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Lantern,
Hawkman, Sandman, The Spectre, Starman and even Robin were all featured in a
small circle in the upper left hand corner on the covers of the Golden Age
comics they starred in from 1939 on (they became trade dress promoting Action
Comics, Detective Comics, Sensation Comics, Flash Comics, All-American
Comics, Flash Comics [again], Adventure Comics, More Fun Comics, Adventure
Comics [again] & Star-Spangled Comics respectively). This
was what we at MetropolisPlus refer to as a "Character Logo" or
"Character Bullet". DC had previously
shown this handful of characters in lieu of a logo. The earliest example of which was in 1939 when
the image of Superman (shown here, originating from the back cover of
Superman #1)
was placed near the top of Action Comics #16, which did not otherwise feature
him on the cover (the last issue of Action Comics to have that distinction,
BTW). Also, Batman from Detective Comics #32 (aping, somewhat, the top splash
from Detective Comics #30 and cover of and Wonder Woman from Sensation
#2 (utilizing, and reversing, the last panel from her first story in the
previous issue).
Further, the contemporary wave of new logos is not the only time that DC
has changed its "corporate look" on the covers of every DC title
within a short period of time. Even during the 21 years that the
"Superman•DC•National Comics" bullet existed, there was a
memorable change. For issues cover dated February 1966, DC added the
"Go-Go Checks" atop their comics to distinguish them from
the competition wherever they were displayed. The look, however, was
abandoned by the September 1967 cover date:
Three years after abandoning the "Go-Go
Checks", DC changed their logo once again.
In August of 1970 there began a period during which house art
dominated the upper left corner of every DC comic.
Toward the end of 1968, character images began to pop up at the top of the
comic cover near the title more and more frequently. But beginning with cover
date October 1970 (so, these comics would have first appeared during August of
1970) the old, tried-and-true DC logo disappeared and was replaced solely by
new (and consistent) character images in bullets above their name alongside
"DC" in a new font. Like so:
Mostly drawn by Murphy Anderson,
these logos were action poses that captured the attention readers (at least,
they did our Webmaster's then-8-year-old brain). The art was popular enough that these
logos were reprinted as stickers after they left the covers of DC comics in
1973 as "Super Friend Stick-Ons", which were offered in the pages
of DC comics (now rather collectible on eBay).
You'll
note that the font of "DC" changed and that this was a slight
adaptation of the DC Special logo (sans serif - see the adaptation of this
logo in the page's title above).
We should mention that the above serif-styled
"DC Special" logo
did not change with the rest of the line in 1970, 1972 or 1974. In fact, it
was not until
early 1977, after which the new "DC Bullet" became the "DC" in the title (cover date Feb/Mar 1977).
Further,
in the title boxes attached to the "Character Bullets", the font
for both "DC" and the character/book name did change from title to
title, so it’s currently difficult to determine whether the offices
considered the “DC” portion of the logo enough of a trademark to be
concerned about depicting with any consistency:
As you can see, some
similar fonts with different thickness to the lines and some other fonts
that, while similar to each other, have wider or narrower cap depths (how
wide the capital letters are).
At any rate, these new logos appeared simultaneously with Jack Kirby's arrival at DC on the comics rack. Jack Kirby - along with several other writers and artists at DC - heralded the arrival of The Bronze Age of Comics. Even Superman got a revamp 3 months into this period. He got a new job (TV News Anchor), new boss (Morgan Edge) and lost part of his powers during the Realm of Quarrm or "Sand-Superman" saga
by Denny O'Neil, Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson.
It was a time of change. Only months later, all DC cover prices were increased to 25¢, but with that increase came
the call of "Only 25¢ Bigger and Better", "48 Pages only 25¢" and "52 BIG Pages - Don't Take Less!”,
etc. It was also the time of the 100 Page Super Spectacular. Suddenly, the history of the DC Universe was open to young comics buyers with reprints from the Golden Age of Comics, the Silver Age of Comics and the current age, as well. Superman could appear in two separate stories in one comic. Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes could now share
new stories within the Superboy title, while Supergirl also shared hers with the
Legionnaires in backup reprints.
It was a grand time for the Justice League of America, Teen Titans & other super-heroes, as well as the
return & growth of the Horror genre. Humor, Romance and War comics were still
prevalent, as well. More diverse stories were being published by DC than any other comic book company each month.
We’ve done our best to reproduce these with great care where we’ve been able. Many sources for this kind of art have proven difficult to find and even the ComicArt-L
group has been at a loss to locate the original sources of this art.
Be that as it may, a few items were capable of being found, such as “Super
Friend Stick-Ons” from 1973. We utilized this art for as many
Super-Heroes as were available. For some of the more obscure titles from the
period, we had to work from either a high-res scan of a cover or original
cover art where possible. That said, it hasn’t been easy (or consistent).
So titles like Adventure/Supergirl, Superboy, Mister Miracle, The Forever
People, and Legion of Super-Heroes are at a lower quality than others. We've
even re-built Wonder Woman from scratch (see below).
Here are some examples from the popular titles of your more mainstream super-heroes:
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The Kirby titles included Jimmy Olsen -
their logos appeared thusly:
Yeah, Jimmy looks just a touch out of place
with them, huh? But it was a great shift. Also, they wanted Kirby on a title
immediately (before his Fourth World titles debuted) and he asked for the
title to which no one was assigned, so he wouldn't take anyone's job. With
Jimmy Olsen, he introduced several elements connected to the Fourth World,
but also introduced other elements like The Project/DNA Project (later,
Project Cadmus), which gave us the return of the Newsboy Legion and the
Golden Guardian, as well as Dubbilex and other DNAliens.
Following are some more super-hero
titles:
Further, there were alterations on existing logos (like Supergirl) and
then heroes that appeared in other titles (like the Legion of Super-Heroes
and Batgirl):
We decided to cheat a bit and re-create
the Wonder Woman corner art. Since we have no resource to obtain the original
art any clearer than the smaller clip art from cover original art that we
used and "cleaned up", We wanted a nicer look to it. To that end,
we
used several Wonder Woman covers from the era (which are all Dick Giordano
pieces) to provide a sort of
"Frankenstein" version. This is close to what it would have looked like, had
Mr. Giordano created the corner art, side-by-side with the version above:
In the style of DC's Justice League of
America's floating heads - here's the original 7, plus the others who
appeared in the book around this time, and, as a bonus, the intrepid Teen
Titans of old. Our Webmaster was minorly irked that they replaced Aqualad with Speedy on
this banner, mostly because he was one of the originals & was still
appearing in the title from time to time. At any rate, we added a Nick Cardy
drawing of him to, at
the very least, complete the core "original" team:
Of course, DC had a wider line than just super-heroes in 1970 among the 7
other genres being published were Romance Titles:
(Minor Digression: in 1972, when the logo changed
and the Romance titles did their own thing again - as they had in 1970 -
and morphed the standard DC logo circle into a heart. Here are the
iterations compared to their contemporaries, starting with the 3-month stint
for the Romance-style original DC Bullet):
Also present in their different genres were the War Titles:
As was Mystery/Horror - probably their
second-most popular genre, judging by the number of titles:
And, lastly, filling out their stable of genres were Humor:
Science Fiction:
Licensed Adventure comics, replacing the licensed humor comics of
Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis:
And, finally, Western, a genre that would last only a few more
years:
Some of our favorite pieces are those which
did not quite appear the same way as the other super-hero character logos - either because they shared a book with
someone else, or didn't have a title in which they appeared regularly at all
(or until late in 1972):
One of the glories of this
period was that the page count was increased. The cost of doing business was
going up due to inflation. In order to manage this change, rather than
reducing the 15¢ books from 34 to
30 pages (which would have shrunk the then-22 pages of new material to 18 or
even possibly 16 pages), DC decided to, instead, increase the page count, as
well as the cost of each comic. By increasing their page count and adding 10¢
to the cost of the book, readers were getting more for their money.
There were providing 26 pages of new material plus reprints for another 13
pages of story content (plus, of course, advertisements). In addition, they
went to a new format for their "Giant" comics, which had dwindled in page
count, as well. Their new 100-Page Super
Spectaculars were 50¢, but had absolutely no advertisements and
wraparound covers (check out our webpage on
them for more details) - such a deal!
Our Webmaster was only in the
first half of grade school during this period and he was happy to pay extra for more pages.
These icons have had a
considerable amount of use in merchandise and media, including 7-11 Slurpee
Cups in 1974 and several other uses outside of the Super Friend Stick-On
stickers.
Our Webmaster noted that in the 2017
animated movie "Batman and Harley Quinn" there is a scene that prominently
features several of the 1970-1972 character icons, plus a few others that
never existed at that time. The scene is during Nightwing's search for
Harley Quinn, in which he happens upon the "Superbabes" themed restaurant. A
cross between "Hooters" and "Planet Hollywood/Krypton", the waitresses are
dressed as super-hero women from across the DC Universe. While some of the
wall art didn't exist in the early 1970s, the art used was mostly consistent
with merchandising during the early 70s period. Here are stills of the
pertinent scenes:
In particular, the Original Captain Marvel
(Shazam!) utilized this website's version of the circle (which never
appeared on comics). Also used were images from the Carmine Infantino/Murphy
Anderson posters (which had also been used for Batman in Detective Comics)
featuring the Riddler and the Joker, as well as Infantino/Anderson's initial
cover image of Batgirl from late 1966 (Detective Comics #359). Also, a
rather obscure Superman image used throughout the 1950s to the early 1970s
in merchandise - from the 1954 board game "Calling Superman" to a 1967
Superman lunchbox to patches in comic book ads in the early 1970s, this
Superman image by an as-yet unknown artist was continually used throughout
merchandise featuring Superman.The last Superman figure by Curt Swan and
George Klein came from the cover of Superman Giant Annual #6 (1962 courtesy
of Comic Book Historians Facebook Group member Ray Cuthbert). The Robin
figure is another merchandising drawing which originally appeared in
Detective Comics #345 by Carmine Infantino and Joe Giella and was utilized
extensively from that point on. Here are examples of how the full images
would appear below:
Many of these books -
which appeared on newsstands and comic book spinners starting in July of
1971 and ending in May of 1972 - are now highly sought-after by collectors.
DC soon advertised the value and page increase on their mastheads and the
spines of the covers, which was reminiscent of the Golden Age when
All-American Comics (again, a branch of DC) advertised this on their covers,
as well - note the similarity - they switched quickly to counting the inside
and outside of each cover in both instances:
Cover date June 1972 (on
sale date: April 1972) was the last time these logos were seen on the covers of
DC's comics. This approach had lasted nearly 3 years and ended practically at the same time that the 25¢,
52-page issues disappeared.
When the new logo appeared in 1972, with a 20¢ cover price and drastically reduced page count, it was a disappointment to many (our
Webmaster included,
but - y'know - 5¢ cheaper...). Gone were the beautifully thick comics with multiple stories and golden & silver age reprints. Gone were sturdy comics which gave way to what now amounted to... well, pamphlets. It was the end of an age, but
- of course - not the Bronze Age, which would wend on for almost another decade.
To review, here’s how long DC kept each appearance of their masthead during this period:
1938-40: Characters/Name in Bullet on Cover – ~2 Years
1940: The Original Bullet – 1 Year
1941: The Bullet, Including the Word "Superman" – 8 Years
1949: Superman/National Comics in Bullet – 21 Years
1955: Same as above,
but adding red (included in the 21-year count)
1967: Go-Go Checks (with above) – ~2 Years
1968: Characters Near Titles (still with the 1949/1955 Bullet) – ~3 Years
1970: Character Logo – ~2 Years
1972: Block Print DC Bullet – 2 Years
1973: Adapted DC Bullet (by Michael Uslan), adding Stars – 4 Years
1977: Glaser DC Bullet – 28 Years
2005: The DC Spin – 7 Years
2012: The DC Page Turner – 4 Years
2016: Updated DC Block Print Bullet – 7 Years and Counting
Granted, between these character logos and the Glaser Bullet, the latter 3 weren’t really drastic changes from each other.
Adding "The Line of Super-Stars" and actual stars to the logo was a slight
change. And while the Glaser Bullet added concentric circles, two more stars
and an outline to the "DC" letters, then tilted it - that wasn't that drastic
of a change, either. But these were changes, nonetheless – and the overall look shifted very quickly during that period of the early 70s. So, there’s no real reason to be up in arms about how quickly the tides have shifted recently.
The staying power of the new logo, however – that’s another argument for a time well into the future.
At any rate, we hope that you enjoyed this trip through the past. we sure did!
Pax, harmonia,
Brian G. Philbin
Webmaster
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