Whitman Comics
 |
|
| Private | |
| Industry | Publishing |
| Founded | 1962 |
| Defunct | 1984 |
| Headquarters | Poughkeepsie, New York, United States |
| Products | Comic books |
| Owner |
Random House DreamWorks Classics (Comcast) |
| Parent | Western Publishing |
| Subsidiaries | Whitman Comics |
Gold Key Comics was an imprint of Western Publishing created for comic books distributed to newsstands. Also known as Whitman Comics, Gold Key operated from 1962 to 1984.
Gold Key Comics was created in 1962, when its parent company Western Publishing switched to in-house publishing rather than packaging content for branding and distribution by its business partner, Dell Comics. Hoping to make their comics more like traditional children's books, they initially eliminated panel line-borders, using just the panel, with its ink and artwork evenly edged but not bordered by a "container" line. Within a year they had reverted to using inked panel borders and oval balloons. They experimented with new formats, including Whitman Comic Book, a black-and-white 136 page hardcover series containing reprints and Golden Picture Story Book, a tabloid-sized 52-page hardcover containing new material. In 1967, Gold Key reprinted a number of selected issues of their comics under the title Top Comics which were sold in plastic bags containing five comics at gas stations and various eateries. Like Dell, Gold Key was one of the few major American publishers of comic books never to display the Comics Code Authority seal on its covers.
Gold Key featured a number of licensed properties and several original titles, including a number of publications that spun off from Dell's Four Color series, or were published as standalones by Dell. It maintained decent sales numbers throughout the 1960s, thanks to its offering of many titles based upon popular TV series of the day, as well as numerous titles based upon both Walt Disney Studios and Warner Bros. animated properties. It was also the first company to publish comic books based upon Star Trek. While some titles, such as Star Trek and The Twilight Zone, were published for many years, many other licensed titles were characterized by short runs, sometimes publishing no more than one or two issues. Gold Key considered suing over the similarly themed television series Lost in Space for its resemblance to the pre-existing Space Family Robinson but decided their business relationship with CBS and Irwin Allen was more important than any monetary reward resulting from such a suit.
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Wikipedia