Line #34 Creator/GoldKeyComics


1	[[quoteright:196:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/gold_key_whitman_logos_for_tvtropes_2.jpg]]
2	Gold Key Comics began in 1962, although the history extends back further. Western Publishing and Lithography (better known as the creator of Golden Books) had published some comics under the Whitman imprint in the 1930s, then in 1935 Dell Publishing contracted and distributed comics from Western as Creator/DellComics. This ended in 1962, an event known as "the divorce", when Dell and Western went their separate ways.
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4	Ownership of most of the original titles, as well as most of the licensing agreements, were with Western and not Dell, so Western created the Gold Key imprint and continued publishing its own comics.
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6	Gold Key's comics always stood out from their competitors on the stand due to the frequent use of painted covers. The cover art was usually reproduced in "pin-up" style (i.e., without logos and cover text) on the back cover.
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8	In the 1970s and 1980s, the Whitman imprint began appearing on Gold Key titles, and the company stopped publishing in the 1980s.
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10	The bulk of Dell, Gold Key, and Whitman's output always consisted of licensed properties based on cartoons, TV series, and films (and they did adapt ''everything under the sun'' -- see ComicBookAdaptation, below; or just google "Gold Key Comics"), but they did have their own small stable of original characters as well. Notably, most of them were ''not'' super heroes in the conventional sense.
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12	For decades, [=Dell/Gold Key/Whitman=] were also the publishers of Literature/BigLittleBooks, small prose novels based on the same licensed properties as their comics, with subjects like ''The Lone Ranger,'' ''Lassie,'' ''Batman,'' ''Donald Duck,'' and on and on. Every turn of the page revealed a page of text on the left and a full page comics-style illustration on the right. Some featured flip-book animations of the characters in the corner of the pages that you could see move by flipping through the pages of the book in your fingers.
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14	[[CanonInvasion Several of Gold Key's original properties]] (Dr. Solar, Magnus, and Turok) were sold to Creator/ValiantComics in the 1990s, and have more recently reappeared in Creator/DarkHorseComics. In 2013, it was announced that these properties would be published by Creator/DynamiteComics.
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16	Creator/DreamWorksAnimation, through its [=DreamWorks=] Classics subsidiary, owns the Gold Key Comics archives and characters.
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19	!!Gold Key comics with their own trope pages include:[[index]]
20	* ''ComicBook/DoctorSolar''
21	* ''ComicBook/JetDream''
22	* ''ComicBook/JudgeColt''
23	* ''ComicBook/MagnusRobotFighter''
24	* ''ComicBook/MightySamson''
25	* ''ComicBook/TraggAndTheSkyGods''
26	* ''ComicBook/{{Turok}}''
27	[[/index]]
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29	!!Other Gold Key comics provide examples of:
30	* CanonWelding: Despite ExecutiveMeddling, Don Glut managed to tie together [[http://www.comics.org/series/2140/ Doctor Spektor]], [[http://www.comics.org/series/2072/ Dagar]], [[http://www.comics.org/series/1529/ Doctor Solar]], [[http://www.comics.org/series/2279/ Tragg]], [[http://www.comics.org/series/1820/ The Owl]] and probably others
31	* ComicBookAdaptation: Gold Key published a ''lot'' of these. If you think Creator/{{Dark Horse\|Comics}} and Creator/{{IDW\|Publishing}} publish a lot of licensed titles today, you haven't looked at Gold Key's line:
32	** ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'', ''WesternAnimation/MickeyMouse'', ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'', ''Series/DarkShadows'', ''Series/TheManFromUNCLE'', ''Series/Adam12'', ''Series/{{Bewitched}}'', ''Franchise/TheLoneRanger'', ''ComicStrip/BuckRogers'' (both the original and the [[Series/BuckRogersInTheTwentyFifthCentury 1979 series)]], ''Franchise/FlashGordon'', ''Anime/BattleOfThePlanets'', and on and on. The ''Star Trek'' comics have been collected in a trade paperback.
33	** Gold Key had most of the Creator/HannaBarbera properties, but in 1970, lost the rights to the pre-1967 Hanna-Barbera line-up. Charlton picked them up. After Gold Key lost the H-B line-up entirely in 1975, Charlton picked up most of those properties as well.
34	** [[ComicBook/LooneyTunes Gold Key and Whitman's]] ''ComicBook/LooneyTunes'' comics deserve special mention. They ran for decades and built up an ExpandedUniverse, complete with original characters like WesternAnimation/BugsBunny's girlfriend Honey Bunny, Porky's nephew Cicero, the Road Runner's wife and three sons, and Sniffles's human friend Mary Jane. The comics are also the only reason anyone is familiar with Petunia Pig, who was a regular cast member in print, but who only appeared in a small handful of early cartoons. [[note]] She does have a cameo in the 1970's TV short, "Bugs Bunny's Christmas Carol," which not coincidentally was produced when the Gold Key comics were going strong. [[/note]] Bugs's nephew Clyde, a relatively obscure character from the classic animated shorts, is another prominent AscendedExtra in the comics. The Bugs Bunny newspaper strip and all Looney Tunes books and merchandise of those years featured these characters prominently, and any fan of that period would be likely to recognize them. The stories' style arguably bore more resemblance to the ComicBook/DisneyDucksComicUniverse than to the faster-paced Warner animated shorts (and Whitman did publish Duck comics for Disney). Since Gold Key/Whitman went under, though, this version of the characters and their world seems to have been completely forgotten by Creator/WarnerBros (despite the fact that it would seem like an obvious model for how to handle long-form storytelling with the characters, something WB seems to perpetually struggle with). One of the most notable writers was Creator/MarkEvanier. Creator/CarlBarks (of the aforementioned [[ComicBook/DisneyDucksComicUniverse duck comics)]] even did a little work for them.
35	* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: The early Star Trek comics were drawn by Italian artists who had not seen the show and were working from publicity stills. The artwork is intriguing, but varies wildly from the style of the show, with unrecognisable machines flanking the transporter pad, and tricorders used as communicators. The writing is also bizarre, with the Enterprise exploring other galaxies, entering planets' atmospheres, and in one entertaining but [[https://web.archive.org/web/20150426231447/http://www.comics101.com/comics101/?mode=project&action=view&project=Comics+101&chapter=105 notorious example]] committing planet-wide genocide against a plant civilisation to prevent it spreading to other parts of an otherwise ''[[WhatTheHellHero uninhabited galaxy]]''.
36	* RecycledInSpace: ''Space Family Robinson'' (aka ''Lost In Space: Space Family Robinson'') was ''Literature/TheSwissFamilyRobinson'' in space!
37	* StatusQuoIsGod: Most of their comics, although a few comics in the 1970s managed to avert it.

Context Creator / GoldKeyComics